Hi all,
First – Some months back we posted the notice below on our correspondence, asking people to add connect@churchwithoutwallsinternational.org to their address book so their service provider wouldn’t see my Weekly Thoughts and e-newsletter as spam.
We had to change our web site host to accommodate more videos, so our contact email changed. This means my Weekly Thoughts no longer come from john@supernaturalhousechurch.org but rather the address below. If a person did not do as we requested, their Internet Service Provider probably saw my emails to them as spam and blocked them or moved them to the spam folder. If you know of someone who hasn’t received my Weekly Thoughts or e-newsletter in some time, forward this to them, and also let them know they will have to go to our site and re-enter their information to start up again. Thanks.
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Continuing….
The word ‘fellowship’ in the NT is ‘koinonia’ (coin-o-knee-uh). It means ‘common’, ‘sharing in common’, ‘participation with’, ‘communion with’, ‘sharing in’. In the New Testament it is translated ‘fellowship’, and ‘communion’. In a sentence: The share which one has in anything.
In II Corinthians 13: 14 Paul says this, “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God (the Father), and the communion (fellowship) of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.”
In Philippians 2: 1-2 he said, “If there is any encouragement in Christ, if any comfort of love, any fellowship of the Spirit, any sympathy, fulfill my joy and be like-minded, having the same love, being of one accord, of one mind.”
To have ‘the fellowship of the Spirit’ you first have to recognize His presence in your spirit
What I do is this: The first thing in the morning when I wake up I shift my attention to down inside me, the area of my chest and mid-section, though not on the physical, but sensing the Father’s presence in my spirit, which is felt in that area.
It is from there when I say ‘Good morning Father, is there anyone you want me to pray for this morning?’ (first to His ‘list’ before I get to my list), names or faces float up to my mind and I pray in the Spirit quietly for them until their name or face passes before me and another one takes their place. It is there during the day I sense a grievance when I say or do something wrong, and it is there I feel a surge of joy while my mind wonders what my spirit knows but my mind does not yet know.
I have learned to shift my attention back and forth multiple times a day, often just to feel His presence. I love to worship by connecting down inside me to the core of why I love the Father and Lord, and do so by first sensing His presence inside, and singing and worshipping to that presence. From there is flows up and out of me to the Father.
Sometimes I will shift my attention to my spirit to compare what I sense in my spirit while someone else is talking to me – He is the Spirit of Truth – so I listen to what they say, or what they email me, or what they message me – and compare that with any sense in my spirit, for He will sometimes ‘fact check’ what they are saying. There are times I’ll read an email or listen to someone and know they are speaking the truth, or they are speaking out of hurt, or trying to protect something down deep inside – and sometimes nothing because that may be none of my business.
You can also watch an advertisement for a movie or TV show and check inside to see if there is a wrong spirit attached to it. He is the Spirit of Truth, so get used to comparing what He is ‘giving off in your spirit’ versus what others are saying. The doctor give you a negative report? Check with your spirit – is the Holy Spirit confirming that by a heavy feeling, or is there peace?
I will check inside me, in my spirit, to see if the Spirit of Truth inside has anything to comment on or to give witness to something said.
This is the point of fellowship with the Father, Son, or Holy Spirit.
When I was a new believer in my teen years I SO wanted to hear the Father’s voice – THAT was my focus, to somehow tune in to His wavelength on a consistent basis. Back then, which was the mid 1970’s, car radios were tuned using a knob you turned to find a particular radio station’s frequency. When you got close to that frequency suddenly out of the static you could hear a voice from the station, and as you slowed the turning of the knob to a very slow turn the voice became louder – then whoops! Too far the other direction, so you would reverse your turn and turn back to where the voice was strongest – back and forth a tiny bit until you had the absolute strongest signal possible.
THAT is what I felt like trying to hear the Father’s voice. Trying to tune in to hear Him out of the static of other voices or just my own. I would be right on the mark sometimes, and then suffer through a dry time of not being able to ‘tune in’ – and I’d work at it until I had that ‘wavelength’ again. I did this by calling to remembrance those times I ‘hit it’ and remember what His voice sounded like, purposely imprinting on my brain what I was doing when I heard Him, what He felt like, what He sounded like – so the next time I would not be so dull of hearing, but could ‘zero in’ on His voice right away.
I spent a lot of time, a LOT of time remembering each and every time I got it ‘right’, calling those times to remembrance again and again, over and over. I examined where it came from – the direction – so I could determined when it was me (came from the brain above my shoulders) or when His voice and presence originated in my spirit man and then floated up to my mind.
But at some point I realized while trying to hit the right wavelength I had missed the larger truth and the larger necessity: To first sense His presence inside. That waking up first thing and sensing Him inside me was like have the whole ‘radio station’ in my spirit. I no longer needed to ‘fine tune’ things, I just looked for and felt the larger Presence in my spirit, for I learned that out of that comes His voice. It is out of that Presence the subtle feelings, witness, and directions come from.
It is a larger reservoir of His presence inside 24/7 from which ‘the Voice’ comes – and I learned if I focused on His larger presence inside, then I could very much more easily hear His specific voice when that came. That’s the key. To sense His presence first and foremost. From that presence His voice, His subtleties, His nuances, come.
The sensing of Him down inside is the ‘sharing’, the ‘communion’ and fellowship of the Holy Spirit.
Learn to feel His presence in your spirit. Learn to shift your attention several, many, times a day from the sense realm of the physical and mental, to your spirit. When the doctor says thus and so, check in your spirit if there is peace or need to pray.
When a person is talking to you shift your attention down inside to see if the Spirit of Truth ‘fact checks’ what they say. When you read a news report on the computer or listen to someone, check for that resonance in your spirit – don’t just react from your emotions, but first shift attention to your spirit. Many Christians are better at reacting to the spirit of fear than they are the Holy Spirit, and that is a very sad observation.
What I’m saying here is how you learn to stay in the fellowship of the Spirit. Be with Him in these and many more similar ways. He is within 24/7, learn how to shift attention to your spirit to sense Him there.
But John said in I John 1: 3: “That which we’ve seen and heard we share with you that you may have fellowship (commonality, in common) with us. And truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ.”
While we can have the fellowship of the Spirit 24/7 as we sense His presence in our spirit, we can also have fellowship with the Father and Lord. And though we sense the Father or the Lord, or the Holy Spirit through the Holy Spirit, you can tell the difference between them. I love the fellowship with the Father the most, He is the One I’ve spoken with since I was a teen. He replaced my earth-dad and has never left me. He is the One I know best.
How do you tell the difference between Father, Son, and Spirit?
And that’s where we’ll pick it up next week, and also we’ll see the Holy Spirit speaking in Acts, and define for people those who have said they heard ‘an audible voice’ – and more.
Until next week, blessings,
John Fenn
