From The Pastor
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Updated January 26, 2012
Please click on this link Sermon Manuscript for Sept. 5, 2004 to read this sermon.
Fellowship in The Word
The subject of reading the Bible is before us these days as many of us resolve to read a portion or the entire Bible. I came across some thoughts by Thomas Kelly to encourage us in our reading. He describes how we can have fellowship with the Bible authors as we go beyond just reading words on a page.
For the Bible, as such, is a book and words; and what you want is not a book but a living God; not words, but the Word, the Living Word. It is not the words of a book, but the Living Word who animated and owned those writers who wrote the Bible, that we crave. “As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God.” The Book points beyond itself to Him who has been found by its writers. And because He is already in the deeps of your own souls, these words of the Bible are made living and vivid to you… Read your Bibles, and feel your way back into the source and Spring of Life which bubbled up in the Bible-writers. And you’ll find that Source and Spring of Life bubbling up within you also. And you’ll find yourself in deep fellowship with these writers, because your life and theirs go back into the same Living Spring.
(from Secret Seekers, an essay in The Eternal Promise by Thomas Kelly)
Kelly frequently uses the phrase holy community to describe the extraordinary fellowship the followers of Christ can enter with each other. That is what he is describing here, although he doesn’t use that phrase in this quotation. I find that he is describing something I, too, have experienced but needed his help putting words to it. I do feel a sense of fellowship with Moses, Isaiah, David and Paul as I read their words. I am certainly not their peer. Nevertheless, we do share the Living Word of God that stretches across time and knits us together. I sense that fellowship. I attend more closely to their Spirit-breathed words. We truly share the journey.
Pastor Chuck
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