Rick Warren's Daily DevotionalSample

Healing Choices: A Shared Life

God intends for us to experience life together. The Bible calls this shared experience fellowship.

Today, however, the word has lost most of its biblical meaning. Fellowship now usually refers to casual conversation, socializing, food, and fun.

The question, "Where do you fellowship?" means "Where do you attend church?" "Stay after for fellowship" usually means "Wait for refreshments."

Biblical fellowship is experiencing life together. It includes unselfish loving, honest sharing, practical serving, sacrificial giving, sympathetic comforting, and all the other "one another" commands found in the New Testament.

When it comes to fellowship, size matters: smaller is better. You can worship with a crowd, but it's hard to fellowship in a crowd. The body of Christ, like your own body, is really a collection of many small cells. The life of the body of Christ, like your body, is contained in the cells.

For this reason, every Christian needs to be involved in a small group within their church, whether it is a home fellowship group, a Sunday school class, or a Bible study. This is where real community takes place, not in the big gatherings.

God made an incredible promise about small groups of believers: "For where two or three gather together as my followers, I am there among them." (Matthew 18:20 NLT)