I have been blessed to experience some of the greatest worship there has been in our lifetime, but we have lost that by letting our devotion to worship eclipse our devotion to the Lord. Several times I have been distracted from the River of Life by the great tributaries that feed it.
Consequently, I have been cautious and watchful for any tendencies to do this again. At the same time, I am resolved to seek the highest worship and koinonia I have been blessed to experience. We are called to walk in both and to pursue even greater levels than we have experienced. Thus, we cannot stop pursuing God’s highest for us just because we mishandled it in the past. We must learn from our mistakes but keep pressing on.
Koinonia is part of our inheritance Jesus paid for and one of the greatest benefits of the new covenant. It can only be experienced by those walking in the new covenant, because it requires the Lord Himself to be in the center of our fellowship. As John wrote, “if we walk in the Light as He Himself is in the Light, we have fellowship with one another” (see I John 1:7).
We cannot experience koinonia without the Lord, but even with the Lord in our midst, we can neglect to seek and follow Him more and drift from Him. Thus, we must keep the Lord our main pursuit with the greatest resolve. Not just to experience His presence, but also to wait on the Lord, inquire of Him for all things, and listen for His instructions and guidance.
One of the Greek words translated “worship” is the way a dog licks its master’s hand. A dog’s devotion to its master is one of the great lessons in devotion and loyalty. As I have shared before, I want to seek the Lord like my dogs do me. They want to be as close to me as they can at all times. Most of the time they lie right next to my chair, but if they lie across the room, it is in direct view of me. If I move a little, their eyes pop open, and they’re ready to follow me if I go to another room. That’s how we should be with the Lord. If He moves just a little, we should be ready to follow Him, never letting Him out of our sight.
Christian maturity begins when we become less focused on the benefits we receive from Him and more focused on the benefits the Lord receives from our relationship. The greatest benefit He receives from the new covenant is family, and to be walking in the reality of His family is koinonia.
Even the greatest gifts and benefits we have in Christ can be corrupted by our selfishness. He wants and expects us to enjoy them, but the greatest joy of all comes when we seek the blessings and benefits of others and especially the Lord more than ourselves. That’s when koinonia is realized. Christian maturity is, to a large degree, being delivered from self-centeredness to become truly Christ-centered.
In Philippians 3, the apostle Paul, who perhaps lived one of the most fruitful lives of the church age, wrote near the end of his life that he did not yet consider himself to have attained. What could he not have attained? Certainly not his salvation or eternal life, which he attained the moment he believed in the cross of Jesus. He went on to explain that it was the “high calling.” What was this high calling that even the apostle Paul did not think he had attained after doing so much?
When I asked the Lord about this as a new Christian, He said the clearest description of the “high calling” in Scripture was Galatians 2:20: “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.”
© 2023 Rick Joyner. All Rights Reserved
