THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE HOLY SPIRIT; KOINONIA

2 Corinthians 13:14 The amazing grace of the Master, Jesus Christ, the extravagant love of God, the intimate friendship of the Holy Spirit, be with all of you.

The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost, be with you all. Amen.

2 Corinthians 13:14 KJV

The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.

2 Corinthians 13:14 AMP

The grace (favor and spiritual blessing) of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the presence and fellowship (the communion and sharing together, and participation) in the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen (so be it).

2 Corinthians 13:14 AMPC

Look at this singular verse, every (Nigerian) Christian knows this by heart. If I say The Grace, we all know what next. No need to open bible

The Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, be with us all now and forever.

This was Paul's closing blessings in his second letter to the Corinthians.

And while we've gotten so used to this passage, somehow we do not understand its true meaning as so many of us do not walk in

The grace (favor and spiritual blessing) of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the presence and fellowship (the communion and sharing together, and participation) in the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen (so be it).

2 Corinthians 13:14 AMPC

Here we see an appearance of The trinity in a blessing to the church.

I'm not sure there is any other blessing that has this in the new testament.

Paul prays first for the Grace of the Lord Jesus Christ to be with them.

This is only accessible of course to those who believe in Christ and have accepted Him as Lord and Saviour.

This Grace is given only by the sacrifice on the cross.

This will mean all believers have access to it.

The love of God

This is the cord holding it all. It is the anchor

It is why we have Grace through Christ Jesus. Love is what bought it all. Sweet part? This love is for all of mankind and revealed through Christ Jesus

The Fellowship of the Holy Spirit

MSG says it is the intimate friendship of the Holy Spirit

KJV calls it communion

AMPC says it is not just communion/fellowship, it is expatiated into a Sharing together and participation

The word communion is Koinonia in Greek and it simply means fellowship.

Let's branch to our concordance a bit please

G2842Greek: κοινωνία

Transliteration: koinōnía

Pronunciation: koy-nohn-ee'-ah 

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 Description: from κοινωνός(G2844); partnership, i.e. (literally) participation, or (social) intercourse, or (pecuniary) benefaction:

Translation: (to) communicate(-ation), communion, (contri-)distribution, fellowship.

Just look at what we are meant to be having with the Holy Spirit. 

We've been given Grace through the love of the Father. We've also been blessed with the presence (indwelling) of the spirit inside of us as a seal of our faith.

But you see fellowship? This one that Paul is talking about, it doesn't just fall on us like Grace. We do not just find ourselves in it, no.

It requires participation. Intimate friendship doesn't just happen, it is built by efforts from both parties of this friendship

Fellowship is companionship which means to share life together. We've been called to share life together with the spirit.

He shares God's life (thoughts, mind, action, will emotions etc) with us and vice versa.

It's something so personal and beautiful. We freely interact and discuss with the Holy Spirit. Now note that this is not just Paul's advice or prayer

This is God's wish. God wants us to participate in this fellowship.

And I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Comforter (Counselor, Helper, Intercessor, Advocate, Strengthener, and Standby), that He may remain with you forever–

John 14:16 AMPC

And I will ask the Father and he will give you another Savior, the Holy Spirit of Truth, who will be to you a friend just like me—and he will never leave you. 

John 14:16‭ TPT

If we scroll up this chapter, we will see that Jesus had told his disciples He was leaving them.

They will not get to see Him and speak with Him daily as they used to.

All the inside gist they used to get, seems like it'd be cut off.

Jesus was leaving!

The disciples of course would not have felt good. What is the verse before the promise of the spirit?

If you love me, you will obey my commands. There is definitely a direct link to this. Fellowship with the spirit spurs us into obedience!

“I will not leave you all alone like orphans. I will come back to you. “I have told you all these things while I am with you. But the Helper will teach you everything and cause you to remember all that I told you. This Helper is the Holy Spirit that the Father will send in my name.

John 14:18‭, ‬25‭-‬26 ERV

Whatever it is the disciples thought they'd miss out on due to Jesus leaving, the spirit will be sent and that gap closed. I love the part where Jesus says He lives with you and will be in you

The easiest person to communicate is with someone that lives in the same room with you

My parents advice that married couples sleep in the same room, cos it's easier to resolve conflict.

There is no way you want to fight for a long time with someone you are living in the same room with for long. You will sha communicate

Now imagine one living inside of you. He will be in you!

There is an automatic expectation of communication.

Interactive Spiritual communication is one essential part of Fellowship of the Holy spirit.

We hear whispers of His will

His mind and stance dropped into our thoughts/mind

God's emotions showed to us.

The Holy Spirit is to reveal the deep things of God and it happens only from the place of fellowship.

In fact, this fellowship is "life" to us.

It is the link between the creator and that which is created.

We have a relationship with God as sons already. The Holy spirit is our means of communication in this relationship.

How?

Fellowship!

In fact Jesus mentioned in John 16:7

Let me assure you, it is better for you that I go away. I say this because when I go away I will send the Helper to you. But if I did not go, the Helper would not come.

John 16:7 ERV

This is how much value and importance Christ placed on fellowship.

Note the word used here is Helper and it describes beyond the indwelling of the spirit as a seal.

It denotes a link, a special help to reach God.

So important that Christ had to go

Actually, this is why Christ died too

At the beginning, God intended fellowship and it was cut off/limited after the fall of man.

God sent His only son to die so you can have fellowship!

Fellowship with Him

And while we are here on earth, we will have to do this through the Holy Spirit.

Now back to the Corinthians and Paul's letter to them.

These letters to the Corinth Church  were filled with strong corrections.

The Corinth Church had all the gifts of the spirit.

Them dey manifest die

But there was a huge problem: Carnality

How do you have the spirit and have outward expressions of Carnality? Hmmmm

I for pretend to not understand this o. But you see, a lot of us believers are very much like the church in Corinth (even worse)

I cannot imagine Paul writing letters to our generation today😂😂.

The church in Corinth had a huge problem 

Na dem sleep with their papa wife, fornicate pass, full of carnality pass

Their problem was indeed plenty and one thing we'd notice in the the letters to the Corinth Church was the emphasis on the help of the spirit.

Should we study well, we will see exactly why Paul ended with this prayer.

The church in Corinth had a Carnality problem majorly because there was a deficiency in Fellowship with the Spirit.

Koinonia missing!

(Note that operating in the gifts of the spirit do not equate fellowship! It is from this Fellowship of the Holy Spirit that transformation happens for a believer. This is the location where we are changed)

[So] if we say we are partakers together and enjoy fellowship with Him when we live and move and are walking about in darkness, we are [both] speaking falsely and do not live and practice the Truth [which the Gospel presents].

1 John 1:6 AMPC

You want to know the extent of your fellowship? It's in your lives. The thoughts on your mind, the things you do when no one is watching

All what the Corinth Church did wrong, it pointed to one thing: A need to fellowship more

In fact, Paul had to close his letter by praying that need for them. That this fellowship it will be with you people forever o.

I use myself as an example on this so much

"Stop sinning"

If you like make vow to God with your life, na lie. Tomorrow you will go back. Because it is not your integrity that keeps you

It is fellowship. It shows us the way and helps us to walk in truth. The spirit, the one who is Help, He provides Help as we fellowship.

I hardly ever tell people stop fornicating, stop doing this or that (Except it's a direct instruction from God).

Infact, I never focus on the stop

My focus is Fellowship; Koinonia. This is where all the change happens without stress. This is as valid for us as it was for the church in Corinth

How does this change happen? 

God rubs off on us in fellowship. Literally!

This invitation to fellowship is forever open to us.

And now more than before, there is an urgency for us believers to fellowship with God (especially for such a time as this).

God wants to reveal His thoughts and mind to us. He wants us to feel His heartbeat and know His emotions at all times.

Is God happy about xyz? Sometimes I'm fellowshipping and I just see God's smile. 

Here’s the one thing I crave from God, the one thing I seek above all else: I want the privilege of living with him every moment in his house, finding the sweet loveliness of his face, filled with awe, delighting in his glory and grace. I want to live my life so close to him that he takes pleasure in my every prayer.

Psalms 27:4 TPT

True fellowship goes both ways. Thing is, the Holy spirit is already inside of you for this reason looking forward to every intimate moment.

The spirit craves this more than you know. This is one of the major reasons for His existence in you

Whatever it is you are struggling with as a believer, take your eyes off it, take you mind off it.

That sin? That struggle? Ignore it. You actually can't do anything about them on your own. You will end up struggling more and more. 

Why not just focus on being with the spirit instead? Leave those things and shift your attention to fellowship

Take the hand the spirit extends to you for fellowship and begin. 

Let us pray

May the grace (favor and spiritual blessing) of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the presence and fellowship (the communion and sharing together, and participation) in the Holy Spirit be with us all from this day forever more.

WHAT DO YOU SEE?

During prayers this week, the Lord drew our attention to the creation story and explained some things to us. We will be taking it up from there today

In the beginning God ( Elohim)  created [by forming from nothing] the heavens and the earth. The earth was formless and void or a waste and emptiness, and darkness was upon the face of the deep [primeval ocean that covered the unformed earth]. The Spirit of God was moving (hovering, brooding) over the face of the waters. And God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. God saw that the light was good (pleasing, useful) and  He affirmed and sustained it; and God separated the light [distinguishing it] from the darkness.

Genesis 1:1‭-‬4 AMP

First, the earth was formless and void or a waste and emptiness and there was darkness

Then God looked and said Let there be light. So there was light and God saw that the light was good.

First, what does light do?

It helps to see properly.

If I come into a room that is dark (a wasteland as the earth was described), I will need light to move around

Here, we see God's first reaction in the face of darkness: Let there be light

It is calling forth "sight"

But I found out something this week, that it is not just calling forth sight. It goes beyond this

Let's go back to Genesis again. It says after God created light, He saw that light was good.

Now, the earth was described as a wasteland; empty, void and filled with darkness.

If I throw light upon this, the wasteland, emptiness and voidness remain. In fact, they are magnified in the presence of light.

You see more clearly.

That is what light does, it helps you to see more clearly.

Whenever I'm too lazy to do my home cleaning, I put off the light cos light helps me to see how much cleaning I need to stand up and do right away. Darkness hides it just a little bit

So if God says let there be light, what is automatically shown as this light is switched on is the state of the earth: void, wasteland, empty, etc.

How can this be good?

As we prayed this week, the spirit of the Lord drew my attention to this:

That beyond sight, the light was vision

You see, sight is limited to that which we see around us. Vision is the ability to see farther than your eyes can see.

When God saw the light that it was good, what He saw was vision. All the earth was about to be (they already were in His sight)

He wasn't seeing emptiness, voidness or wastelands, no!

What He saw was Good. He saw the Earth and all of creation even before they were created!

There was a visualization of that which was then unseen. And it was Good!

It was this vision that allowed God to know what was next. What the fields should look like, where the sky should stay, the placing of the moons and the stars etc. He didn't have to think or do trial and error because He had seen.

Also note that, God did not have a template for creation (Except that which He saw).

The only thing that had a template in creation was man, and the template is God (Man was made in the image of God)

So there was no sight whatsoever that looked like what the Lord envisioned and called forth

He had not seen a version of earth or something that could be a foundation for this earth that He was about to call forth but yet He saw. The earth at that point also did not look anything like what He saw, but there was a possibility of an unknown because He saw

Even before man was created, for every "it was good", man appeared in the picture. The vision of course included the interactability possibilities of all things to be created

Where there is no vision [no revelation of God and His word], the people are unrestrained; But happy and blessed is he who keeps the law [of God].

Proverbs 29:18 AMP

Where there is no vision, the people perish. We are only carried as far as we can see. We cannot move beyond our sight

We are as big/great as our vision. I'm going to chip this in from the prayers before we proceed.

We talked about the creation and man being made with the template, God

And because man is made with the template called God, some functionaries got called into this creation called man.

So man has the creative ability of God.

You have the DNA of God, so you have the creative ability of God.

What does it mean to be creative? The ability to bring things to life.

In design, a lot of people work with already built templates/existing products and improve on it.

In fact, most of the things we see are improvements on that which already exist.

But for the man in Christ (because we've been returned to status quo), we can bring the unexisting into existence. We do not need to have a template to see

We are not limited by surrounding situations. We already have the only template we need, and it is God's DNA flowing inside of us!

This DNA that we have causes us to see as God sees. Wasteland, void and emptiness all around but He saw beyond it!

The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.   But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!

Matthew 6:22‭-‬23 KJV

The only source of light for the body is the eye. The bible makes us understand that Jesus Christ is Light

[12]Later, Jesus talked to the people again. He said, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never live in darkness. They will have the light that gives life.” ERV Bible. John 8:12

I am the light of the world.

The only source of light for the body is the eye.

Jesus (our light) is now our eyes

We see all situations through His lens

Whoever follows me will never live in darkness

Darkness was the state of the earth until God said let there be light. And all things started coming alive, one after the other

This light that gives life, we have it.

But first, this light SEES life.

The body moves based on what it sees. Again, Our direction is determined by what we see

What we see is very crucial in this life. It is what determines where the body moves to.

And the Lord said unto Abram, after that Lot was separated from him, Lift up now thine eyes, and look from the place where thou art northward, and southward, and eastward, and westward:  For all the land which thou seest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed for ever.

Genesis 13:14‭-‬15 KJV

Abraham had just been seperated from Lot. They had shared lands and Lot chose the fair part of the possession. So Abraham was left with that which was "not so good"

God appeared to Him just after this:

Look with your eyes, all the land which you see, I will give to you and your seed forever

All that which you see, I will give to you forever. We can only possess as far as we can see.

Whatever you see is what belongs to you. It is unto us just as we envision

There is so much power in our sight, so much!

And one thing I've found in, one of the most difficult times to see is when things are not so good. It's very possible that we forget our "God status/DNA" and focus on the physical.

There we saw the giants ( the descendants of Anak came from the giants); and we were like grasshoppers in our own sight, and so we were in their sight.”

Numbers 13:33 NKJV

Quick back note:

Moses had sent some men to Canaan to spy.

They were moving back to the promised land, so they wanted to see what it looked like and all It will take them to get in.

How fruitful the land was, the soil, the walls protecting it, all details about the land basically.

Now here is the report brought back by those sent

For 40 days these men were spying and checking out the land.

They saw that the land was good:

The men told Moses, “We went to the land where you sent us. It is a land filled with many good things ! Here is some of the fruit that grows there.

Numbers 13:27 ERV

But they added a BUT

They saw powerful people, giants

They saw impossibilities of entering the land

And you know what happened?

Everyone that saw how they could not did not actually enter the promised land.

But Joshua son of Nun and Caleb son of Jephunneh were among the men who were sent out to explore the land. They are the only ones who did not get the sickness that caused the others to die.

Numbers 14:38 ERV

Only Joshua and Caleb entered the land

Why? Because they saw the land as attainable.

Sometimes, we see good but there are BUTS

You look at 2020, with one mouth Confess it is good and the next minute you add the buts

You cannot move past the buts in your vision. What you see is your reality, it is what shapes your destiny. Your vision is the only key to your future

A lot of people are seeing a future that is in front. But no, your future is really what you see now. Your future is right here is your present sight!

We didn't see all of the things happening in the world today coming.

What we saw was what God told us about 2020 and beyond.

You see when God was describing Canaan to His children as theirs, there was no mention of it being a land filled with Giants that they cannot overcome. It was their land, the one He was about to give back to them, flowing with milk and honey

God obviously saw the giants living there at that point but that detail was unimportant cos He has envisioned that land as home to His children. 

There was a land flowing with milk and honey (exactly as told by God). But they focused on a detail that did not matter to God, the giants in the land. As they kept on seeing the giants, they became like grasshoppers.

They who were meant to inherit the land saw themselves as grasshoppers, as ones who couldn't own that land. So they didn't

Whatever it is 2020 has brought our way, this is a reminder that God saw all of these things ahead and they were inconsequential. 

The pandemic, the chaos in the world, the projections for the coming months/years due to all of these,

ALL INCONSEQUENTIAL

He gave us a word to guide our sight. And this is exactly what we must see. We must see alongside God

This is not the season to start complaining or adding buts.

And I just sense this as an instruction for us in my spirit, that we should be mindful of our words.

Don't add buts to it. Refuse to see the situations that will add buts to that which is yours

Don't join people to wish 2020 away. It might be jokes but please don't. This is not the season for that, at all.

Don't push things that the Lord had clearly told you were for 2020

Faith is the evidence of things not seen. The only substance of our vision is Faith. It is not directed by what is happening around us, No!

Everything in this world is a matter of perspective

Where you are seeing from. And what you see.

Scripture says the light shines in darkness and is not overcome by darkness. This light we have said is our vision.

Whatever darkness is in the world, it cannot overcome our vision cos it is light. It cannot overcome that which we have seen and believed. Never!

Moreover the word of the Lord came unto me, saying, Jeremiah, what seest thou? And I said, I see a rod of an almond tree.  Then said the Lord unto me, Thou hast well seen: for I will hasten my word to perform it.

Jeremiah 1:11‭-‬12 KJV

What seest thou?

What do you see?

Jeremiah saw and said what He saw. And what did God say?

You have seen very well, for I watch over my word to perform

When the Lord gave us the word for the second half of the year, I kept thinking about it and the Holy Spirit led me to this scripture.

We see and believe before there is a performance.

I'm going to share our anchor scripture for the second half here again.

And blessed is she that believed: for there shall be a performance of those things which were told her from the Lord.

Luke 1:45 KJV

We've already established the connection between our vision and faith.

And here is what this brings to us :

A performance of the things which were told from the Lord

God is not a man, that he should lie; neither the son of man, that he should repent: hath he said, and shall he not do it? or hath he spoken, and shall he not make it good?

Numbers 23:19 KJV

It's a simple case of What you see is what you get

Your future is right here in your present sight/vision, begging you to see well, to ignore all that is around. I'm going to end this with this question for us all.....WHAT DO YOU SEE?