Last week we discovered that God made us for his pleasure, made us to get to know and love him and live in relationship with him. Humanity’s first purpose in life is to get to know and love God in return. We call that purpose, WORSHIP.

This week we are going to focus on our second purpose: to get to know and love God’s family or community. We call this purpose, FELLOWSHIP.

And just as we were all created to worship, we were all created for fellowship.

Simply defined, fellowship is living as a part of God’s family, living together and loving together in community. In fact that was God’s plan from the very beginning.

When you read the story of God creating the universe, you find God constantly looking at what He has made and announcing, ‘It is good’.

God made the stars, sun and moon; "And God saw that it was good."

God made the oceans and mountains and seas; "And God saw that it was good."

God made the plants and animals, lilies and roses, fish and birds and dogs, and the Canterbury Crusaders! "And God said they were very good!"

And God made brussel sprouts and spiders and mosquitos…And God even found them good!

It’s a refrain that must have echoed across the universe: "It is good!"

But do you know the first time that God saw something that wasn’t good? When He noticed that Adam, the man he had created, was all alone:

The Lord God said, "It is not good for the man to be alone." (Gen 2 v18, NIV)

So God created Eve (and saw she was very, very good!); God created Eve so that men would never have to be alone. And not just for marriage, God did not want his people to live alone.

We were created to live in community and that’s been God’s plan from the very beginning. But often we try to make it through life on our own, and that’s not what God had in mind for you or for me. He wants you to join his faith family.

In terms of our natural families, some of us come from wonderful families where we found love and strength and support. Others of us come from families that weren’t good and may even have been damaging, leaving us with personality scars and painful memories.

I don’t know about your past, but I do know that God has a future purpose for you, that you would experience fellowship, that you would be a part of His family.

In the Old Testament, Solomon was the son of King David, and succeeded him as King of Israel. When he became King, God promised to grant him any request, and Solomon asked for wisdom. He became known as the wisest King in the world.

In the book of Ecclesiastes Solomon recorded some of his discoveries in life. Here is what he learned about trying to make it through life on his own: Read: Ecclesiastes 4 v 8 to 12 (GNB)

A rope of three cords is hard to break

A bundle of sticks is hard to snap.

(Using a stick of dowelling) Just imagine that this stick represents you. Admire yourself for a moment. Look at how tanned and thin you are. Now as a stick the first thing you have to do is to decide how are you going to live. And you have two choices. Either you can live alone – or you can decide to join a bundle with other sticks. And there are advantages to both.

There are some real advantages to going it alone. But there are also dangers in trying to make it through life all by ourselves. Sometimes when you are trying to make it on your own its easy to get damaged, sometimes, even snapped right in two. And some of you know how that feels. But it’s our choice and if we want, we can decide to go it alone.

Or we can decide to bundle with some other sticks. (Using a bundle of dowelling)

There are distinct advantages to this option also. In fact this is the option that our Bible reading recommends and outlines some of those advantages.

1. When you bundle with other sticks there will be someone to pick you up when you fall down. Ecclesiastes 4 v 10

No matter how self-reliant, how confident, how capable you may be...sooner or later, something is going to hurt you, knock you down. All of us are going to fall.

It might be because of decisions we make or because of events that are beyond our control. You may lose your job or lose a loved one. It could be a health problem. You may be the victim of a crime. You might get sued. You may have family problems.

There are a thousand and one things that can go wrong in life, and there’s no way you can protect yourself from all of them. The only guarantee is that eventually, something is going to come into your life that will rock you to the core.

And when that happens you and I are going to need someone to stand alongside us. Someone:

• to help us hold together when life is falling apart
• to encourage us to never give up even when those around us are
• to pray for us and remind us of God’s goodness and faithfulness in the dark times
• to help us slowly get back on our feet and begin to put our lives back together again.

We all need friends. And if you bundle with other sticks you will find friends, people who can pick you up when you fall. And if you bundle with other sticks YOU will be there to help someone else who needs to be picked up.

If you are in one of our 40 Days small groups the chances are that there is someone in your group right now who has fallen down and needs someone to help them get back on their feet again. And it just may be that God has placed you in that group to do just that.

Chances are there is also someone in your group that is an EGR – an "Extra Grace Required" person, who needs extra sensitivity and care.

Every group is going to have at least one EGR person and if you look around and you can’t figure out who it is, then its probably you. And if it is, you’re in the right place! Because when you bundle with other sticks there will be someone there to help you when you fall.

Here’s a second advantage:

2. When you bundle with other sticks you find warmth. Eccl 4 v 11

You know what happens if you rub two sticks together for long enough - you get fire. And fire provides warmth and most of us could use a little more warmth in our lives.

Anybody have a tough week? I heard of one teenager who did recently.

• Her week began by getting locked out of the house where she was babysitting, leaving her

all alone in the back yard with a one-year old till the mother came home.

• Then she got a sinus infection that wiped her out for the 7 tests she had at school that week.
• And then when she was out on Saturday she had her first flat tire!

And when she got home, she didn’t need advice or my opinion on how to avoid a tire blowout - what she really needed was a hug.

Sometimes, because life can be cold, you just need a hug.

Have you ever tried hugging yourself? Try it, it doesn’t work. You just wind up getting wrapped up in yourself. When you need a hug – you need a friend. I hope you have someone in your life that brings you warmth, someone who just brightens the room when they walk in, someone that you look forward to seeing because you just feel better when you are around them.

And I hope that you are bringing warmth to someone else’s life. Did you know that:

• Every time you encourage someone when they’ve had a hard day,
• Every time you offer a kind word or a compliment,
• Every time you give someone a hug,

You bring warmth. If you bundle with other sticks you will find warmth. And then:

3. When you bundle with other sticks you will find protection Eccl 4 v 12

When these words were written almost all military combat was hand-to-hand. So soldiers went into battle with a partner, someone that could be counted on and trusted completely. And they would stand back to back with one another, and always kept close so that they could fight off the enemy on any side.

And in a sense that’s what friends do, they guard your back and help protect you. And sometimes we most need protection from ourselves, from the temptations that are hard to resist.

If you’ve ever tried to break a bad habit you know what this is like. Often it is knowing that someone is walking with you that keeps you from stumbling and falling to temptation.

Bundle with other sticks and you will find that kind of protection. And then finally:

Friends help us to grow. The writer of Proverbs puts it this way:

As iron sharpens iron, a friend sharpens a friend. (Prov 27 v 17, NLT)

People learn from one another, just as iron sharpens iron. (GNB)

Think of a blacksmith who makes swords. He takes a hammer and takes a piece of iron and works on it slowly and continuously until it takes the shape and sharpness of a sword.

Friends are like that (although hopefully a little more gentle!), always challenging us and even pushing us to be all that God wants for us to be.

This kind of growth needs a closer relationship than you get by just attending Sunday services. It needs a one on one, or a threesome or a small group. Right now that’s happening in our 30 different small groups that are meeting each week. Sticks are bundling together and friendships are being formed and people are growing.

Listen to how one woman describes her experience in her small group:

"It has dawned on me that having a deeper relationship with God means getting to have a closer relationship with those in God’s family as well. It was an amazing insight to realize what it can mean to be part of a small community – the love and support, the ability to question and discuss, to share and grow – all things I’d been experiencing from a variety of other sources in my life, but never before thought about looking for from my relationship with God."

You see that’s what happens when a stick decides not to go it alone but instead to bundle with other sticks – we develop a deeper relationship with God – and we grow.

It would be nice if everyone was just like you and me; strong and healthy and normal, practically perfect in every way! But the truth is:

• Sometimes the other sticks are needy. They have problems and need help.

• Sometimes their lives are messy, & when we get close their messes spill over into our lives.
• And sometimes, because every stick is different, they don’t always fit together neatly in the bundle and that can make us uncomfortable.

It’s not always easy living in a bundle of sticks.

But this is God’s vision for His church: a bunch of fragile sticks bundling together

• To pick each other up when we fall down
• To provide warmth for each other
• To protect one another
• To help each other grow

This is the way God intended it to be. We were created for fellowship. We were created to be a part of a loving community.

We hope that St Albans won’t be known because we have good music or lots of community outreach or an awesome building or excellent programmes for our children and teenagers. Those are all good things in themselves and we will continue to work to make them happen. But that’s not our goal. Our goal, and God’s vision, is that this church would be known by our love.

Jesus said, "If you love each other, everyone will know that you are my disciples." (Jn 13 v35)

Wouldn’t it be great if people in our wider community were saying:

‘Oh I know St Albans. That’s the church where they really care about each other.’ If that happened we wouldn’t be able to keep people away. Lonely people aren’t looking for religion, they’re looking for relationship, to be accepted and to belong; they’re looking for a family.

Do you know that the most frequent command in the New Testament is the command to love one another? That 99% of the commands are about love, not about mission?

In the 1970s Jess Moody wrote, "We will win the world when we realise that fellowship, not evangelism, must be our primary emphasis. When we demonstrate the big miracle of love, it wont be necessary to go out, people will come in." In the same book Howard Snyder wrote, "Our emphasis should be evangelism through fellowship, especially through small groups, coupling loves’ miracle with Christ’s invitation."

Did you know also that 30% of the teaching in the New Testament letters is on relationships and only 3% is about the gifts of the Holy Spirit? Now God clearly believes that the gifts of the Holy Spirit are vitally important in church life, but God thinks that our relationships with one another need 10 times more emphasis. Probably because we find it so hard to be loving that God needs to spell out what it means! There are 39 different statements about how we are to behave towards one another – love one another, live at peace with, be patient with, forgive, admonish, teach, confess your sins to, you belong to… one another.

Authentic loving relationships involve knowing and being known, caring and being cared for, serving and being served, correcting and being corrected and celebrating and being celebrated.

Real Christian community exists where: authentic loving relationships occur, truth and life meet, people can disagree in a healthy way, and positive care and discipling are experienced

So, if you are in a small group right now, I hope you "stick" with it and are finding people to grow with, to share life with, to love and from whom you receive love.

And I hope that after these 40 Days are over you will consider continuing to meet as a group; sticking with your bundle!

If you aren’t in a group, it’s not too late to join up. Just visit the Info Desk after the service.

Maybe you are sensing that God is nudging you today, reminding you that you weren’t created to live life alone and you are wondering what it might be like to be a part of God’s family. Youre welcome to come and talk with me about it after the service.

You know when sticks decide to give up trying to make it through life on their own and to bundle with other sticks, something amazing always happens.

God creates a family. And you’re invited to join up.