Draw Near To Christ: How To Live In Fellowship With Jesus Series

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Introduction

Draw near to God and he will draw near to you - James 4:8

Draw near to God. How is that done? And more specifically, how do you draw near to God the Son – the Lord Jesus Christ? We are in the midst of a study on how to have fellowship with each of the members of the Trinity. We found that we draw near to the Father by enjoying His love in a father/child kind of relationship, which involves delighting in His presence, trusting Him as a father, fearing Him as a father, and obeying Him with the preferring kind of obedience. Then last week we moved to fellowship with the God the Son. We draw near to Him by seeking grace. And we do that through faith, the spiritual gifts, bold, son-like prayer, and Scripture. That is how we interact with Jesus in His role as priest, or mediator.

But there is much more to how we interact with Jesus than that. I spent the week pouring through the gospels this week, looking for the various ways Jesus taught us to interact with Him. I am not going to talk about every one of them – we will just hit the ones Jesus emphasized the most. The most basic way is the one we saw last week – trust Him. In addition to that I would like to point out five more. The first one is “Come.”

Come to Him

John 6:37 whoever comes to me I will never drive away.

John 5:39 You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about me, 40 yet you refuse to come to me to have life.

Can you obtain eternal life through the Holy Scriptures? Not unless you come to Jesus. You have to come to Him to receive eternal life to begin with, and then, once you have eternal life, you have to keep coming to Him.

Matthew 11:28 Come to me … and I will give you rest.

John 7:37 Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink.

We come to Him every day for rest, and for the all the basic needs of our soul.

A Christian is someone who has a need and looks to Jesus Christ. He is our source for every part of life. We look to Him for salvation, forgiveness of sins, rest, for strength, comfort, for guidance – every part of life. Every human being looks somewhere for life. When you are empty or dry or needy or lacking something, you look for something or someone to supply you with what you are lacking. It might be your spouse, your job, yourself, the government – everybody looks somewhere, and what Jesus said is, “Look to Me.” When you look to Jesus Christ for every need in life, that is what it means to come to Him.

Eat and Drink Him

This is what Jesus was getting at when He talked about eating and drinking Him.

John 6:53 Jesus said to them, "I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.

Eating and drinking means looking to Jesus for nourishment, strength, satisfaction, enjoyment, renewal, and sustenance.

John 6:35 Then Jesus declared, "I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty.

John 4:14 whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.

Every time you have a need or a longing or desire, and you look to Jesus Christ to supply it, that is an act of fellowship with Him. You are having communion with God the Son when you do that. And if, when you do that, you realize what is happening and you enjoy it for what it is, it will increase your love for God. You will enjoy those experiences, your soul will taste and see that they are good and start to crave more of them, and then when temptation hits and it is a choice between saying no to the pleasure of sin on the one hand, or forfeiting future fellowship with Jesus on the other hand, it will be far easier to prefer fellowship with Jesus over the pleasure of sin.

Follow Him

So you have fellowship with Jesus by trusting Him and by coming to Him (looking to Him for life and all that life entails). Next, Jesus said, “Follow Me.”

John 12:26 Whoever serves me must follow me