You say the word "communion" nowadays and it brings up the following associations:

1. The book of that title with the creepy cover, by Whitley Streiber.
2. Something you "take" or "get" or "share" with or from your church, pastor or priest.
3. Fellowshipping with God everyday in His Word, by prayer and meditation.

One thing I have noticed in my recent reading of some not so recent Christian writers is how very much they used to emphasize communion with God. They took it for granted that after God first got their attention that the Christian would follow up on their initial salvation by a determined desire to...

"know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings, being conformed to His death"... ~ Phil. 3:10

There are many verses like this, that show that all of our spiritual knowledge of God is through Christ, and that to know Him is to have life eternal. His Words are spirit and life. In Him all the fullness of God dwells bodily, and by His Spirit we learn from Him as the truth is in Jesus. The older Christian writers passed around these truths as a common and accepted currency.

Faith in Christ is much more than a ticket to Heaven - and from the Lake of Fire. It is also the ticket out of this world right now, the world's thinking, pleasures, fears, distractions, obsessions. This gets back to our communion with God. The more we know of Him - the more we know Him - the more we recognize the shabbiness of the props around us. We can say, with Alice, "Why, you're just a pack of cards!"

But this is the problem. Many Christians (as well as some "christianoids") have no desire to unlearn their love for the world or allow their inner compasses to be re-remagnetized for the upward calling in Christ Jesus. Yet this is the very reason we were saved, to point others to God, and to demonstrate in our lives a confession of lips, hands, feet and heart.

We, of all people, should really desire to know God and all the glory that is in Heaven. We should out-Hubble Hubble in discerning a world that is so far away, but so real. Our lives should focus on and magnify the Majesty in Heaven.

Do you know what I see today? If you get too excited about pressing after God, desiring His presence, you run the risk of seeming to be unsure of your salvation, of not "resting in Jesus and what he did on the Cross." Not denying any of this, yet we rest so that we may strive, and we kneel so that we may have Christ formed in us.

Do you want to feel utterly small in your understanding of God? Take a look at some of the great works of the past, like John Owen's lengthy "The Death of Death in the Death of Christ" (How much could you write on that subject?), or his 7-volume "Commentary of Hebrews" presenting the Lord Christ as "Prophet, Priest and King". Speaking of Hebrews, we also have Richard Baxter's wonderful comforting and challenging "The Saint's Everlasting Rest". Many of these writers took great pains to spend much time in the Word and in prayer. The best single lesson I have learned from them - and the whole point I am artlessly trying to ramble home to you - is the utter importance of spending good quality time and seeking after God. When it comes to the faith that we profess such a love for, we need to go beyond the Dragnet threshold ("Just the facts, Ma'am" - i.e. "Jesus died, was buried and rose again for me, etc.").

This is life eternal, that they might know You, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. ~ John 17:3

We need to think like Paul, who didn't treat his faith as merely a done deal, but rather as something that he had just a little of.

"Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me." ~ Phil. 3:14