2 Sam 13:39, And the heart of King David longed to go out to Absalom; for he was comforted concerning Amnon, since he was dead. 
	We are looking at the manner in which The Lord God Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth has infused humanity with a longing after Himself. As we have seen, this longing has been misused and misdirected by the elements of this age. It puts forth all other types of things to fill that void that can only and fully be met by God, Himself. It has been corrupted by all those deceitful lies of this world as a means of the enslavement of humankind. This is to the lusts and the fleeting idols of wealth and power and fame and sex in the guise of love and substance abuse as well as anything else that would otherwise hinder seeking after God with all our hearts and with all our souls and with all our might as is the inherent course of His design
	As well, this longing is manifested within the familial relationship as specified in this passage. It is not a matter that the longing for our loved ones is wrong before God. That is unless it also takes greater emphasis and demand of our time and devotion than what we have in our hearts for God, Himself. As well, the longing for our loved ones to come to know The Lord in the fuller and splendid relationship that is His design for family is the outworking of that concise relationship that is established in Christ Jesus.
	This should be evident in our longing for the fellowship and the relatedness that is shared among the community of the believers, God’s Church. That is one of the detailed out workings of the Holy Spirit that is evident when we are in the company of those who love and know Christ. There is an immediate sense of relatedness through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit that just enwraps our hearts and souls together in The Lord with those whom we may never have even met before.
	Consistent with this intimate relatedness is the fact that the Holy Spirit puts upon our hearts those who are in need of prayer and support and encouragement at those times of their immediate and urgent need. The time of day is inconsequential as the Holy Spirit moves within us to pray or call or provide whatever other support may be necessary at the immediacy of that moving within us and our obedient response to act accordingly. There arises a binding in the love of God which cements our hearts and souls together for the sake of the testimony of God in all His glory.
	This too, is the outworking of that longing which is the full measure of our makeup as the children of God on this earth as we long to know Our Creator in a most personal and intimate manner. 
	All of this comes from the fulfilling relationship that is first established with God through Jesus Christ. It is then ordered according to that which flows forth from our hearts of obedience and honor and devotion to Jehovah fully aligned with His will and His Word.
	  The Apostle Paul describes this heart after The Lord and after that relatedness with His people in Rom 1:9-12. Please turn to this passage so we can walk together into the depth of what God has brought forth in those who belong to Him.
	Rom 1:9-12. For God, whom I serve in my spirit in the preaching of the gospel of His Son, is my witness as to how unceasingly I make mention of you, always in my prayers making request, if perhaps now at last by the will of God I may succeed in coming to you. For I long to see you in order that I may impart some spiritual gift to you, that you may be established; that is, that I may be encouraged together with you while among you, each of us by the other's faith, both yours and mine. 
	Please notice that the Apostle’s heart was first the complete service to Jehovah in the manner in which he obeyed and desired to share the greatest measure of that which God had opened in his heart. As the servant of The Lord, Paul was determined to bring forth unto those fellow believers, the depth of the truth of Who God was and what He had lavished forth in His great love in the giving of Jesus Christ. This was not singly the matter of salvation, as glorious as that great miracle of new birth is.
	Paul wanted those believers to be joined into the fullness of what it means to be established in the living relationship with God. There was the depth of growth into Christ that would serve them every day of the rest of their walk on this earth. The relatedness to each other was as well the appraisal of what it means to be a Child of God, brought into communion with Him by the Holy Spirit’s indwelling work in each of His own. This is established in the fact of our communion and growth together as we learn and obey and walk with each other in the encouragement to go on in Jesus.
	Being separated from fellow believers should create that longing to be with one another in this life that we have received freely by the grace and the mercy and the loving kindness of God working within us and through us unto others. We should want to be in fellowship with each other. There should be restablished that need to have that community relationship where we help one another to come into the fuller understanding of what this new life entails.
	Again, the Apostle highlights this fact of the longing and the necessity to be together with those whom the Lord has called unto Himself. Consider what Paul wrote to the Christians in Corinth in 2 Cor 9:10-15. There is an outpouring of his heart in thanksgiving unto God that is to be multiplied as the saints gather and learn and worship and live together. 
The community of believers grows together in the good measure of the love of God that is poured forth through all the gifts and the hearts that respond to the requirements of those who have needs that must be met. It is all with thankfulness and honor to the One Who supplies everything for the sustaining of His people.
	2 Cor 9:10-15, Now He who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food, will supply and multiply your seed for sowing and increase the harvest of your righteousness; you will be enriched in everything for all liberality, which through us is producing thanksgiving to God. For the ministry of this service is not only fully supplying the needs of the saints, but is also overflowing through many thanksgivings to God. Because of the proof given by this ministry they will glorify God for your obedience to your confession of the gospel of Christ, and for the liberality of your contribution to them and to all, while they also, by prayer on your behalf, yearn for you because of the surpassing grace of God in you. Thanks be to God for His indescribable gift! 
	As well as declaring the full heart to be with this community of believers once again, the Apostle also highlighted later in the same letter, 2 Cor 12:14+15, how much they meant to him. He thought of them as a parent would consider and long for a child. This is much as is expressed in our morning’s passage by David for his son, Absalom. There is detailed that sense of the parent, who established the community through all the hard work of evangelism and then teaching and nurturing and encouraging and laying down one’s life for the sake of the maturing of the beloved ones.  
	2 Cor 12:14+15, Here for this third time I am ready to come to you, and I will not be a burden to you; for I do not seek what is yours, but you; for children are not responsible to save up for their parents, but parents for their children. And I will most gladly spend and be expended for your souls. If I love you the more, am I to be loved the less? 
	There is such a loving longing expressed by the apostle for those believers. He proclaims it in the terms of a parent’s sacrifice and love for the children. 
It is also the same heart as that of a shepherd for the sheep of his flock. The essential reality is that of whatever it takes to bring them into the best pastures of the Lord no matter what the cost or lack for the shepherd. The same idea and truth is evidenced by a parent who will do whatever is necessary and will suffer whatever cost for the sake of the safety and growth and the support of the children. 
	Then, in Phil 2:25-30, we have another example of the longing that expresses the heart of God within the binding together of His family in this relationship that joins us in Christ Jesus. There is that urging on in the course of this walk with Our Lord. 
The fact that Epaphroditus so longed to be back with his fellow believers in Philippi is evident in his concern that they would know that he had not succumbed to the severe illness that had apparently overtaken him. The Philippians were worried about him as he was so concerned about their loving and faithful service of prayer and encouragement on his behalf. 
He was a God send to Paul in the service that he had rendered, even when it brought him close to death. We can feel the torn hearts of both men in that they were serving the Lord even to the point of this illness. Epaphroditus had evidently been of great help to the apostle, who was so thankful that this man had not died. He was anxious that the beloved in Philippi would be reunited with him to soothe their concerned hearts. 
At the same time, Paul had been well served by this man and was loath to lose the help that Epaphroditus had been. There was the bittersweet reality of what would need to take place in the hearts of all. There was that unity in the service of Christ which required the sacrifices that would tear at the hearts of each man. This was while meeting the needs of the Lord’s people in the most necessary and joyful manner that could be accomplished through obedience to and the honor of The Lord.
Phil 2:25-30, But I thought it necessary to send to you Epaphroditus, my brother and fellow worker and fellow soldier, who is also your messenger and minister to my need; because he was longing for you all and was distressed because you had heard that he was sick. For indeed he was sick to the point of death, but God had mercy on him, and not on him only but also on me, lest I should have sorrow upon sorrow. Therefore I have sent him all the more eagerly in order that when you see him again you may rejoice and I may be less concerned about you. Therefore receive him in the Lord with all joy, and hold men like him in high regard; because he came close to death for the work of Christ, risking his life to complete what was deficient in your service to me.
	The Apostle, then, in 1 Thess 2:17-20, expresses the full measure of that Godly longing after the fellow saints of Our Lord Jesus Christ. There is expressed the fact that Paul was bereft of those beloved saints who had believed in the Good News of the death and resurrection of Jesus, the Only Begotten Son of God, given for the sake of the redemption of all those who would but believe upon Him. That single basis of relatedness in Christ fills the depth of the longing that is our portion as so created by God.
	In the course of that deep craving and desire to know God and to know Him to the fullest measure of our abilities on this earth, we are joined together with fellow saints who become enmeshed in our hearts and minds and souls with the binding ties of God’s so great love. Accordingly, as we are separated from those whom we know personally, there is that intense sense of aching for and desire to be back together in fellowship, face to face and spirit to spirit.
	1 Thess 2:17-20, But we, brethren, having been bereft of you for a short while — in person, not in spirit — were all the more eager with great desire to see your face. For we wanted to come to you — I, Paul, more than once —  and yet Satan thwarted us. For who is our hope or joy or crown of exultation? Is it not even you, in the presence of our Lord Jesus at His coming? For you are our glory and joy. 
	This is one of the tremendous reasons that it is so important to be together in worship with one another. It is a time of our joining together in that growing oneness of spirit to bring forth the communal expression of thanksgiving to God for all that He has manifested in Christ Jesus. We fellowship together, we pray together, we read and feast on His Word together, we partake of the Lord’s Supper together. It is that fellowship meal of our corporate remembrance that it is all because of the work of God – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, by which we are even assembled together in His love.
	This is no small reality in Jesus Christ. As we are so assembled, there is the opportunity to lift up those who are dealing with the reality of what is necessary for that growing intimacy with God. It is an absolute necessity that when we are in the depths of those hot and dangerous and fiery times of death to self for the life of Christ to be more and more the portion of our daily walk on this earth, we need to be with the saints. 
	It is so often expressed that we don’t feel like we want to be with other Christians in those harsh times of the work of God. There are those who say that they do not feel worthy to partake of the assembled feasting on the love of the Lord. Others express the idea that they would be a hindrance to the worship of the others. Or there is that expressed that we are uncomfortable in worship with others or that we have no time for corporately gathering together because there are other things that occupy our Sundays, etc.  
	The Writer to the Hebrews details the exact need for all the people of God to be in the worship service together for the mutual benefit of each member. This is commanded for us in Heb 10:20-25. 
	Heb 10:19-25, Since therefore, brethren, we have confidence to enter the holy place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way which He inaugurated for us through the veil, that is, His flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful; and let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds, not forsaking our own assembling together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another; and all the more, as you see the day drawing near. 
	The time is drawing near. There is no doubt about that. We cannot be out in the fringes of our social chaos by ourselves. We need to have that place in which we gather in the name of God and stand with each other as buffers and stanchions of faith and love and encouragement as each day brings the end of time as we know it closer and closer to its conclusion. The people of God are to show forth all those characteristics and gifts of God’s grace and mercy and love to each other as is so vital as this time. This can not happen when there is no desire and no commitment to be with each other in fellowship and in communion together as the corporate Body of Our Lord Jesus Christ.  
	The fact is, as it was so expressed by the Apostle Paul, earlier this morning as well as by the Writer to the Hebrews in this passage, we need to be together. We stand together. We encourage one another together. We discover the needs of others and allow the Lord to show us how to meet those needs together. The very truth is that these are the times that are the most valuable in our lives to know the love of God expressed through the saints with whom He has joined us as one in Christ Jesus. 
Again, revisiting the heart-felt encouragement of the Apostle Paul, For who is our hope or joy or crown of exultation? Is it not even you, in the presence of our Lord Jesus at His coming?
	And, as he so aptly expressed his heart for those who had responded to the Good News of the risen Lord Jesus, Paul closes this morning’s consideration with the heart that is held within me toward the members of this fellowship, it is the heart of God toward each one of us as we have responded to His so great love, allowing Him to fill the longing that He has created in each one to know Him. It is through His Church on earth, the living body of the Lord Jesus Christ, that His love is expressed in the manner which brings to fruition His eternal design in His created ones. …For you are our glory and joy. So be it and amen. 

	This morning’s benediction is Prov 3:11+12. My son, do not reject the discipline of the Lord, Or loathe His reproof, For whom the Lord loves He reproves, Even as a father, the son in whom he delights. Amen.