Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Unity

In most, if not all of Paul’s various letters, he begins and ends with greetings to the churches. He praises them and thanks them for what they are doing and even gives an occasional shoutout to his friends. Usually I skim over this, and more than once I’ve though, “Get on with it! I need some wisdom here!” However, after ho-humming through Thessalonians many times, God finally revealed why His ways are not my ways. Good thing, too, because the exact reason for Paul’s inclusion of these seemingly innocuous greetings is one of the main factors in Satan’s plan to destroy the modern church.

Society’s message to everyone today is of competition. Do-it-yourself. Anything you can do, I can do better. Receiving these and hundreds of other messages like this over the course of a lifetime makes us pooh-pooh the idea of unifying together as the body of Christ. We read that we’re in a race, but rather than reading the rest of the message we hit the ground running and try to knock out as many people as possible on the way. We see a crowd of people with arms raised in praise to God at church, yet we think that they are reaching for our blessing so we elbow our way to the front of the congregation or to the stage, thinking that this is what will lend us favor to God.

During all of this knocking out and struggling to elevate ourselves (which is, again, not a Biblical principle), we turn our love walk into a cage match. This effort does nothing but hinder our progress because there is no forward motion. When we think that we are moving ahead in the “real” world we forget that we are squelching the possibility for any progress in the spiritual realm. Even while reading this, you might be annoyed with the number of times I have used the pronoun “we” already. Or you might be thinking that this is a grave lesson for someone that needs this message, but you don’t.

The Bible contains a famous story about the prodigal son in Luke 15, told by Jesus Himself. Rather than rehash a story nearly everyone has heard, I want to point out the reaction of the “good brother” when the prodigal returns home. He is angry and hurt and confused. He does not understand why his father would be rejoicing so much when the teenaged brat returned home repentantly. Rather than making his son a servant in his home, he treated him like royalty. The good brother was never really given special treatment for doing what was expected of him, so he became angry when someone who should have been below him was elevated above him. He wasn’t thinking beyond that day at all. Later, when his father had a problem, which of his two sons would be most trustworthy? Which son would he really want to take into his confidence about a special matter? Which son would receive the biggest reward later? Big brother couldn’t think about any of this. All he saw was someone being rewarded for doing something wrong, and he couldn’t celebrate with his family. He isolated himself in his hurt and misunderstanding.

The first step to progress here is realizing that the spiritual journey is not one of isolation in the barren desert. It might feel as such most of the time, and that’s the foundational problem. We turn away when we are hurt and don’t understand what is going on rather than pressing forward to find out the truth. We hate our brother for being blessed for returning when we were right there all along. The reason that churches were even formed is because believers were a small bunch and continuous encouragement was necessary to keep the flock together. The purpose was not to outdo one another spiritually and use a fellow Christian as a measure of your own faith and closeness with God. How often is this done? If you’re doing better than the person next to you, it’s time to coast. But if they start seeing more blessings and favor, you start running again. How ineffective. It is behavior like this that causes people to become mistrusting of their brothers and withdraw into their shells. Rather than being wise as serpents and gentle as doves, we become tortoises and poke out to share our light only when it is safe.

The point is not to reflect upon why the church has become such a terrifying place for people to go or ask when it happened. The important matter is fixing the problem. When any tool of the enemy pops up to dismember us, it should be red flagged, returned, and a snapshot posted on the bulletin board so we recognize it when it comes back. Satan has only so many tactics, but he gets away with using them over and over again because humans have a nice way of forgetting spiritual lessons as soon as we flip on the TV. When we find something that works, something that God is giving us to help heal the wounds, we need to rejoice and put it to use. We have another strange way of trying to stop at the first sign of healing, but if we don’t keep applying the healing balm another scab will form. It might be smaller in circumference, but will definitely be thicker.

The New Testament warns us many times to be like-minded with our fellow man. Since this principle is not the popular way, we don’t think much about what happens when the church members have too many different goals. Then, when we don’t see some of our favorite people at church for months on end or God isn’t providing like He promised, we wonder what happened. It should be glaringly obvious that the problem is disunity among His people. We don’t realize how much of a hole is left when even one thread is broken in the tapestry of the church.

Paul did. In the fourth chapter of Philippians, he asks Euodia and Syntyche to iron out their differences. He does not point blame to any one party and he asks those around them to help out. He remembers the service that both of these women have given to the kingdom of God and he wants it restored. In this letter that the Holy Spirit knew would be inserted into a book read by countless people through the ages, Paul was prompted to write about this. Anything that is included in the Bible is considered important to God- especially this.

We aren’t privy to the matter on which Euodia and Syntyche were disagreeing. As with most things, it was probably so trivial that it didn’t really have a lasting effect on anything. The dissention among them, however, was so powerful that Paul felt it from far away. The disunity grieved his spirit. From this point of view, it was simply two women bickering. From a heavenly perspective, it was a problem that had the potential to completely destroy a body of believers. If nothing else, the inclusion of this story shows the importance of walking out the love that Christ demanded that we have for one another.

On a more personal level, God has been moving mightily to bring unity to my church. We've seen people being transplanted to different areas of ministry or even leaving the church altogether. Some of these people created problems and God was not able to effectively guide and mold them here. Others were not able to grow because they felt the disunity and it was hindering their walk with God. I feel that for many of these people it was a temporary move and God will reunite them with us when the time is right. People who left because they were hurting and confused are now poking their heads back into service on occasion. I rejoice to see them come back, because it means that God has healed that hurt in them and now they are able to see His hand still moving among us.

Another tool that God is using here is baptism. Even before the astounding amount of baptisms at Judgement House, there were many during service that nearly brought me to my knees simply because the sweet presence of God was flowing so mightily. And then the unprecedented Sunday where Pastor Kevin asked if people wanted baptized and thirty people ran from the sanctuary like their heels were on fire? From the stage I saw people in the congregation who never showed much emotion finally allow tears to stream down their face. These people felt that God was doing something, and they were able to connect with and rejoice for a complete stranger. A powerful example of God teaching us how to love our fellow man.

As the church continues to operate in this unification, we will finally see the manifestation of what we believed was God’s will. Even though we said that we were ready to take the city of Huntington for God, we still weren’t equipped to encourage and rejoice with our brothers and sisters. How would we be able to accept those that are broken and living a sinful lifestyle with no knowledge of the power of Christ? We would not have been able to look past their sins and reach out to the grieving heart. But now, finally, we are changing as a body and allowing God to open our hearts to love each other. This is the key to everything we have hoped for. This goes far beyond the church and ourselves, and will reach more people than we had ever dreamed. Once we stop looking at it from a self-centered perspective, we will be amazed at how much God will use us- and we won’t feel any pride or haughtiness at all. We will feel unworthy, but realize that all glory goes to the One that holds the world in the palm of His hand. Only then will we be ready.

Friday, November 14, 2008

Blog tour!

Titletrakk.com is doing a blog tour! If you participate, you can win over $300 worth of Christian media.

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