November 30
“…those who believed were of one heart and soul…” (from Acts 4:32)
I believe the main reason why we do not see the manifest power of God, in our churches today, is our lack of unity. It was one of the hallmarks of the early Church – and so blatantly absent from our churches today.
Yesterday, we mentioned that there are reasons why unity in the Church is so important to God. Today we want to look into those reasons…
1) Unity is a reflection of God Himself. The Bible informs us that God is One God existing in Three Persons. He is a triune Being. Though we may not fully understand this, Scripture is clear. Those who question the validity of this doctrine have never done their research. God has revealed Himself as One God in three Persons.
As God is, so He has called His people to be. Different, but together. Diverse, but unified. Separate, but inseparable. We must always keep in mind that God’s people are redeemed to give the world a clear picture of Who He really is. We are empowered by God to bring revelation of God to a world that desperately needs to see Him. As He is Three, working as One – so we must be many, working as one.
If this is true, what does our inability to get along say about Him? At the least, we are offering a confusing message. We are sending a message that our love for God doesn’t extend to others who have professed faith in Him. We talk about the infinite love of God, but then we cannot seem to love those who claim to love the same Savior. Sure, we can point to the importance of our differences – but isn’t the love of God (within us) supposed to overcome all differences? Doesn’t love conquer all?
Unfortunately, our disunity often speaks louder than our message. Our message of truth gets drowned out by the din of our discord.
That’s why Jesus prayed for our unity. It is unity that abides in the Godhead – and that unity needs to be reflected in the people who wear God’s Name.
One of the stalwart virtues of being in the Family of God is the ability to overcome our differences. God’s love, abiding in us, makes us strong enough to break down the barriers of our differences – and helps us to see them for what they really are – opportunities to reach a diverse group of unreached people.
God never intended for us to all be the same. (Unity is NOT uniformity!) He gave us all different strengths, different passions, different personalities, different styles – so that we might be able to appeal to different kinds of people.
We have tended to turn our differences into reasons to disparage, distrust, and avoid one another – all the while ignoring the enormous penalty it brings to the effectiveness of our message.
Remember… it was Jesus Who said that the world could only believe that He was sent as Savior of the world… if we were unified.
If unity was that important to Jesus… shouldn’t it be that important to us?
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