Unity?

As a people who each claims to have called out to Jesus to save them from their sins and are depending solely upon His Word as being the Son of the Living God, and having received the Spirit of God into our hearts, it should be difficult for us to not always have a sense of unity.  We are all saved by the grace of God and are dependent upon His mercy.  We are all children with the same heavenly Father.

We are also all made unique and we all have our own call and purpose.  Your call might be to pick up people’s trash, to cut grass, to teach music, to coach kids, to help people find a career, to give people water, to care for babies, to work in Haiti, all for free, as a gift to others.  I can’t say that’s not your call or purpose unless Scripture specifically indicates otherwise.  That work is between you and God.  In fact, while I may not participate in it with you because I don’t have the same call, desire or enthusiasm for it, I’ll support you in it.  And we all should have the same view with regards to one another’s call.

We should be careful and take heed to not be a stumbling block for one another as each of us pursues what God has laid on our heart to do.  Romans 14:13 tells us, “let us stop passing judgment on one another. Instead, make up your mind not to put any stumbling block or obstacle in the way of a brother or sister.”  Here in Romans this is talking about eating and drinking food that those raised as Jews would consider unclean.  The discussion is, if God made it, it’s not unclean, but if someone thinks it is, don’t eat it and hurt their ability to find Christ or a deeper faith in Christ.

We are talking about the same thing regarding unity today.  If someone has a call and it’s not your desire to pursue, don’t be a stumbling block that would prevent them from following their call.  What if your resistance to their call causes them to turn away from their faith?  Verse 15 says “do not by your [actions] destroy someone for whom Christ died.”

As a people called by Christ name, we should be very careful in condemning any work or ministry that others believe they are called to do.  Rather, let us see in what ways we can support one another’s call.  We can be sure the world isn’t going to support it, so how can we, following Jesus, not support one another?

A divided church must be careful to find unity so that they are not rejected from being priests for God.  A divided church is an irrelevant church.  (Hosea 4:6, “...  Because you have rejected knowledge, I also will reject you from being priest for Me; ...”)

In the movie, The Insanity of God by Nik Ripken, he summarizes the definition of persecution.  Persecution is preventing a Christ-follower from telling another person about Christ.  If all Christ-followers stopped telling others about Jesus or Godly ways of living, there would be no Christian persecution.  A divided church that has members willing to take measures to prevent others from following their call is persecuting them.  Let that sink in.  A church, assembled together as a body of believers - calling itself Christian, would persecute itself.  If such a thing happens, one can only be sure that some of the body of Christ have not humbled themselves, they are not seeking God with their whole heart, and they have not turned from their wicked ways. (2 Chronicles 7:14) Their land will not be healed and that body will not be a priest for the living God.