We religious leaders are a divine mess. We can snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory in a blink. How do we get so much undone that we do? No wonder the world begs off from joining us.
Where else would unity be so divisive as in the church? It is regarded as a dirty five-letter word among many. The Tulsa Workshop is accused---that's right "accused"---of leaving the patriotic theme of evangelism for a new theme.....the dirty five-letter one. How shameful is that?
According to Jesus, evangelism is primarily affected by our unity....John 17. Yet the more evangelistic among us seem to resent this. Why is that? Why can we not allow Jesus' very own words to register in our minds that he is telling us something most important? He is saying the world will know him by our love for one another. So we do what with that? Of course...we divide over the slightest gesture of unity. That's brilliant!
Why do we divide? What is it about us which makes us bent on extracting good reason to split up? Two things come to mind: (1) the evasion of the Holy Spirit, and (2) the evasion of sin.
(1) If we shut the Holy Spirit out of our walk, the deeds of darkness which includes divisiveness must be the fruit. This is spiritual law. Only He can lean His unifying work into God's people and if we shut the door on the Spirit....then the deeds of darkness are all that's left. We are a divided people because we can't stop it.
(2) We've lost the size of sin. We regard it as a few bad crumbs which fall from our otherwise goodness table. We sweep them under the rug; our bitterness, our hatred, our divisiveness, as if a pinch of bread and sip of grape juice on Sunday morning surely persuades God we aren't all that bad. The tiniest dot of sin wrecks an entire world. Yet, we behave as if the cross is a great topic for a sermon; but not that necessary for we strive to abstain from doing anything wrong.
When we lose sight of the size of sin, this opens the doors wide for the sinful (yet very acceptable among us) moves of judgment. We smirk and sneer at the stupidity of others while we smugly disavow our personal sin to be any big deal in the face of God.
Therefore, when our sin is small and His Spirit is unwelcome, we become a people so horribly disfigured we actually label a call for unity---not evangelism, but---weak and liberal teaching. Oops! We are exposed to what the world already knows about us. When we practice this form of religion, we are laughable to the world and sinful in the sight of Him who died for us.
6 comments:
Good post, Terry!! I'll be thinking about this today, tomorrow . . .
I think you may be on to something.
Terry you are dead on. This is why I love Ephesians 4. We all have different gifts to which we were called to edify and unify the body, so that we can become mature. Some remain as immature children, but like the God He is, He brings the whole body to fit perfectly. There is no stopping what He has already has called us to be. Unified. "As each part does it special work, it helps the other parts grow (v.16).
It is Christ who unites us. It's bigger than us. It transcends us. The One who unites us is greater than the things that divide us.
Unity and evangelism are inseparable. When we unite with Christ we unite with one another. The problem lies within our narrow view of the Kingdom.
Keep up the call to unity Terry. We need to hear it again and again.
Glory to God!
Jason
Mr. Rush, I'm kind of chuckling to myself, b/c just last night at dinner, someone mentioned "unity", and I replied, "Now there's a divisive topic", which drew a couple of odd stares. Seems that truth teaching on unity and love incite satan to work his division among us. Your assessment as to the "why" of it is dead-on sir. Preach on brother Terry!
Thanks for the encouragement.
Great post Terry. You do a great job with the workshop, and unity is always a worthy topic.
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