Tuesday, May 14, 2013

Unity


Churches have their favorite songs.  I am familiar with one church that constantly sang a chorus as an opening song-prayer to God, Bind us together, Lord, bind us together...with cords that cannot be broken...Bind us together with love.  The song is a longing for unity – so warm and inviting.  That church needed binding-together; they had split several times in less than ten years.

The reality of division in a church, home or office setting is cold and chilling to the bone.  In disunity there is chaos and wandering.  It makes little difference what preaching you preach, or what songs you sing, if there is no willingness to actually be bound together in love.

By contrast, in unity there is direction and strength to spare.  A young fellow had an old jalopy.  Getting around in a town filled with hills was difficult.  In order to get up one of the steepest of these hills, the young man needed a running start.  As he approached the bottom of the hill at full speed, trying to get up enough speed to make the next hill, he saw two cars crossing the street he was on. 

He calculated that if he slowed down just enough for the first car to pass, he could gun his engine and make it in front of the second car.  The only miscalculation was that he failed to notice the first car was towing the second car! 

He learned the hard way an important theological lesson; it is very difficult to divide things that are bound together.[1] 

Are you in a divided household?  A divided church?  Chaos at the office?  What privilege, what rights, what do possess, and are willing to part-with, that will release the power of God’s Holy Spirit on that situation?  Hmmmm?


[1]W.A. Criswell, The Bible For Today's World, (Grand Rapids, Zondervan Press, 1965), 32

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