State of the Unity Address

While writing my last post, Year in Review 2005, I realized that I have some things that I need to express.  I stated in my last post that I have discovered a lot about the church and it is the body of Christ.  Oh, how I believe that we have strayed so much from being Christ-like in how we deal with society and how we treat each other.  The church needs to be about caring for those less fortunate and absolutely lost.  We need to be about looking past the obvious sin that separates people from God and show them the atonement that is available to them through Jesus.  Jesus said that he came to call sinners to turn from their sins not spend time with those that already think they are good enough. (Matt. 9:13, Mark 2:17, Luke 5:32)  Are we spending time showing others around us Jesus?  It doesn’t matter what their status is or what they are involved in.  They still need the Lord just as at some point we realized we needed the Lord and received Him.  How do they know unless they are told?  

The federal government has received a bad report on how it handled the disaster of hurricane Katrina.  On some levels that criticism was merited and on other levels I believe that it should not have had a role to begin with.  It is not the role of government to take care of those in need; it is the church’s responsibility.  Now there is the issue of personal responsibility being abandoned but that is a deep rooted fallacy of relying on the government for your every need.  It is a failed philosophy that was in place way before Katrina struck the Gulf coast.  The church’s role is to take care of orphans and widows, sick and infirmed, weak and elderly, poor and lost and to minister to the spiritual needs of all.  The people that were devastated by those hurricanes encompass all of those needs.

The church also needs to stop the petty bickering that so many times divides us and keeps us from being Christ-like.  Jesus commands us to love each other in John 13.

John 13:34 - 35 (NLT) 34So now I am giving you a new commandment: Love each other. Just as I have loved you, you should love each other.  35Your love for one another will prove to the world that you are my disciples.”  

And because of that love for each other we should be able to tolerate the short comings of others because we all have them.  Not one of us is perfect.

Ephesians 4:2 - 3 (NLT) 2Be humble and gentle. Be patient with each other, making allowance for each other’s faults because of your love.  3Always keep yourselves united in the Holy Spirit, and bind yourselves together with peace.  

What causes fights amongst us?  I believe we lose focus of what our purpose really is and we start looking out for own desires and promoting our own agenda instead of what God wants for us. We start doing things of ourselves, not remembering that we are only a part of an entire body.  

Ephesians 4:4 - 7 (NLT) 4We are all one body, we have the same Spirit, and we have all been called to the same glorious future.  5There is only one Lord, one faith, one baptism,  6and there is only one God and Father, who is over us all and in us all and living through us all.  7However, he has given each one of us a special gift according to the generosity of Christ. 

All of this doesn’t lend the church to turn a blind eye to sin or to hold back truth or not expose false doctrine.  Our inaction can be as bad as our action as in the same way if a police officer sees a crime being committed and does nothing to prevent it.  We should never compromise but always defend the truth and bring injustice to light.  We can expose sinful behavior for what it is but always in a way that points to Jesus and not to our own selfish motives just as Paul confronts Peter in Galatians 2.  It is not our place to condemn but it is our place to make judgment calls.  We must be able to discern what is wrong and what is right and keep a clear distinction between the two as society continually seeks to blur that distinction.  We must remain unified in our focus on what is right and wrong and what is scriptural and what is not.

Ephesians 5:10 - 14 (NLT) 10Try to find out what is pleasing to the Lord.  11Take no part in the worthless deeds of evil and darkness; instead, rebuke and expose them.  12It is shameful even to talk about the things that ungodly people do in secret.  13But when the light shines on them, it becomes clear how evil these things are.  14And where your light shines, it will expose their evil deeds. This is why it is said,     “Awake, O sleeper,     rise up from the dead,     and Christ will give you light.”  

Unity starts at home.  The family has come under attack like never before.  Married couples have to work at marriage.  Love is not something you fall in and out of.  Love is a choice and it is HARD WORK.  Your marriage is a COVENANT between YOU and GOD to love each other and take care of each other in EVERY CIRCUMSTANCE UNTIL THE DAY YOU DIE!  I believe that we have made it way too easy to dissolve this commitment through the nonsense of no-fault divorce.  Somebody is at fault and it isn’t God.  It makes it that much easier of an argument to approve marriage of those that are involved in immoral and perverted unions when we as Christians can’t make marriage work.  Let God be the focus in your marriage stupid!  Marriages fail because of purely selfish motives.  Men, we are to love our wives as Christ loved the church.  Christ DIED for the church, for us.  That is the love we need to have for our wives.

Ephesians 5:25 - 30 (NLT) 25And you husbands must love your wives with the same love Christ showed the church. He gave up his life for her  26to make her holy and clean, washed by baptism and God’s word.£  27He did this to present her to himself as a glorious church without a spot or wrinkle or any other blemish. Instead, she will be holy and without fault.  28In the same way, husbands ought to love their wives as they love their own bodies. For a man is actually loving himself when he loves his wife.  29No one hates his own body but lovingly cares for it, just as Christ cares for his body, which is the church.  30And we are his body.

Next are the children who are the main target and we most certainly have a responsibility to raise them in the reverence and advice of the Lord.  If not taught by us their minds will be shaped by the philosophy of moral and religious relativism where absolute truth does not exist.  I believe that if we do not lead the children then we are just as guilty of their demise as anyone.

Matthew 19:14 (NLT) 14But Jesus said, “Let the children come to me. Don’t stop them! For the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to such as these.”

Parents, you cannot buy your children’s love.  They don’t want things from you.  They want your love, direction, instruction and yes discipline.

Ephesians 6:4 (NLT) 4And now a word to you fathers. Don’t make your children angry by the way you treat them. Rather, bring them up with the discipline and instruction approved by the Lord.

It breaks my heart to hear about the stories of kids in daycare from the time they are 3 months old until they reach school age.  I can’t believe that mothers will take their kids to daycare even on their days off but it happens.  And kids are also mostly ignored in our churches too.  They are expected to be like adults from the time they are 8 years old when they should be discipled, ministered to and taught in a way that is relevant to them.  There is no wonder that an every increasing majority of kids are like they are when they are left to be raised and influenced by everyone but their parents and the church.  Wake up people the future is dim!  We are experiencing a huge hole in the body of Christ!  Kids are abandoning their faith and the church at an alarming rate.

Now, what are we going to do about it?