Stewarding the Unity of the Spirit

“As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.”  Ephesians 4:1-6

Sundays have been great! Kate and I have so enjoyed being together, and each one seems to bring an increased momentum to our community as we come together!

Last Sunday as I taught from Acts 6, I asked the question “Can a church model health and God’s solutions where culture is struggling with [racial, generational, philosophical, socioeconomic, or political] division?” I believe we can, and should! Acts 6 shows us a way to do it, and I am thankful to be in this book at this hour in the story arch of our church. There is so much we must glean from the early believers and the journey of faith and transformation they walked as the Spirit led and empowered them to show Jesus to the world and disciple them in His Way. 

Acts is showing us a way to reclaim our places of influence in order to show the world what healthy community, connection and especially disagreement can look like. As we walk in the Spirit and tear down our own walls that want to divide us and keep us from becoming a a true community of transformation, God will use that to bring solutions to the problems that our wold it struggling with.

Obviously that statement has a lot to unpack, and we must – but the simplicity of it is this: When we can do it, we can show others how to do it. If we cannot get along, and retreat from conflict or disagreement about [fill in the blank here, because division is everywhere right now], what voice or right do we have to say “God led us in a better way”? But if we get ahold of His heart for others and don’t view disagreement or difference of perspective as something to fight over or divide over, we begin to listen to one another, have hard conversations, and be refined “as iron sharpens iron”. In this way, we will walk out the beautiful, messy, challenging path of true unity and the Kingdom community, and what we model will become like an oasis in the dessert to a culture that only knows how to fight, disparage, mock and shrink into homogeneity. 

With a Father to make us family, Jesus’ redemption that places us in a new reality and kingdom, and the Spirit of God to guide us through hard things, we should be a place where God’s Way is lived out in a way that is no longer reactionary to culture but of formative to it!

That’s our call and our commission, but it has to start in us to shine through us!