Division. I have written about that before and truly believe that someone is holding onto the old saying, “Divide and conquer” which is attributed to Julius Cesar who successfully used the strategy to conquer his enemies. It has been used since in business and politics with much success. I was praying about that this morning as I read my daily devotional from Wigglesworth. He reminded me of the division within the body of Christ and it broke my heart to think about it in that regard. He quotes Ephesians 4:4 first, “There is one body and one Spirit.” Amen. But then he goes on to remind us that we must recognize this fact. The longsuffering of God reaches
out to believers who have the idea that only those in their church are right. He says that is foolishness. I agree with him again, how can people read the scripture and think that their table is the only table. We all partake of the bread and wine and the body of Christ consists of all who are in Christ. A pastor I listen to taught Sunday morning on the two simple commands Jesus gave us. Love God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength; love your neighbor as yourself, we all know these but churches sometimes try to make it hard. I don’t understand the whole denomination thing anyway….Ephesians 4:4! It seems that we have been dealing with the issue forever. John gives us one of my favorite scriptures on the subject and it is an indictment on some churches today. 1John 4:7-8, beloved let us love one another, for love is of God; and everyone who loveth is born of God and knoweth God. He that loveth not, knoweth not God, for God is love. How can there be any division in light of these scriptures?
I grew up in the ’40s and ’50s and understand how we can be taught division, I came to Jesus in the early ’70s and understand how He can untrain us and show us how to love one another. Let’s pray tomorrow as we fast, for a fresh anointing of the Spirit on our leaders reminding them of this lesson that we might have peace in our land. And on our church leaders that we might all be one body as Jesus planned.
We are still working on 1 Timothy in our Bible study on Tuesdays and we are seeing that Paul was training Timothy in these very issues and others in dealing with a hard to manage a church. We do not meet tonight as it is 2nd Tuesday but you are invited to join us next Tuesday at 7:00.
I love you Neighbor, Jim