FRIDAY, OCTOBER 20
“I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in Me through their word, that they may all be one, just as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You, that they also may be in Us, so that the world may believe that You have sent Me.”
John 17:20-21
REMEMBER UNITY
A man was visiting an insane asylum one day, and he noticed that all the insane people were on the field outside, but there was only one guard. He asked the guard, “Aren’t you afraid?” The guard said, “Absolutely not.” He said, “Don’t you believe that since you are the only one here, these people could overrun you and break out of the asylum?” He said, “That’s impossible.” The man asked, “Why is that impossible?” The guard replied, “Because lunatics don’t unite.” (Tony Evans)
One of Jesus’ final prayers for us before His death on the cross was that we would be united as Christians. He clearly said He was also praying this prayer for those of us “who will believe.” Thousands of years before our existence Jesus started praying for unity. Perhaps with all the divisive issues in the world today He knew we would need thousands of years of prayer to pull it off.
The key to Biblical unity is living like Jesus. Pastor A.W. Tozer said, “If you’ve got 400 pianos and you try to tune 400 pianos to each other back and forth, you have a mess. But if you have one tuning fork, just tune them all to that one tuning fork and they’ll all automatically be tuned to each other.” Instead of listening to all the voices on social media and culture for guidance, we simply need to build our values, conversation and lifestyle choices around the nature of Christ. If we do that we will find unity as a church. And Jesus taught that the world will see that unity and it will lead them into a relationship with Jesus.
Pray for the unity of our church and other churches in our community. Pray that God’s church would lead the way in modeling Biblical unity and God’s love in our nation and world.
