Unity of the Faith

The Lord’s Prayer, not the one where the Lord is teaching His disciples to pray but the one He actually prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane before He went to the cross in John 17. Jesus was very specific in this prayer, when Jesus says something once, it is important. When He mentions something twice He is saying listen up boys this is really important. In John chapter seventeen, Jesus mentions unity or oneness five different times. The is really important. The first thing in the art of war is to divide and conquer.
Luke 11:17
17 Jesus knew their thoughts and said to them: "Any kingdom divided against itself will be ruined, and a house divided against itself will fall. (NIV)

Paul wrote to the Ephesus church about unity and the fullness of Christ that we need to grow into. Paul knew something about disunity, he was once against Christ even though he was pro God. He understood exactly about a house divided cannot stand.
Eph 4:13
13 until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.
(NIV)

The church today is immature, have read countless articles of Christians against other Christians in being so contentious with one another the picture that Jesus wrote in Luke 11:17 is very vivid today. How can the bride be ready to meet the bridegroom when the bride is not ready. There is no maturity level to speak of. Here we are, having the best means on learning the word with technology to help bring us to the knowledge of His word and we are so contentious with one another that it does no good.

In Genesis eleven six we see the people in unity with one another in building a tower to heaven and the Lord says something very profound, if we are in unity there is nothing that we can’t do.
Gen 11:6
6 And the LORD said, "Indeed the people are one and they all have one language, and this is what they begin to do; now nothing that they propose to do will be withheld from them.

We have been caught up in seeing what is different about other Christians but we use it against them and break up the unity and we bring division. Satan is laughing at us and does not even have to lend us a hand for we are doing it all by ourselves. In the process of pointing fingers at others we are being less and less mature. If they are for Jesus then they are for us.
Mark 9:38-40
38 "Teacher," said John, "we saw a man driving out demons in your name and we told him to stop, because he was not one of us."
39 "Do not stop him," Jesus said. "No one who does a miracle in my name can in the next moment say anything bad about me,
40 for whoever is not against us is for us.
(NIV)

Jesus in the parable of the wineskins says:

Luke 5:37-39
37 And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the new wine will burst the skins, the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined.
38 No, new wine must be poured into new wineskins.
39 And no one after drinking old wine wants the new, for he says, 'The old is better.'" (NIV)

Jesus has given us new wine, but we are so caught up in looking at the wineskin and pointing out the differences that we have missed what is inside the wineskin. It is the wine that is important, not the wineskin.

Are we ready to mature? It starts with unity.

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