Follow the Leader

Leadership is a hot topic these days. And for good reason. The spiritual law of leadership is important. Defined by the Trinity and effecting our social orders from family life, to government, church health to corporate success it's obvious that leadership matters.

There's a topic that I think needs equal attention however. How to be a good follower. Being a good follower is as important as being a good leader and can impact a leaders success. Interestingly enough I believe the life of Jesus teaches us a great deal about following the leader. Even leaders need to know how to be good followers because they are apt, in some areas of their lives, to not always be the leader.

In his time on earth Jesus had followers but he was also led. Jesus said that he came to do the will of the Father. (John 8:28) He was submissive and humble, not necessarily popular attributes, but important.

As a woman who is married to a pastor I've had an opportunity to contemplate this truth over the years from a variety of angles. Families and churches would be much healthier if leaders led and followers followed.

Here are just a few characteristics I believe a good follower exhibits:

Humility - those of us in a position of following need to be okay with not being the leader. Recognizing our submission to another's role helps define a healthy relationship. We all have equality in our value but we don't all have equality in our roles. We need to be okay with that. Leaders must leverage their power for the good of others and followers must respect authority without manipulating and undermining. Confident respect is healthy when followed through in submission.

Assume goodwill - unless otherwise proved operate under the assumption that your husband, pastor, father, or boss has motives of good. If it is proved  they don't find out why, don't chuck the relationship, work toward restoration and healing. Leaders need appropriate accountability and at times correction. However, I've found when we believe in a leader, pray for them, encourage them, and follow well, the need for intervention is lessened.

Participate - don't just sit back and watch the leader do all the work. Just because you "wouldn't do it that way" doesn't get you off the hook of taking ownership. Leaders can't be successful if those they are leading are passive. If you are a part of a family, church, organization, country the success of those organizations depend on your willing participation.

"Have confidence in your leaders and submit to their authority, because they keep watch over you as those who must give an account. Do this so that their work will be a joy, not a burden, for that would be of no benefit to you." Hebrews 13:17


So in a day when the conversation turns readily to leadership let's not forget to follow. Nothing promotes unity in a family or a church like when the balance of leadership and submission are in place. Have you struggled with a resentful or suspicious attitude toward the leaders in your life? Ask God to help you overcome it and instead be a blessing to them. Leaders lead better when their followers follow.

Love Matters ~ The Heart of it All

I wrote a post this week entitled Unity Matters- A Match Made in Heaven about the importance of marriage. I believe marriage matters because everything God ordains or creates has value. Today, I say people matter. Does anything have value and touch God's heart as dearly as people? I don't think so. He is a great lover.

So while marriage matters, and the church matters they are not ends in and of themselves any more than I believe grace is. Because it's all about unity and God is looking for people to unite to his heart and to become part of his family. Marriages and churches are servants, they are servants of people, because people matter.

In my last post I told a story, a figurative story. Today I'm going to tell a real one and it's loose ended and in the making. Here goes:

Once upon a time a young woman felt compelled to ask God, "show me your heart, I want to know what you love, what matters to you." And he answered. God began showing her his plan to unify people to himself and each other. And he started teaching her about love. A robust, purifying, enduring love; not sappy and flat. He peeled back a layer of life and showed her that his heart beat for the broken. First revealing hidden children, outcasts and abused, orphaned and disabled. Then he made her squirm. He clearly showed her his love for someone unexpected.

It happened one morning when she least expected it (this Tuesday) and it took her breath away. After hours of conversation with loved ones, soul searching, and bible searching; brought on by North Carolina's Marriage Amendment vote. After an online and real life whirlwind of debate and feeling like the world was turning upside down and what is the church coming to anyway kind of week, she was feeling raw. Wrestling truth had left her limping. Driving down the road that morning God told her to turn around and pick up a lonely road walker. She argued, God insisted, she obeyed.

A conversation ensued. Strangers talked about the hard reality of life, new cars, a dead father, and hand lotion. God came up, the young man was searching. She asked, "Do you have a church? Why not visit ours?" He said that would be nice, he was looking for new direction and better friends. He said he had prayed for help that morning. As they parted ways the young man leaned in close and asked. "Can someone like me, you know, gay, come to your church?"

What would you have said?

The question still rings in her heart. She responded "God loves you. Of course you can come." 

But that wasn't good enough. "I'm not worried about God's love," he replied. 

She got it, it wasn't God's love he was doubting, it was hers. "I believe that the Bible is true and that God is holy. But only God can convict us of sin, not people. We would love to have you," she answered. 

Before he left he reached out for her hand. She said "You know God told me to turn around and come back. God cares about you." And they moved, self consciously toward each other, because God was drawing them.

She pulled onto the highway and wanted to weep and laugh at once. God had pulled a stunt no magician could. He had brought her low and lifted himself up, he had reminded her that he loves the pharisee and broken alike, he made her the answer to a young man's prayer. One she would have said God doctrinally wasn't obligated to listen to or answer. But God had reminded her he wasn't obligated by her views of doctrine. She was convinced she had seen the love of God being poured out and it wasn't what she had expected. 

The next day she got a phone call. It was the stranger turned friend asking for a ride to church. 

My view of marriage remains in tact. However, I'm afraid my view of people, and of love, hangs in tatters. My pride is being laid low and God's love has coursed through my life like a tornado. I'm convinced of one thing. The only person's holiness I'm responsible for is mine. I am, however, indebted to love everyone.

So, what was a distant and theoretical conversation has become a real life crash coarse in love. "Can someone like me come to your church?" I will never be the same.

(By the way this song was playing on the radio when I drove past the road walking stranger, that's when I turned around)

Unity Matters ~ A Match Made in Heaven

"Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her  to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church— for we are members of his body. "For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh." This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband." Ephesians 5:25-33

God has been teaching me about unity lately (I've written several posts on that topic in the last few months. You can read three of them here and here and here.) Lately, I've been pondering God's picture to us of unity in marriage. I'm compelled to probe God's call to be united to him and I'm intrigued by the "profound mystery" that he communicates to us about unity in marriage. Let me begin by telling a story:

Once upon a time a good man; a man of character and fortune, a man of excellent reputation and wisdom, a man of authority, of royalty, asked a common, shamed, foreign woman to marry him. Her response was an affectionate but flighty, “Yes. But only on my own terms, I want to keep my old habits, my own hours and friends, dirty up the mansion, remain unrefined and by the way keep a few boy friends on the side.” She was the worst kind of fool. He set his terms; an exclusive relationship. She refused. But he was patient; he overcame her fears and payed off her debts. Eventually she came to love him and realize the worth he was offering to her. She woke up from her stupor, realized her pitiful state, and embraced the love of her generous suitor, too thankful to be ashamed.

Will we embrace the proposal of such a groom as Jesus or in return for his gracious payment of our sin debt will we flaunt our sin and other lovers in his face? God offers his church transformation, to be made into a radiant bride. A commoner turned princess couldn't undergo a more complete makeover and yet so often we as people and churches insist on remaining a filthy tramp as long as we can get our hands on some of the good stuff like grace, mercy, forgiveness, and oh yeah, love. The problem is the bride is operating under a lie; mercy doesn't come without repentance, or grace without humility.

And the most shocking thing of all? The bride has missed out on the greatest of the wedding gifts, union. The Prince has offered to make her in every reality one with himself, sharing his title, his status, his power, authority and wealth in every way. He's willing to hand over the signet ring for her to use in his name. Love, mercy, and grace aren't an end in themselves they are a means to an end, they are the nature and method in which complete union takes place. But these are the terms; the tramp must transform into a princess. He's willing to pay for the transformation, but she has to agree to it.

God has, from the moment of creation, gifted us with the picture of unity through marriage. The image of a bride and her Husband has been painted from Genesis to Revelation. Understanding the significance of being united with God illuminates the high value of marriage, likewise the union of marriage points back to the gracious gift of Jesus' union with the church. God structured a man and woman's relationship with each other to best reflect his character to us.

Thankfully purity is not a prerequisite of our union with Jesus, but it is a hallmark of it. Jesus knows exactly who he is offering himself to be united to; sinners. He's not shocked and his love is not overwhelmed. He offers himself to make his chosen one pure. His blood, his own righteousness, is the purifying agent. Jesus draws his bride to himself and away from other lovers, making her holy, which essentially means set apart for his own purpose. But then, once she is clean and has accepted the terms of his marriage proposal, he expects purity. And he should, it's only fitting. 

Why is the picture of marriage so sacred? Because nothing on earth depicts the union of Jesus to his beloved bride, the church, like a husband and wife do. Unity is the crux of the gospel and I wonder if we regularly miss the significance of that. I know I have. At the heart of God, at the heart of humanity, at the heart of relationship, at the heart of the gospel, at the heart of the bible, at the heart of the New Heaven and the New Earth (our eternal home, Rev. 21) is unity. At the fall unity with God and each other was broken, at the cross it was restored, in heaven it's consummated. "He made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, to be put into effect when the times reach their fulfillment —to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ." Ephesians 1:9-10

One day Jesus will sit down to feast with his bride at his wedding banquet. To have the Creator of the universe, the holy eternal God willingly offer to make us one with him is a scandalous grace. But he never said we could come on our terms, he expects full and total surrender. His love is a willingness to transform and redeem at a high cost to himself. His gift is generous beyond comprehension and available if we are willing to die to our own glory and live for his alone. What a joyful people we should be, united to our Beloved, loved beyond what we can even comprehend!

Let's consider how we can honor our marriages as the holy picture of divine unity that they are. Our hungry, fainting world needs the hope such truth can provide. 

Five Minute Friday: Together

I'm joining up again with The Gypsy Mama's wonderful community. Today's prompt excites me, we're talking about; Together. 

Go

All galaxies known and unknown fit in the palm of his hand, his word holds life together, by a word he brought into being all things. He is pure, good, holy, the only one worthy of praise. Higher than our thoughts can think, more beautiful than we can look upon and live, infinite in existence and power, stretching out into eternity in every direction. He knows no limits of time, or limits of any kind at all.

We, on the other hand, have never recovered from our tragic beginnings. Corrupted at the dawn of time, mankind bears a scarlet stain across it's heart. Limited by time we are chained to the laws of earth and their consequences. A speck in the cosmos like a billion grains of sand, our lives are over before they've begun.

How could a being like me and a being like God have any common ground? Could a flee and a blue whale be friends? How much more odd that infinity should embrace limitation. How much odder still that he should invite me into his exclusive circle of love, Father, Son and Spirit ever knowing and enjoying one another. How could my heart be one heart with his, united and sharing glory? The very idea arises a protest to my lips. But this is what I want and what I was made for. So humbly I accept a gift I could never deserve and can't comprehend. Joining together, my small heart swallowed up by his great one in an eternal embrace.

Stop

Well, I must confess I took longer than five minutes today as I pondered this weighty subject. So how can such a thing be possible, the union of holy God and broken man? John 1:14 gives us the answer "The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth." God the Son wrapped all of his glorious, holy self into skin and bone, taking the nature of God and the nature of man and uniting them together in himself. John 1 makes John 17 possible. John 17:21b-22 "May they (believers) also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one." (Taken from Jesus prayer to his Father.)


What are you doing with your salvation? Are you content merely to be saved? Are you a friend with benefits kind of follower, wanting the blessing without the commitment and work that come with sanctification (being made holy)? It's a fearsome thing to allow our hearts to get close enough to holiness to have our impurities washed away, to allow our very nature to be consumed and refined by the nature of God, to allow a union to take place. But if we settle for anything else we are just licking up crumbs off the floor when we could be sitting down to a feast. I'm praying that God will teach me what it means to be one with him as Jesus is one with the Father. Will you join me?

Five Minute Friday: Goodbye

It's time to link up with Lisa-Jo for Five Minute Friday. Today's prompt: Goodbye.

Go

Why does goodbye hurt so much, what makes it so hard? Stretching thin the fibers of hearts, pulling the bond taught between them, so tight you could pluck and twang their cords. Goodbye of a relocation tests the metal of relationships. The fast paced frenzy of our culture, taking hither and yon, have prompted creative ways to touch hearts and minds like never seen before. It's amazing the ways we found to stretch our goodbyes into long distance hellos.

But there is a goodbye that hurts like a birth and won't be satisfied. It burns and aches for decades. No connection prolongs that goodbye from a distance. Even though we celebrate and anticipate for those leaving us for Heaven's wonders, the ache still comes. Why when we know we'll see them again do we grieve so long?

Unity. We were made for this. Separation is unnatural and death speaks a final word. We were meant to be together. Joined at the heart to Father God, joined at the heart with brother man. Hear death's warning. We were made for unity. The bride here and the bride there can not be complete until we're together, eternal, and we long and ache and twist until it's done.

Stop

The Spirit and the Bride say come, unify us, Lord Jesus! My Mom and I have been talking about unity a lot lately. This week we talked about what death is saying to us about unity in light of eternity, it's calling out; embrace unity with God and each other, hold out unity while there is time. Death is God's final warning and reminder that we were made for unity with him, and this life is an invitation. What will you do with the call of unity?

{One practical step I'd like to hold forth is the linking of arms with another sister in unity for this journey heavenward. For tips on how to do that download a free copy of my ebook Sister to Sister; A Mentor's Handbook.}

What is Unity

I wrote last week of 'Life Beyond the Cross' proposing that Christ's ultimate goal in his sacrifice on the cross was the unity of mankind with God and with each other. So, what is unity? Unity is not you agreeing with me, or me agreeing with you. Unity is us agreeing together with God about who he says he is and what he says is ultimate reality. Unity is founded on the bedrock of truth revealed to us in God's gift of his Word. Mess with God's Word and unity crumbles before it's even begun.

Unity is agreement on the essentials and grace in every other matter. What are the essentials? The truth of who Jesus is, what man is, God's definition of sin, the way of salvation, the infallibility of the Bible, our eternal destiny, the nature of the world, the nature of God, and God's call of holiness for his people, all are clearly set out in Scripture. There is plenty for us to agree on and if we focus on understanding and living in the truth that is revealed it will more than occupy our time.

If, however, you and I do not agree on the essentials and dispute what the word of God holds out as truth, we can have no unity. That doesn't mean we can't have grace for people who believe differently than what the Bible teaches. God certainly has grace, inviting all to enter into his life giving truth, and he sets the example for us. But without an agreement in God's truth you and I will not have one heart, we are not unified, and there is a difference.


Unity comes among brothers when we realize our spiritual life is not an individual enterprise. We are better together. Indeed we are only complete as Christians when we allow the Holy Spirit to join our hearts together as one just as we are joined by the Spirit to God. Realizing that our sin, our spiritual health, and our participation affects the health of the whole body will bring a new awareness of the value of each member.

Unity also comes when we recognize how highly God values his people being one, agreeing in the truth and deferring to one another over preferences. "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." Ephesians 4:2-3

Solidarity comes as we live out our conviction of truth, as taught in God's word, in loving relationship. Unity is living as one people, committed to one another, loving the same God, empowered by the same Spirit, sharing the same holiness, headed to the same eternal destiny, seeking together lost people needing reconciliation with God and us, having the same desire to glorify and be satisfied by Jesus. Sounds wonderful doesn't it!

Whether the carpet is blue or burgundy, the music is too loud, the pew Bible's aren't KJV, the pastor's wife didn't say hi to you again, or coffee is allowed in the sanctuary, are all non-essentials. Let's look for the essentials we can agree on and celebrate together. This month how can we making every effort to live together in the bonds of peace?

Linking to the Grace Cafe:

Adventures in Gardening ~ Pruning

My adventures in gardening are beginning to pay off. I will be eating squash in no time and my cherry and Roma tomato plants are full of light green orbs!

Maggie, my trusty helper, choosing a tool to dig up some weeds.

The senior pastor at our church is part of a large farming family and has gardened for many years. I'm grateful for the help he's given me with the starting of my little plot. Yesterday he stepped over to the parsonage and we took a look at my garden. He helped me identify "suckers" on my tomato plants, breaking off the little branches at the joint, lightening their load. I had not been as vigorous in pruning as I should have been.

Squash blossom!

A gardening article says this about the need to prune tomato plants: "If unsupported, the increasing weight of filling fruit and multiple side branches forces the plant to lie on the ground. Once the main stem is horizontal, there is an increased tendency to branch. Left to its own devices, a vigorous indeterminate tomato plant can easily cover a 4- by 4-foot area with as many as 10 stems, each 3 to 5 feet long. By season's end, it will be an unsightly, impenetrable, disease-wracked tangle...A properly pruned and supported single-stem tomato plant presents all of its leaves to the sun. Most of the sugar produced is directed to the developing fruit, since the only competition is a single growing tip. The result is large fruits that are steadily produced until frost." (Pruning Tomatoes, Fine Gardening.com)

little Roma tomato!

What an amazing parallel for us to consider. Without the proper support and pruning we will become "an unsightly, impenetrable, disease-wracked tangle" ourselves. And that disease and mess will spread to the rest of the garden, to the family and church we're a part of. Suckers, excess stems shooting out from the main branch, sap the energy required to produce large, healthy, regular fruit. They can also compromise the strength of the main branch. In our lives beliefs and priorities that looked promising, green and flourishing, often turn out not to be.

Commitment to time in God's word and prayer, and relationship with fellow believers, offer us the support we need to avoid sprawling in an unsightly mess. Likewise let's ask our dear Gardener to prune suckers from our lives. In my own life facebook can be a terrible sucker, sapping time and energy from the greater priorities of parenting my children and a devotion to prayer.

What are some of the ways you are lacking support in your life? Have suckers taken over fundamental priorities? If so our faithful Gardener is willing to prune and re-order if we will submit to him. It is his great joy to lift us upright and strip away useless distractions in order to produce in us fruit for the good of the whole body.

Life Beyond the Cross

 

As we approach the time of Jesus crucifixion I've been pondering, what was on his heart on the way to the cross? John 17 gives us a birds eye view and it's breath taking.

"My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one— I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me." John 17:20-23

Stunning! Doesn't it just take your breath away? Like beautiful wrapping on a precious gift Jesus' prayer peals back the top layer of salvation revealing the heart of the gospel. Unity. Salvation is a doorway into a new life, an action, a change of status. But we are not saved for salvation's sake. We are saved for unity.

What amazes me is the standard Jesus holds out for us, "that they may be one as we are one." Did he just say that? Did he just hold up the perfect oneness of Three in One; Father, Son and Spirit, eternal unity? I believe he did. The purpose of the cross was to remove the barrier between us and God that our union could be complete. One heart, one mind, one mission, one purpose, one love with the Living God, and for that unity to be reflected and perfected in the church, a oneness of heart among brothers. "Then the world will know!"

What's on the other side of the tomb? Unity!

The entire book of Ephesians fleshes out this blueprint of unity for God's body, a reflection on earth of his unity with, well, himself. Is such unity possible in the church today? I've rarely, if ever, seen such a thing. It would certainly be unmistakable. But before I die it is my desire to have tasted for a time an entire group of people moving in tandem to the rhythm of our Father's heart, so connected to him and one another that they are mistaken for one person instead of many. I would sell everything I have and give up every other dream to live with such a people. And I think that's the point.

"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

Will you and I be part of the answer to Jesus' prayer of unity for his disciples? What an honor and joy that would be!

Adventures in Gardening ~ Growth

I wonder what it feels to be a seed. A little germ of life tucked into the rich, warm, darkness of soil; life imprinted into my very DNA. Would I be surprised to find my little head poking up into the dazzling sunlight? Would my little green arms lift up in worship, instinctively, because that's what I was created to do?

Tiny watermelon plant

I feel a bit like my little garden seeds stirring to life, waking up to the season of spring. Just when I think I've got this spiritual growth thing figured out another season awaits me right around the bend. I'm thankful. It's really quite an adventure, though often unexpected. Each truth builds upon the last. Each encounter with the living Truth strips back a layer of flesh, leaving me stinging and exhilarated that he would rid me of my useless dead ways and bring to life divine nature in this erratic heart.

I thought I would talk about sisterhood and mentoring for years, that it would be the drum I'd beat for many seasons. And in a way it still is, but the path has shifted and my view has expanded. I find that mentoring relationships, the sisterhood, is a facet of a prism so much more dynamic and brilliant than I could have imagined. Unity. It's what we were made for, oneness with God and with each other. Certainly that's lived out in sister relationships, but unity takes on so many forms. Unity, known and expressed in truth and love, is something I'm digging more deeply into.

I love mentoring. There's little else that excites me as much as connecting on a heart level with other women in the truth of Jesus. I love praying with, caring for, and shepherding women in their own walks with Christ; and I'm so blessed when a godly woman offers to care for me and point me to Jesus too. But this move has shifted my relationships and focus. I used to spend hours, enough to fill a part time work week, mentoring. Now I truly mentor only one young woman. I still seek to encourage many different women through the week in general. And I hope to establish more mentoring relationships over time in our new home, but I also sense God deepening my woman's bent to nurture in a unique way.

The promise of fruit on my little tomato plant

God is beginning to enrich my life with the care not only of younger Christian women but also with the desire to love the broken children of Serbia. It's not a season I had anticipated. But as my head raises to the light of the Sun I adore I feel my fresh arms clap in delight. Where this adventure will take me is beyond my comprehension but one thing I know I don't want to do it alone!

What area of your life is God unexpectedly growing you in? How do you draw other women into the journey you are on?

Adventures in Gardening ~ Commitment

"A successful home garden comes with planning and constant attention! Select the site carefully, plant at the right time, use the right amount of fertilizer, use adapted varieties, control pests; then, harvest at the right time." (The Alabama.)

Oh dear. Maybe I'm in over my head. Even in simple terms gardening sounds complicated. Gardening uncomfortably illuminates my careless nature. I have to ask myself if I'm committed to this process.

What else, I wonder, am I careless about? If I'm hesitant to take great pains to have a successful home garden due to "planning and constant attention" what other areas of my life suffer from lack of constant attention?

My spiritual life is certainly like a garden, really everything in life is spiritual, and I do seek to attend to my walk with Christ. But there is an area more glaring.

For months, even a couple of years, I've been captured by the book of Ephesians and more lately I'm obsessed with Jesus' praying in John 14-17 for the unity of his family. My heart for orphans in Serbia was, and is being, birthed by the prayer "show me your heart God". His heart is love, adopting us, and longing for us to partner with him in loving one another.

So often we as Christians, I'm so guilty myself, have not troubled ourselves to learn the hard language of love. We focus on the form, the program, the duty but not the heart. Love is a garden, but it only blooms in community, in relationship.

"Before sea, sky, tree, bird, serpent, there was love: the eternal, infinite, pure love that flowed in and from Father to Son, Son to Spirit, and then back again, round and round, unhindered, unbroken, undiminished, wild and unbridled. The old theologians called this perichoresis, the self-giving dance of the Three-in-One God. God in himself is an entire community of radical love. God in himself is a city on a hill. And the pulse of that city, its lifeblood, is love." (Your Church Is Too Safe, Mark Buchanan)

Boy this gardening is becoming more important than I imagined. Beyond the vegetables I hope to harvest it is growing a new appreciation for the cultivation of a holy life. The huge word in my mind lately is unity and I think Mark Buchanan's new book 'Your Church Is Too Safe' will only fuel that fire.

So where are you in community? Are you scarred from it, running from it, longing for it, or cultivating it?

All for One

"My prayer for all of them is that they will be one, just as you and I are one, Father - that just as you are in me and I am in you so they will be in us, and the world will believe you sent me." {Jesus' prayer to his Father for his followers.}

"They will be one, just as you and I are one."  How can that be?! Have you ever fathomed unity in the church body that reflects the unity of the Father, Son and Spirit? Unity that is made possible and powered by the union we have with God himself.

I wonder if as church bodies we fall so short of our calling simply because we don't understand it. What will convince the world, our neighbors, our family members of the truth of salvation? "I have given them the glory you gave me, so that they may be one, as we are - I in them and you in me, all being perfected into one. Then the world will know that you sent me and will understand that you love them as much as you love me." John 17:22-23


It is not the well thought argument, the tract, or even our good deeds that God intends for us to use to convince the world of his love for them. No, it's his family's unity. And what unifies us, makes us one? Passion for God's glory. 

It brings to mind the Three Musketeer's motto, "All for one and one for all!" If we live in unity "All for One and One for all" we can be assured of victory!