Posts Tagged ‘unity’

You are United with Christ

Tuesday, October 24th, 2017

you-are-united-with-Christ

You are united with Christ.

Jesus says, in His high priestly prayer for unity: “The glory which You have given Me I have given to them, that they may be one, just as We are one; I in them and You in Me, that they may be perfected in unity.” John 17:22-23a NASB

Can you imagine the incredible unity that Christ is talking about? He just said that in the same way that God the Father and God the Son are one, so we as believers are to have the same kind of unity. God the Father and God the Son are the same essence. They have one will. They are one in every sense of the word except that they are separate individuals. It’s an internal unity, and it must be possible among believers, or Jesus would not have prayed it.

We see in the early church this kind of unity, where people shared everything with each other and didn’t hoard anything. They broke bread and had fellowship with each other, laughing and crying together in sweet unity. They prayed together and didn’t care about earthly objects, but only about the will of God to be accomplished. This is why they had so much power in the Spirit, because they had no idols. Christ was all in all.

Being united with Christ is what it means to be saved. When you invite Christ into your life, Christ is in you (2 Corinthians 13:5), and you are in Christ (1 Corinthians 1:30).

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“But whoever is united with the Lord is one with him in spirit.” 1 Corinthians 6:17

And if Christ is in each of us, of course we will love each other and have unity in the Spirit because we love Jesus. We see Jesus when we see each other. If this is not happening, perhaps you are around carnal Christians who are not allowing Christ to be their greatest joy. (I estimate that up to 90% of church-goers are not true believers. You cannot see Christ in them at all because He isn’t there.) Out of selfishness, carnal Christians live their lives for themselves. Scripture asks us to examine if we are in the faith, in case we are not actually saved. If Christ is in us, we will be excited about the things of God. It is oxygen and life and feels clean and fresh and beautiful.

A. W. Tozer says: “I will never be through talking about the union of the soul with the Savior, the conscious union of the believer’s heart with Jesus. Remember, I am not talking about a ‘theological union’ only. I am speaking also of a conscious union, a union that is felt and experienced.”

It is not just a theoretical idea that we are united with Christ—He and we are ACTUALLY one. Let that sink in… Wow!

unity-in-Christ

This means that we are also united with Christ in His death and resurrection: “For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection.” Romans 6:5 NASB

When we choose to die to sin, we experience resurrection power in our lives as we see impossible things happen—changed lives, answered prayer, bitterness gone, healing from past wounds, etc.

If you want to understand the illustration of the Vine and the branches from John 15 that I explained in the video, I wrote more about that here: Abiding in the Vine.

If you don’t want to miss any of these posts from the series “31 Days to Regaining Your Identity,” why not sign up for my free monthly newsletter below, and follow my prayer page on Facebook.

you-are-a-masterpiece

 

My daughter and I created the artwork for this series from the course {aff} “You are a Masterpiece” by Alicia Gratehouse. If you love to do art and are discovering who you are in Christ, this is a great art course for you!

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Posted in Christian Living | 12 Comments »

The Power of Uniting in Prayer

Wednesday, August 5th, 2015

the-power-of-uniting-in prayer

Even though our individual prayers matter to God and form the basis of our personal relationship with Him, God also wants us to pray with other believers, loving them and lifting their burdens. He wants us to humble ourselves to other believers so that they can pray for us (James 5:16). Often there is a demonic component that we are not even aware of, or a sin (that we are blind to) has a grip on us that we don’t fully comprehend. That grip is expelled and dissolved when it is verbalized to another human being who will pray for us.

Satan knows this to be true and tells us that we cannot tell anybody about what we are struggling with because it’s too personal. I have found that the more personal it is, the more likely that others are struggling with a similar issue. Being humble also helps other people to share their own struggles, even if the struggles are completely different. This is especially true if people see a believer set free and transformed as a result of other people praying for them. Everyone needs victory in their Christian lives, and God has purposely made it impossible to walk in complete victory without interacting with other members in the body of Christ to bring about maturity (Ephesians 4:13).

We have power in uniting in prayer as believers.

The number one thing that Satan attacks in the church is unity. He causes factions, dissensions, disunity—so that he separates us—so that we cannot combine together in the body of Christ to move forward in the will of God. If he can destroy the unity in the church, he destroys the church because it is powerless. Satan renders the church impotent when we allow him to set us at odds with each other, allowing our minds to entertain negative thoughts about any other person. This is our downfall.

What causes strife among you? (James 4:1-3) Is it not because you want to be well-respected? We need to be humble as we serve rather than wanting ourselves to be elevated. It’s so easy for the enemy to come in and make you feel like you’ve been slighted by somebody, or you take something wrong that somebody has said to you. The enemy will twist the truth, and then that thought will eat away at you like a cancer, causing division in the body of Christ. It corrupts the church from the inside out. The dissensions we hold against each other are the fruit of the flesh, not the fruit of the Spirit. You can see the fruit of the flesh in Galatians 5:19-21.

In the same way that unity is vital in a marriage for a marriage to function properly—so it is for believers in the body of Christ to be unified in order to function the way God designed us to function.

What makes prayer so powerful when we unite together in prayer for a specific cause? How is this achieved? How can believers have one essence?

In John 17:21, Jesus cried out to God for the unity of believers. “Make them one, even as You and I are one”–this is one of the most shocking Scriptures I have ever read. God the Father and God the Son are one essence. For believers in the body of Christ to be one essence like that just blows my mind! And yet I’ve experienced this unity several times while praying with other believers.

How do you achieve this? The closer you are to Christ, the more unity you will have because Christ is one. Different believers who are right with God (with no unconfessed sin) can combine in the Spirit and pray full blast with 100% of their beings. At that point—Boom! The Spirit of the Lord shows up in mighty measure and moves in phenomenal ways. You have one mind, one heart, one purpose (Philippians 2). The Spirit of God is present so tangibly when this happens. We all draw close to the heart of God, discover God’s will for us, and ask God to bring to fulfillment His will.

We are not imposing our own will onto God; instead, it’s the reverse. Know God. As you pursue Him full-tilt, He will reveal His will for you, and you obey and pray in line with God’s will to fulfill what He has asked of you.

Several times (which I describe in the audio below), I have had one essence with a small group of women as we prostrated ourselves in the dust before the Lord. We could each hear the heart of God because of deep prayer in our personal lives, since we had spent tons and tons of time on our faces before the Lord in private. So all of our hearts were one before we even met. Then when we began praying—Boom! God showed up from the very beginning because we already all could hear the heartbeat of God and were asking the right things of God. God changes the way we pray, the closer we are to Him, because His requests become our requests, and then He moves mightily to complete what His will already was.

All prayer and all the desire of our hearts should be about God being glorified. God will not use you (and you cannot pray this way) unless you understand that you are nothing (Galatians 6:3). To be full of the Spirit, you need to be empty of yourself—your own agenda, your own selfishness. His will in you is way better than your own will. God is looking for people to share His heart with, so that we will pray according to His will.

Here is the audio that describes how uniting in prayer with other believers can be powerful. (To download, right click “Save as” and choose “Desktop”):

Also, I’ve started a series of short prayer videos on my prayer page.

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Posted in Prayer | 4 Comments »

Smooth Words Don’t Mean You’re Walking by the Spirit

Thursday, March 19th, 2015

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Who speaks smooth words? Politicians and car salesmen. Who speaks real words, even if they offend? Spurgeon and Jesus are two that come to mind. Jesus called people names. He did not use smooth words. Spurgeon was also told many times to change the way he talked because it was offending people. Yet somehow in Christianity, people who naturally speak in a smooth, inoffensive way tell real people that they are sinning in the way they speak.

I’m not talking about being rude. Love is not rude. I’m talking about twisting a normal sentence that is inoffensive into a huge insult that was never intended. Satan pits believers against each other by giving them poison glasses. They look through those poison glasses to a person who is real, and they take offense where no offense exists. They assume the godly person is evil, so what they say will be twisted no matter what.

There is a time to speak up and be harsh, and it’s usually when people in positions of power in Christian circles are being used by the enemy to hinder God’s work.

That is the time that even the Son of God called people names. Yes, He insulted the people who were hindering God’s work.

I have seen it so many times. The godly person is called to a meeting with people in Christian authority who have already believed the lies from the enemy. They might even have deep-seated bitterness against that person. During the meeting, they whip that godly person to death. They do not let that godly person call forth any witnesses who would reveal the truth. Even when the truth is mentioned, their ears are plugged and they will hear no more of it.

“His speech was smooth as butter, yet war was in his heart; his words were softer than oil, yet they were drawn swords.” Psalm 55:21 ESV

Christian, if you are being wounded for the cause of Christ, when you have spent every drop of your being in faithful service to your Master, you do not have to go to a meeting where you will be killed by people’s words. You do not have to go there alone. You do not have to go there at all. God will strengthen and uphold you. God will defend you, if not on this earth, then in the world to come.

Don’t let the evil one stop you from using your spiritual gifts. Don’t let him hurt you by turning back on your head every harmless word that has been used against you. Don’t slink down in defeat for the rest of your life.

Find some believers who are walking by the Spirit who will walk in unity through prayer, and begin everything that you do for God in prayer. Ask Him if you are to lead a certain event or activity, and if the Lord is behind it, He will carry you and provide for you despite all the opposition. Because the Lord rules on high, and His designs will not be thwarted. Walk in confidence if you have committed your ways before Him, and He will direct your steps.

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Posted in Christian Living | 16 Comments »