DESTROYING THE BARRIERS THAT WE CREATE
I send greetings to you in the name of Jesus:
We spend a lot of time in trying to make ourselves feel and look better in this life from other people. We tend to unwittingly throw up barriers and walls between ourselves and others to protect what we have built in life. I am beginning to see that the main reasons for division within the Christian community is the fear that we will somehow lose ourselves completely in Christ to the point that we no longer have control of who we are, but Christ's spirit will lead us around in a kind of zombie fashion and cause us to lose all rights to consent or our own will.
How much we believe in Christ and in God's intent of heart to love us so completely that we can trust God as a little child has that complete trust in their parent becomes the direct center of what we need to deal with. It really isn't a matter of simply trusting one another with the more intricate details of our lives, and it isn't sharing with one another the resources that we have; but I believe it goes back to the issue of how much we trust God. We must understand that from the very beginning of God's plan of salvation this kind of trust in him was the issue that we would have to overcome. How much does God really love us? We know about the words of John 3:16 and that God tells us the reasons that he sent his only begotten son to become a sacrifice for us so that we might be able to reach out to God in the same ways Adam and Eve did. In Ephesians 2:14-18 the word tells us "for he himself is our peace, who has made the 21 and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by abolishing in the his flesh the law with its commandments and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new man out of the two, thus making peace, and in this one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility. He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access to the father by one Spirit."
Paul was writing about the Jews and the Gentiles coming together in Christ to be one new man through the unifying power of the Holy Spirit. Christ has destroyed the barriers that people have built between themselves. Because these walls have been removed, we can have real unity with people who are not like us. This is called true reconciliation. Because of Christ's death we are all one are hostility against each other has been put to death we can all have access to the father through the Holy Spirit and we are no longer foreigners or aliens to God and we are all built into a holy temple with Christ as our chief cornerstone. There are so many different barriers as Christians that we can allow divide this from one another it can be age, appearance, intelligence, even political persuasion. It can be economic status, race, theological perspective. But one of the best ways to stifle Christ's love is to be open and friendly only with those people that are like us. I think if we truly look at this through God's eyes we would be able to see the reasons why God wants us to be unified in the spirit of Christ. If we are all unified and together; of the same mind, and the same heart as family in Christ, and if we can have the same kind of love for the same things then there is no force of evil in this world that can stop us or that can stop our witness in reflecting God's light into this world
It is Jesus himself who is our peace and who has made us all; as different as we all are, to become one by destroying not only the barrier that was between us as individuals, but the impenetrable barrier that sin had created between us and God our father. It really only makes sense to me to allow God the total and complete control over us by unifying us and the will that we have through the power of God's Spirit. We need to ask ourselves what does it mean to be built on the foundations of the apostles and the prophets? It means that the church is not built on modern ideas, but rather on the spiritual heritage given to us by that first church by the early apostles and prophets. In Ephesians 3: Paul starts out by telling his readers that it was because of what Christ did to tear these barriers down that he became a prisoner of Christ Jesus for the sake of the Gentiles. Paul put a very interesting way when he said for this reason I, Paul, I'm a prisoner of Christ Jesus for your sake. The conclusion that I take away from this is that if we are ever going to find Christian maturity; if we are ever going to be able to stand and give complete witness and testimony to this world as to what and why we believe in Christ Jesus, then we to are going to have to become prisoners of God's Holy Spirit. We will eventually be forced to make a choice about what is more important to us. Is it our promise of eternal life with God? Is it our self will to continue to hold God away from us at an arms length and to control any relationship that God may want to develop us into having with him? Only we can answer those questions. May you richly bless God through your life in him.
THE UNWORTHY SERVANT
We spend a lot of time in trying to make ourselves feel and look better in this life from other people. We tend to unwittingly throw up barriers and walls between ourselves and others to protect what we have built in life. I am beginning to see that the main reasons for division within the Christian community is the fear that we will somehow lose ourselves completely in Christ to the point that we no longer have control of who we are, but Christ's spirit will lead us around in a kind of zombie fashion and cause us to lose all rights to consent or our own will.
How much we believe in Christ and in God's intent of heart to love us so completely that we can trust God as a little child has that complete trust in their parent becomes the direct center of what we need to deal with. It really isn't a matter of simply trusting one another with the more intricate details of our lives, and it isn't sharing with one another the resources that we have; but I believe it goes back to the issue of how much we trust God. We must understand that from the very beginning of God's plan of salvation this kind of trust in him was the issue that we would have to overcome. How much does God really love us? We know about the words of John 3:16 and that God tells us the reasons that he sent his only begotten son to become a sacrifice for us so that we might be able to reach out to God in the same ways Adam and Eve did. In Ephesians 2:14-18 the word tells us "for he himself is our peace, who has made the 21 and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by abolishing in the his flesh the law with its commandments and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new man out of the two, thus making peace, and in this one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility. He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access to the father by one Spirit."
Paul was writing about the Jews and the Gentiles coming together in Christ to be one new man through the unifying power of the Holy Spirit. Christ has destroyed the barriers that people have built between themselves. Because these walls have been removed, we can have real unity with people who are not like us. This is called true reconciliation. Because of Christ's death we are all one are hostility against each other has been put to death we can all have access to the father through the Holy Spirit and we are no longer foreigners or aliens to God and we are all built into a holy temple with Christ as our chief cornerstone. There are so many different barriers as Christians that we can allow divide this from one another it can be age, appearance, intelligence, even political persuasion. It can be economic status, race, theological perspective. But one of the best ways to stifle Christ's love is to be open and friendly only with those people that are like us. I think if we truly look at this through God's eyes we would be able to see the reasons why God wants us to be unified in the spirit of Christ. If we are all unified and together; of the same mind, and the same heart as family in Christ, and if we can have the same kind of love for the same things then there is no force of evil in this world that can stop us or that can stop our witness in reflecting God's light into this world
It is Jesus himself who is our peace and who has made us all; as different as we all are, to become one by destroying not only the barrier that was between us as individuals, but the impenetrable barrier that sin had created between us and God our father. It really only makes sense to me to allow God the total and complete control over us by unifying us and the will that we have through the power of God's Spirit. We need to ask ourselves what does it mean to be built on the foundations of the apostles and the prophets? It means that the church is not built on modern ideas, but rather on the spiritual heritage given to us by that first church by the early apostles and prophets. In Ephesians 3: Paul starts out by telling his readers that it was because of what Christ did to tear these barriers down that he became a prisoner of Christ Jesus for the sake of the Gentiles. Paul put a very interesting way when he said for this reason I, Paul, I'm a prisoner of Christ Jesus for your sake. The conclusion that I take away from this is that if we are ever going to find Christian maturity; if we are ever going to be able to stand and give complete witness and testimony to this world as to what and why we believe in Christ Jesus, then we to are going to have to become prisoners of God's Holy Spirit. We will eventually be forced to make a choice about what is more important to us. Is it our promise of eternal life with God? Is it our self will to continue to hold God away from us at an arms length and to control any relationship that God may want to develop us into having with him? Only we can answer those questions. May you richly bless God through your life in him.
THE UNWORTHY SERVANT
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