Unity: Called To One Another | Pastor Drew

Today we are starting a three-week series on measuring church success.

Measuring church success.

In conversation right now, real quick, what are some things that you have been told or you believe about what church success is?

I'll give you two minutes to talk about that.

This could be right or wrong.

This could be right or wrong.

All right, I'd like to, we're a conversational church.

We're a relation, the R in me, the R in real means real.

It means relational.

And because we are a relational church, that also means that we're conversational.

So I'm curious to know, what are some people, what are some thoughts over here?

What are some things that you heard about success in the church?

Number of baptisms, all right.

The church success is based upon the number of baptisms.

Sunday morning attendance, yeah.

Money, oh my goodness, money, money, money.

Anybody else?

A place where everyone knows your name.

In the back, y'all quiet back there.

Television.

Whether or not you're on TV.

If you're on TV, man, you must be doing the Lord's work.

I like that.

YouTube.

What about here?

Driving the nice car, being on TV, man.

Healthy, yes.

These are all different ways in which we have tried to understand or define what success is in the church.

The problem is, is oftentimes our metrics and the measuring system that we use in our culture is not the same measuring system that Jesus uses for his bride.

What makes a church successful in today's American church culture?

We're taught to look at primarily the four B's.

Buildings.

How impressive is your space?

Oftentimes I go to churches or I've been to places and I'm with other pastors and I'm like, oh man, this is just a beautiful church.

Oh man, the Lord has really blessed This place.

Bodies.

How many people are showing up and are sitting in the seats?

Man, the more you got, the Lord definitely has to be there.

And I'm not saying it's bad.

Hear me clearly.

The third B is budgets.

How strong are your financials?

How much capital do you have?

How much money you got in the bank?

Tell that to an urban church pastor who's been faithfully following Jesus for 50 years, and the bank account right now still ain't got no more than$500.

And they've been trusting God every single day.

If we think that budgets is an indicator of success...

we may miss what faith actually means.

Branding now, all of a sudden, branding has always been a thing, but even now, more today than ever, branding is now an indicator of a church's success.

And how is the brand?

How are the clips in the social media?

How is the engagement?

How are we engaging?

What are the algorithms?

Who's engaging with your website?

Who's engaging with your Facebook and your platforms and your YouTube?

Who's engaging?

Because if you've got a lot of engagement, well surely your church just has to be successful.

I think it's interesting that now more than ever we're more connected.

Now more than ever we have more platforms to get the message of Jesus out.

Now more than ever we have access to more knowledge and more information and yet There's deep depravity in the American church.

We may have lots of people, but we have very shallow souls in our congregations oftentimes because we're using the wrong metrics for church success.

Now, buildings, bodies, budgets, and brandings are not necessarily a bad thing.

It's just when you use these things as the evidence of success, that means that also these things can be manipulated.

I think that that there's some people in this country that think that there was a time period before that America was successful because of economic revenue at the expense of black bodies that were being enslaved that made billions of dollars, that generated billions of dollars of income.

But because there's lots of money, it must be successful.

Is that really the metrics?

Name any other injustice that cost people to where you have people getting rich at the expense of bodies and then we dare say that the economy indicates success.

Is it a just economy?

Is it an economy that reflects the kingdom of God or does it reflect the kingdom of man?

Because I can tell you all over the world there's always a challenge.

Are we going to trust the economy of the kingdom Or are we going to trust the economy of man?

And oftentimes we'll even use the economy of man and just put Jesus on it and say, this has to be the Lord because look at all this money.

We are successful.

But at what expense and what compromise did we make for that success?

The kingdom of God doesn't necessarily count how many attend.

but it counts how we live with one another.

And this is where Ephesians becomes radically relevant for who we are today.

Paul is writing this letter from a Roman prison, not as a celebrity apostle, but as a prisoner for the Lord.

He is writing to believers in Ephesus, a wealthy, multicultural port city on the western coast of Asia Minor.

Ephesus was the home of the massive temple of Artemis, one of the seven wonders of the world, a hotbed of magic, idolatry, and power struggles.

If you read Acts chapter 19, you can find it.

Acts 19 · chapter mention

find out.

It was deeply divided among ethnic, religious, and economic lines.

Jews and Gentiles, slaves and citizens, rich elites and disenfranchised, male, female.

The early church in Ephesus was a multi-ethnic congregation made up of both Jewish and Gentile believers, groups who historically despised and distrusted each other.

Gentiles, they prided themselves on their philosophy and and their citizenship in the Roman Empire.

You know what else they boasted in also?

Was their military might.

Sound familiar?

Jews clung to their heritage, the Torah, even temple identity.

The political climate was tense.

Rome ruled through fear and domination and then called it the Pax Romana and said the peace of Rome, but it was actually false peace because there was no peace at all.

And Christians were beginning to face opposition as a subversive movement, claiming that Jesus, not Caesar, is Lord.

Is this cultural and spiritual battleground?

In this cultural and spiritual battleground, Paul cast a vision of the church as a new humanity, not defined by the categories of the empire, but by the gospel of peace.

In chapters 1 through 3, Paul outlines the gospel.

You've been chosen and you've been redeemed, and you've been sealed by the Spirit.

In Ephesians 1, 3-14, in Ephesians 2, he says, you've been raised from death to life.

Ephesians 2, 1-10, you've been raised from death to life.

You've been reconciled across racial or ethnic divides into one new body.

You are now a holy temple where God dwells.

And now in chapter 4, he shifts gears by saying, walk Let the gospel tear down every dividing wall we've rebuilt.

Sisters and brothers, will you please stand as we read the word of God?

Ephesians chapter 4, I'm reading from the NASB Bible, and I will read verses 1 through 6 for the sake of today's message.

Ephesians 4 · chapter mention

Therefore, I, the prisoner of the Lord, implore you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called.

With all humility and gentleness, with patience, showing tolerance for one another in love, being diligent to preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace, there is one body and one spirit, just as you were called into one hope of your calling.

One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.

Father, we just thank you, and over these next few minutes, I ask God that you would do something within us as a body, that you would move in us with your Spirit, and that you would draw us into the depths of of your holy work on earth as it is in heaven.

May we respond to your invitation to unity with yes and amen and repent of anything that hinders us from living in the fullness of who you've called us to be here and now as a church.

In Jesus' name, amen.

You may be seated.

The first part of this message is unity.

This week we'll talk about unity.

Unity begins with calling.

In verses one here, unity begins with calling.

Interesting enough, anytime you see therefore, it's an indicator that whatever was talked about before has influence into what is about to be said.

And here, the first three chapters of Ephesians, if you were here when we did an Ephesians series, the first part is sitting.

It's sitting in Christ who is already at the right hand of God the Father.

It's deeply theological in understanding what it means to be children of God who are seated in the heavenly places right now.

Where is Jesus?

Jesus is in heaven at the right hand of the Father.

The scripture says that together we are right now in Christ, in Christ.

Jesus is where?

At the right hand of the Father.

hand of the Father.

So together, the church Of all believers, right now, we are seated at the right hand of the Father in Jesus right now.

We're not waiting to get there.

Our identity is there now.

Paul talks about this for three chapters.

And then he says now, because this is true of God, this now must be true of you.

It moves into a very practical understanding of what it means to follow God.

We, unfortunately, due to the dualism in our culture, we kind of separate theology from practice.

It's like, what is it that you believe?

What do you believe?

Like, what's in your mind?

This is part of even Gentile history and the influence of academia at times.

The philosophers, the Greek philosophers, right?

It's, I think, therefore, I am.

There's like this division of theology and practice.

And so oftentimes, I have some friends who wear crosses on their necks.

They wear Jesus pieces.

I mean, they've got these Jesus Jesus figures on their necklaces, right?

Jesus is right here, I mean, so close to their heart, but they won't let him in.

But at least it looks good.

At least it looks good.

But in their mind, they have believed this idea about Jesus, but it doesn't have any impact on the way that they live.

No, no, no.

I believe in Jesus.

No, let me tell you something, sisters and brothers.

It was never meant to be divided.

Whatever it is that you believe, that's what you will do.

However you're living, you're showing how you believe.

I don't care what you say you believe.

What you do is evidence of what you believe.

And both our belief and our practice is broken because of sin.

And part of what it means to follow Jesus is to obey the Holy Spirit and stop resisting the Spirit so that we can faithfully reflect who God is in heaven here on earth together as the church.

So he moves them into a practice.

And he says, therefore, I, the prisoner of the Lord, I urge you I beg you.

I plead with you.

Paul, who is in prison when he writes most of the New Testament, he's locked up, he's bound in chains, not because he wants to be great, but because he wants to follow Jesus and be faithful.

Paul's in chains and writes a letter.

And he could say, based upon my apostolic authority, I am telling you, this is what you've got to do.

Oh man, he doesn't do that.

He says, I beg you.

Paul understands that God is a God who invites.

God never forces.

And because God never forces, we don't force.

And even though he could, based upon his apostolic authority, He chooses to beg, to plead.

Church, today, I beg you to walk in the manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called.

I am pleading with you, church, today.

to commit to lives of unity with one another.

Unity is not sameness.

It doesn't mean we have to look like, act like, and talk like each other.

Diversity and unity is actually a beautiful thing.

However, we must be united as Christians around the truth that Jesus Christ is Lord and not another.

Because that is the foundation of why we even follow Jesus, is because he's Lord, not Caesar, not Mama Nim, not Grandma, not your greatest theologian, not your people, not your culture, not your money.

Jesus is Lord and not another.

Not your ethnic identity, not your gender, anything else, not American nationalism.

Jesus is Lord and not another.

Even above us and our desires that are broken and that are contrary to the will of God.

Jesus is Lord and not another.

And because Jesus is Lord...

He invites us.

He invites us into a new way of living.

This word for calling is the word klesos.

It's a divine invitation, not just to personal salvation, but it's to a shared identity and mission.

Every week we say, we want to be what?

Who can say it?

The vision we say every week.

What?

reflecting heaven on earth as we seek to transform our community and beyond with the love of Jesus Christ.

This is who we say we want to be, and it's good according to Ephesians.

This vision is actually really good according to Ephesians.

This shared identity and mission, we just shared identity and mission by going into the preschool and praying for our preschool together as one body, unified together.

Now, we all don't look alike.

We all don't think alike.

We all don't talk alike.

And we get behind closed doors.

We might not act alike.

But the beauty is, is that together we're in Christ.

That's the beauty in this.

And because of that, we can share a common identity and understand and live out what it means to actually be people who are reconciled and one.

This is a context of Jews and Gentiles who were two opposing groups who could not stand and hated each other.

And you can extend this to any other group in the history of humanity.

And it's the same thing.

You are not just called out of sin.

You are called into the body of Christ.

You are not saved from something.

You are saved for someone and with someone.

Jesus invites us.

God invites us not into just personal salvation This is where it starts for us.

And Paul says, I beg you, church, I plead with you today that we may be a church that answers the calling, that we would walk, that we would live out, that we would practice, that we would perform in this congregation what it means to be people of a new humanity.

May we walk in the manner worthy of the calling which we have been called.

This This is the divine invitation.

that we live this out together.

We're not called into isolated faith journeys.

We're called into community that defies division.

Black, white, brown, rich, poor, middle class, citizen, immigrant, progressive, conservative, whatever other title you want to put in it.

We're called to be a new group of people united in Jesus Christ.

But this is hard to do, which leads us to our next point.

True unity requires character.

I think it's interesting that Paul says, hey, I'm a prisoner of the Lord and I urge you to walk out this manner.

And he understands in the Roman Empire, these two groups of people who are opposed to one another, the Gentiles can benefit a little bit more from the Roman Empire.

The Jews have some struggle, right?

And so the Gentiles, if they want to play it towards their privilege, they can play games if they want to because they're living in the Roman Empire.

This is the second most important city in the Roman Empire, Ephesus.

Well, it went down in Ephesus.

You get a chance to read Acts chapter 19.

Acts 19 · chapter mention

It went down in Ephesus when Paul was trying to plant this church.

It went down.

And what happens is, he says that in order for you to do this, in order to answer this calling, there's a way you have to live.

There's a way that I'm inviting you also to live.

This requires character.

He names four spirit-born virtues.

The first one is, I think that the key to all the rest of them.

The first one is humility.

The first one is humility.

I think it's important, the most important, because in this time, in this culture, humility would have been considered a weak virtue.

In a culture where you were encouraged to power up, to take yours, to get yours, where there were patrons and there were clients.

I'm the patron, you're the client.

Know your role, stay in your place.

I'm the have, you're the have not.

In our relationship, is me, you're doing something for me.

But Paul says that the first thing is that with all humility and gentleness.

Oh my gosh, where else has Paul talked about humility?

I think there's a passage in Philippians chapter 2 where Paul says...

Philippians 2 · chapter mention

That although Jesus was the bodily form of God, that Jesus himself, who is God in human flesh, by all rights, Jesus could power up anytime he wanted to.

He tells Pontius Pilate when he's tempted to power up, don't you know that?

I have a whole bunch of legions, man, I can unleash to get myself up out of this situation.

You better understand who you're talking to, Pontius.

Matter of fact, I'm calling you PP because that's who I am, right?

No, he didn't do that, right?

He did not do that.

What he says is that my kingdom does not operate the way that you operate with military might and power and dominion, that my kingdom does not operate this way.

And Philippians says that in the very form of God, he does not consider equality with God something to be grasped, something to be held or hoarded, something to be attained, but what he does is he lays down his life for the sake of others.

Now, we like humility when it's in relation to Jesus.

We just don't like it when it's in relation to us.

We have the problem when it's in relation to us.

No, no, Dan, I'm about laying your life down so that I can live, brother.

That's fine if that's what you want to do, but then you're no longer receiving the calling in which you have been called.

You have received the calling of the world.

You have received the calling of Satan, the devil, and the beast, who seek to power over, who seek to exercise dominion over, who will sacrifice your life so that he can live.

jesus does the exact opposite and in this culture it was foreign to do this this is why people had a hard time with jesus because he was weak isn't that interesting in our american culture that we have the same view of people that people are weak because they're humble isn't that interesting Humility, church.

Humility.

It matters.

It's the foundation of all of this.

It's the foundation of our unity in Christ.

It's about laying our lives down for others and also being gentle.

And when you're gentle for people who are weaker than you, you choose to be kind.

Yes, you could be mean.

You could power up.

You could go off on them or somebody that you're working with, somebody that you're in relationship with, some somebody that you might be married to.

There's places in your life where you see that you're stronger than them, that you might be smarter, that you might be better.

And if you wanted to, you could power up on that and make them look bad, make them feel bad.

You call them names, call them stupid, call them idiots.

You can do whatever you want to do, but that's not gentle.

Humility.

with gentleness, not humility with power, because that's actually not humility at all.

That's pride.

It's humility with gentleness.

If we're going to live into this calling that God has given us, church, it's going to require us to lay down our lives for the sake of each other and also to be gentle while we do it.

In your relationships, if I were to ask your friends, your children, your best friend, your parents, your spouse, your significant other, if I was to say, how are they being gentle with you when you have disagreements?

What would they say?

If you were to ask my wife, if something happens with us, is Andrew gentle?

I'll be honest with you, if I had a weakness, and I do, Gentleness is one of them.

If I have a weakness with my brothers in Christ who don't quite yet understand some of the things that I'm trying to get people to understand, oh man, I'm loving them, but I'm not always gentle.

I'm so proud, I'm so glad of my sister Michelle here.

We have conversations and meetings and staff meetings, and there's things that we'll just talk about with the church or in relation to the church.

And man, I'll say something just because it's her and I or just a couple people, I'll just be like, man, just boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

And Michelle has this way of helping me see something different.

Michelle, I'm so grateful for you in the way that you demonstrate gentleness, and it convicts me to be more gentle.

Now, Ryan might not think that way, but at least I do, right?

And that's all that matters.

Gentleness is about power that is under control.

It's a soft word in a loud world.

I like to be loud in a loud world.

That's not gentle.

It's about a soft word in a loud world.

The next piece is patience.

It's literally the word means long burning.

Long burning.

God talks about anger and burning like a fire, right?

There's this language in the Old Testament.

This is God's love for us.

God is patient with us, his hesed, his mercy.

It's a loving faithfulness that requires much patience.

And he's threatening and threatening.

I'm getting ready to lash.

I'm getting ready to unleash this judgment.

And oftentimes he just never does.

He's just talking, right?

because he's merciful and he wants us to repent?

Patience.

How are we with our patience?

Do we have a short burning and slow to anger or a long time to forgive?

Are we slow to anger and quick to forgive?

Or are we quick to anger and it takes us a very long time to forgive?

And sometimes we use this thing, I'm just not ready yet.

I just ain't there yet.

And I understand.

I understand there's some things in life that get us there.

But again, over a period of time when you ain't just there, you got to ask yourself the question, who's the Lord here?

You or Jesus?

And that's okay because there's times where we take back the Lordship from Jesus and he gives it to us because he's one who invites.

He never conquers.

He invites.

And if you want to be Lord today, guess what?

He'll let you be Lord today in your relationships.

But then tomorrow you'll find out, man, that's a heavy burden to bear.

And you find out after all that time wasted on not forgiving people or holding grudges all that life and energy that we give to that we finally come to a place where we forgive and it's like man i should have done that 30 years ago but thank god for grace church along the way of this journey we've already ran into it and i hate to tell you this we'll run into it again the church is made up of imperfect people who are following a perfect God.

And along the way, at times we're going to hurt each other.

At times we're going to say something ignorant.

In a multi-ethnic church, in a racialized society, we are going to say some ignorant stuff to one another.

But you know what?

That is the whole purpose of why Jesus came.

He came to take people who were at odds with one another, who hated each other.

He took all of that pain and suffering, all of that enmity, all that hatred and vengeance, and he took it upon himself.

He died so that we wouldn't.

Now, we got to die in giving up our will and our way and our need to be right and our need to have our control.

We got to give that up.

And patience is the virtue that we have to practice that in.

Aren't you glad that God was patient with you?

I am.

Every single day.

And in the same way, in that patience, in that calling that you received, you're actually invited divinely by God to extend that same calling to other people.

This next part is bearing with one another in love.

It's actually to carry each other's weakness and not avoid them.

How many of us avoid people?

We don't like going in public.

Some folks don't like coming to church because there's somebody you're trying to avoid, right?

Some of you don't even want to go home today, and you're going to find something else to do, so you ain't got to go home to have that conversation you know you need to have.

That's avoidance, right?

with patience, showing tolerance for one another in love.

See, we read the passage, weep with those who weep, right?

Mourn with those who mourn.

There's this passage in Galatians that Paul talks about carrying one another's burdens, right, to fulfill the law.

He's not talking about that here.

He's actually talking about you actually got to carry the person that you don't like even when they're burdensome.

He's actually talking about that.

He's actually talking about uniting with somebody even when they're burdensome.

Not their burdens, but actually the person, that that person is a burden because of whatever they say, whatever they do sometimes.

And he's talking about if you want to love somebody, that you've got to bear with them in love even when you don't want to be around them.

It's a little different than just bearing somebody's burdens.

Because when you're bearing somebody's burdens with them, it's like, you know, you go sit with them for a moment.

They need some money.

You might help them pay a bill.

They're crying.

You give them a shoulder to cry on.

He says that the burden is the person.

The burden is actually the person that you avoid.

and he says that in love in love you draw near to them that in love you work this out with them not to avoid them but to move towards them now I'm not talking about abuse if the relationship is abusive get out You're better than that.

They are too.

They just don't know it.

I would never, ever ask anybody to stay in an abusive relationship.

But every relationship ain't abusive.

Sometimes you're just being challenged in ways that you need to be so that you can develop some of these muscles that we should already have as Christians, as my brother Chip says.

And that requires us leaning in to each other.

This is not for those who want to be strong in themselves.

This is for the people who want to be weak in themselves and strong in the Lord.

In a church with deep cultural, racial, and class differences, these were not optional personality traits.

They were non-negotiable character traits for life together in Christ.

The third part is, unity is...

Next slide.

Unity is the work of the Spirit intentionally worked through in and through us.

It's reconciliation.

Unity is the work of the Spirit intentionally worked in and through us.

So the Spirit is the one who enables us to do it and invites us.

The Spirit, that same Spirit who hovers over darkness and chaos in Genesis chapter 1, that same Spirit who raises Jesus from the dead, that same Spirit resides in the church and desires for us to trust and cooperate with the Spirit and stop resisting the Spirit and follow the Spirit's guide in how to love each other well in a way of reconciliation, in a way of unity.

Genesis 1 · chapter mention

It doesn't mean that we will always get along on everything, but it does mean that we will love each other.

The same Spirit, this word eager, is to be diligent, zealous, or act The Spirit has already done it.

It's the Spirit's work, but the Spirit invites us to do our part.

The unity that Paul talked about is not created by us.

It's created by the Spirit, but it is maintained and protected and guarded and nurtured, especially in the face of division, by us.

In Ephesians 2, Paul already said Christ is our peace and has broken down the dividing wall.

That wall was both literal and spiritual.

The separate in the temple between Jews and Gentiles and the hostility between cultures the church then and now is called to display a counter cultural unity rooted not in politics rooted not in race rooted not in economics not in your own style but in the reconciling work of the spirit the spirit of God did it But we also have to cooperate with the Spirit.

We've got to maintain it.

This is the work of the church.

In order for us to be united, we actually have to cooperate with the Spirit to do the things and to be the kind of people that God invites us to be.

And there's a reason why.

This is the next one, which is the last point.

Unity is grounded in God himself.

Verses 4 through 6.

He goes on to talk about one faith, one baptism, one body, right?

Just as you were called to one hope, one Lord, one God and Father of all.

He goes on to talk about these things, right?

It's a seven-fold list that reflects a Trinitarian unity.

Here you see the Spirit, the Son, and the Father in the life of the church.

It's possible that this is a baptismal confession in the early church when they would get baptized.

This is something that they would say together.

because they're one church, not two.

There's not three lords, there's one.

There's only one God and Father, right?

There's only one Holy Spirit.

This was probably a baptismal creed that people would recite at baptism.

It repeated as new believers were immersed into the new community.

In a world of division, baptism said, you belong here, you are one of us, and we are one in Him.

This takes us back to the beginning for the therefore.

See, whenever you see the therefore, as I said earlier, what was said before was about God.

What comes after that is about us.

This passage is connected directly to Deuteronomy 6-4, the Shema.

It's recited twice a day by the Jewish people.

The Lord our God, hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.

What does that mean?

That means that God, in what God says, God does, that God's integrated into himself, that God is consistent, that God is not divided, that who God is and who he says he is, that is who God is.

But therefore, there's a passage in Scripture that says, be holy, For the Lord your God is holy, but therefore, why?

It's because who God is, is who we are becoming.

Because of who God is.

And who God is in Jesus Christ.

God came to do the thing that no human being could do.

He had to do it because he was the only perfect one that could perform it within himself because he doesn't want to deny himself in us.

And so he provides a way for us to know him through the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ because God cannot deny himself in which we are all created in the image and likeness of God.

That is the gospel.

That is the good news of Jesus Christ.

You know why reconciliation is so important for me?

It's the gospel.

Literally, church, when the church is divided, when the church is not united, when the church is racist and classist and sexist, when God hates it because it makes God out to be a liar.

Because God in heaven wants to make himself known through our life together as the church from every background, ethnicity, gender.

God actually wants to make the mystery of who God is in heaven known.

He's already done it through Jesus, and he actually dares us and invites us to trust him to actually do it right here on earth as it is in heaven.

It's grounded in who God is.

Just as God is one, the church must reflect that same oneness.

And so church, we are not like the world.

Ephesus prided itself on wealth, beauty, and power.

America prides itself on branding, efficiency, and individualism, but Paul is calling the church to measure success differently, not by crowds, but by character, not by programs, but by peace, and that peace is connected to the word shalom and wholeness and reconciliation that we also find in Genesis.

That word peace is connected to shalom, which is about the interconnectedness and the interdependence of us together, which we've talked about the word Ubuntu.

I am because we are, and you are because I am.

Not by status, but by spirit-formed unity.

This is our call.

This is our witness in the world.

It's our witness in our community.

And this is how the world will know that we belong to Jesus.

By this, everyone will know that you are my disciples if you love one another.

And loving each other requires us at times to have conversations that are challenging.

When somebody's hurting or somebody in our church who's from a different ethnic group, their people are being mistreated or being pushed out or being not welcomed, it hurts the heart of God, so it should hurt our hearts as well.

Because again, if we're going to be consistent with God, if we're going to be the church, God's representation on earth as it is in heaven, this stuff matters.

Here's the call to response.

There's three areas that I'll touch on.

First one is repent of areas where we've chosen division, preference, or pride.

What are the areas of your life that maybe you're choosing division?

I don't want to be reconciled with this person.

That's on them.

That's their issue, not mine.

Preference.

In a church full of different theological backgrounds, different styles of worship, different ways of seeing things, different experiences, different cultures, we can really get caught up in preference.

And no singular preference is fully God's will by itself.

Our pride.

Somebody said something and you're holding on to it.

Somebody did something and you're holding on to it and it hinders you from being able to move towards that person because of your pride.

That's okay.

Let's just say that you're Lord and Jesus is not.

And let's just call a thing a thing.

Reflect on whether you're walking in humility and gentleness with patience and bearing with one another in love.

The last R.

You actually heard it earlier if you were here from the very beginning of worship.

When Reverend Sprock gave the vision and call to worship, he read a passage from Psalm 133.

Recommit to eagerly maintaining the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.

How good and pleasant it is.

When brothers and sisters dwell together in unity, for there the Lord commands the blessing.

When we're not united, we're withholding God's blessing.

And again, we make God out to be a liar.

Father, we just come before you today and we ask you, God, to help us Help us to repent.

Repentance is not a dirty word.

It's actually a hopeful word.

It's a word, metanoia, which means to change the way you think about something.

Lord, would you help us to change the way that we think about whatever it is that is hindering our life together?

Would we reflect on whether we're walking in humility, gentleness, patience, and love?

And would we recommit to eagerly maintaining the unit of the Spirit in the bond of peace, God?

Because of what you have done in the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, you destroyed the wall that divides humanity.

And in Christ, people from different backgrounds can be united in you.

That is the good news, God.

That you overcome sin and death at the cross.

And you give us your spirit to reflect this same truth together.

In Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.