I have had the privilege of being involved with many church unity “movements”. In reality we should not even call it a movements because some how that connotes that it is almost out of the norm of what the church should be. Sadly Unity is something very foreign to us in an age where approximately 41,000 Christian denominations exist.
I am part of the leadership in RI of something we call “1Prayer”. Yes I am fully aware that the term was stolen, but who is going to come to RI to challenge me. For the last 3.5 years 3-7 churches in this small area of the US have been meeting together to pray for revival and change in the spiritual climate in our area. We have seen amazing highs and some spectacular lows. 4 months ago we saw that God wanted us to rebuild our foundation so we put a halt to our monthly corporate worship and prayer gatherings and met with leaders and intercessors only. Confusion and chaos took hold of our first meeting and while it seemed we accomplished something in reality we gave more fuel to disunity. During a debrief about the meeting we were led to the word in Joshua 5. We believed that God wanted us to follow this and begin in repentance followed by consecration communion and waiting on the Lord to hear His will.
The next month we did just that. We came and repented of our lack, pride, kingdom building, disunity and so many other things. 20 leaders from 4 churches spent an hour repenting that evening of putting our agendas before God’s and Strongholds were broken. 20 leaders from 4 churches consecrated their lives to the work of the Kingdom together and the demons shuttered. 20 leaders from 4 churches stood around the Lords table and broke bread in remembrance and in an act of re-MEMBERING the body of Christ. Barriers crumbled. Something significant that day happened. You can liken it to the crumbling of the Berlin wall. East on one side and west on the other. Church A on one side and church B on the other.
The next month we spent 2 hours waiting on the Lord and worshiping Him for His greatness and yet something felt odd to me. I prayed about it a lot and God gave me a picture.
The greatest battle the church can fight is to be UNITED with one another and THEN link arms against the spiritual principalities of our area. It starts with repentance and being united with communion because ultimately we must start with humility end end with Jesus. When we do this Walls will crumble and strongholds will be broken, but the battle is not over.
I had this vision of God smashing a fence in front of me. There it lay in splinters on the ground. I rejoiced at how great He is and reveled in the fact that this fence is now in pieces in front of me. I stood there week after week rejoicing that this is broken and never step over the debris. Then I notice while I am standing there that the enemy has returned with his “carpenter” minions and they begin to rebuild the broken fence…
Once again I find myself having to pray and fight for that stronghold to be broken, because I chose to be excited about the now and never once decided to be intentional about stepping over the debris to forward move PAST the rubble.
This can apply to ones life and anything a person is struggling with. If you find healing and never move FORWARD the enemy will come back and put that wall back up.
In the case of unity if the berlin wall came down, everybody rejoiced but nobody from the west or east crossed over then there is still division. If the church finds those walls come down and they dont actively pursue, relationships, worship, prayer and community with each other then not only are they letting the enemy rebuild that wall they are helping him. They are handing Satan the bricks.
“if we work with that church then I wont be able to build MY church” (here satan… here is a brick of pride)
“if we help the homeless that sunday with the other church we might not get an offering” (Here you go satan.. this brick of fear should do nicely)
We need to actively pray and fight for strongholds to be broken in our homes, lives, churches and in the body of Christ. When God smashes that wall make sure to step over the debris and act. Fight to make sure that wall stays rubble and that it can be counted as a wall that fell along your journey. Make sure it is now in the distance behind you instead of in front of you.
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