Unity

I first want to say that my heart has never been as broken for the body of Christ as it was Thursday night. Have you ever been so broken inside that your heart literally aches and no matter how much you weep that ache remains? That’s exactly how I felt Thursday night. My words were few but my tears were many. My heart was broken as God opened my eyes and gave me just a tiny little bit of a glimpse of what is breaking his heart. When I asked the Lord, how I should pray for my Pastor and our Church my focus was immediately directed to unity.


Imagine with me for a minute that you’re at a symphony and the conductor is standing above the musicians on his podium and he is leading the musicians to create this beautiful orchestrated song. However, one little flutist forgot to turn her cell phone off and her phone begins ringing. She was immediately distracted and took her eyes off the conductor to find her phone. The flutist beside her is trying to stay focused on the conductor but the fidgeting beside her is distracting her as well. Before long the entire orchestra is distracted and out of sync. The conductor is growing exhausted trying to get their focus so he can get them back in harmony but realize that without unity the music is unpleasing to our ears. If the body of Christ lacks unity we are going to be less effective in the world.

Philippians
2:2 says, "fulfill my joy by being like-minded, having the same love, being of one accord, of one mind."

When I did a word study on this verse, it really jumped off the page at me so I want to share (I eliminated as much as I could)

Fulfill means to develop the full potential of One accord (Greek context) - people sharing the same identity because they are in Christ

Mind (Greek context)-to agree together, cherish the same views and be harmonious.  To break this scripture down according to my word study you could say: To develop the full potential of my joy, be harmonious with each other, having unconditional (Agape) love, sharing the same identity because you are in Christ, agree together.

Acts 2:1 says, when the Day of Pentecost had fully come, they were all with one accord in one place.

Notice that it says they ALL were with one accord in one place. Unity can be defined as oneness of purpose. It means working together toward a common goal. The outpouring of the Holy Spirit was a result of their unity. Think about it, one Believer filled with the Holy Ghost has power but many filled with the Holy Ghost is powerful. Look at Acts 4:23-31 and you'll see that when they all were united as one, one heart and one mind the place where they were meeting even shook. They loved each other so much that they shared everything; they took care of one another. The Lord saw their hearts and released his power to work through them as a result of their oneness with each other (Amazing).

After studying this subject these last couple of days, I believe that love is the main ingredient to having unity. Without love we cannot please God. I could go on and on, but I’m going to stop there and let you study this area for yourself. I do believe that praying the Word of God in unity is needed this week. I Love you guys :)


Heavenly Father,
We enter your gates with Thanksgiving in our hearts and into your courts with Praise. We rejoice in you Lord and we bless your name for you are Holy. Lord you are God; you made the heavens and the earth and the sea, and everything in them. Father, we want to fulfill your Joy by being like-minded, having the same love and being of one accord and one mind. Father we pray to be one with you, that the world may know your love through us. Teach us your ways oh Lord. We will bless you Lord at all times. In Jesus Name we pray…Amen


Read
Psalm133:1(Unity)
John 15:9-14(Jesus command to love, right before he goes to the Garden)
John 17:22-24(Jesus prayer about oneness)
Acts 4:23-31
Psalm 34:1
Psalm 86:11
Psalm 97:12
Psalm 100:4
Psalm 97:12

Prayer List
1. Divine Protection for Pastor and Family
2. Holiness
3. Heart like Hur to pray through the battle/strength when weary
4. Revival
5. Steadfastness
6. Surrender/Church about our Fathers business
7. Discernment
8. Worship in Spirit and Truth
9. Trust
10. Pray to be led by the Holy Spirit
11. Resist Discouragement
12. Offense
13. Unity

Unconditional Love

I'm so glad that God is always faithful to show me the areas in my life that need some attention. It's not fun, in fact it's painful most of the time but there was a time in my life when I didn't hear God's voice. Through the pain, I will rejoice that God loves ME enough to speak to me about my heart issues.

On Sunday, as soon as I was ready to walk out the door for Church, something happened at my house that deeply hurt me. By the time I got to church, I knew that I had a heart condition that needed addressing. I realized that I was beginning to harbor resentment, anger and bitterness. I was mourned by the sin in my heart and tried to let go but it just wasn't going anywhere. I felt like a complete failure with my family. That no matter how hard I try to do the right thing and be the Wife and Mother God has called me to be they just don't get it. Weariness was setting in.

Thank the Lord that he has placed people in my life to speak truth to me, to help me to see things in a different perspective, who love ME unconditionally. As the words of a dear friend were replaying in my thoughts last night and again this morning, I began to think....It's real easy to love those people in my life who are lovable but what about those people that press every button I have? Do I love them freely? What about those people who completely disrespect me, in fact I don't even think they like me, they only like what I can do for them? Are they easy to love? What about the one person in my life who I should be one with, that I should love and bond with but I really don't even understand him and he doesn't understand me. Is he easy to love? For me the answer is; no these people are not easy for me to love.

In all honesty I don't know how to love these people. I don't know how to love someone who in my opinion doesn't really desire to be loved and therefore why should I love them. When that thought came to me, immediately God spoke and said...Amy, what if I would have loved you conditionally, what if I would have given you the love you desired and deserved? Where do you think you would be right now? My heart was grieved by this.

I sit back and I wonder how I allowed this to happen. How did I allow my heart to get in this condition? I'm not sure I even love myself. Do I even understand God's love for me? I just don't know right now. I don't have the answers to all this. All I know is God is trying to teach me something, he's trying to mold me into someone that I don't completely understand but I have to trust him in this. I don't know what God is preparing me for, but I have to believe that he is preparing me for something down the road and I have to submit and be willing to listen to him and obey him. My focus for now is going to be on learning what love really is, learning how to love myself, how to receive love and how to love like God, how to love the unlovable. This is not something I'm asking you to do; I just felt the need to express to you all where I am right now. Maybe you need to examine your heart and pray about this also but if not and you have it all together in this area, please pray for me because I really don't.

Please remember to keep praying through our prayer list. I can't even begin to tell you how burdened my heart is for praying for our Pastor and Beverly. They need to be loved, encouraged and prayed for daily. No matter what is going on in your life, it is important to shower them in our prayers.

1 John 4:8
Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love

Romans 5:8
But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ dies for us.

John 14:23
Jesus answered him, "If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him."

1 John 4:16
So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.

Luke 6:27
"But I say to you who hear, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you

1 Corinthians 13:1-13
1 John 4:7-11

Matthew 5:43-48

Offense

God has been speaking to me about offense. In Matt 24:10-11(AMP), It speaks of someone who falls away because they have become offended. This is a haughty spirit, that because of the snare or temptation put before them they have become offended and the offense (whatever it is) causes them to respond with their emotions and fall away from the church. When I speak of offense I'm talking about "Christians" who get offended by the Word of God (Truth) and fall away or hold a grudge never accepting the truth of the word of God, or a believer that takes on offense out of jealousy, envy, hurt feelings, etc.


The definition of offense is; resentment, displeasure, scandal, anger...The Greek word is (skandalise) “to put a stumbling block in the way, cause to fall away, be led into sin...

However, if you look closely at the definition of Pride in the dictionary, it states that the characteristics of pride are often categorized as offensive. So in studying offense I find that pride is really the root to offense. We all know that there is a spirit of pride/haughtiness. Proverbs 16:18-19 speaks of a Prideful and haughty Spirit. So to understand offense we should understand the spirit of pride or haughtiness behind it.

Believers CAN be harassed, oppressed or influenced by evil spirits which is why we are warned in the scripture to neither give place (ground) to the devil (Ephesians 4:27). This may not always be the case but I think it certainly is the case many times. When offense comes knocking on our door we have a choice to make. We can choose to be offended or we can choose to recognize the offense and the root of the offense and resist it. The enemy is seeking to destroy the unity among believers and is having great success by influencing us to be offended. Offense is a tool of entrapment used by the enemy, he seeks to beguile the children of God and catch them in his snare (1Timothy 3:6-7).

I dealt with offense several times in my own life last week. For instance, someone made a comment (jokingly) to me that kind of took me by surprise. I thought, wow, if they knew what a struggle that was for me they wouldn’t dare be joking about it and I began to take offense to what they said. Then a light bulb went off and I realized that they weren't intending to hurt me. They didn’t even know my issues but the enemy knew them and jumped on the opportunity to influence me into being offended. It took about 60 seconds for me to realize who was behind those thoughts and to intentionally choose to not be offended.

God is constantly revealing areas in my life that need attention so it shouldn't come to your surprise that I don't always recognize offense quickly. A friend of mine recently said that before we can grow as a body we have to get off the milk and onto the meat. In other words if "we" want the church to grow than the body of Christ has got to grow up and stop walking around offended all the time. I believe God has big plans for "our" church but he is waiting for His body to fully align so that he can put his ultimate plan for PCOG into action. Think about it, how can God completely fill our church, overflowing with lost & hungry people that need to be discipled if we are still babes in Christ ourselves? We have to realize where the offense is really coming from and choose to stand against it.

So how do we respond to offense? I think the first step is to recognize this as spiritual warfare, admit when you have been offended, ask God to reveal truth to you and be willing to accept his truth, confess/repent and forgive. With that being said, let's pray for God to help us in this area daily. I believe that if we really seek the Lord and pray through this prayer list daily that God will do amazing things in our lives individually and our Church as a whole.

Additional Scriptures:
Matthew 18:7
Romans 16:17
John 16:1(AMP)
Acts 24:16
Prayer List
1. Divine Protection for Pastor and Family
2. Holiness
3. Heart like Hur to pray through the battle/strength when weary
4. Revival
5. Steadfastness
6. Surrender/Church about our Fathers business
7. Discernment
8. Worship in Spirit and Truth
9. Trust
10. Pray to be led by the Holy Spirit
11. Resist Discouragement
12. Offense

Resist Discouragement

As you know I spoke to the youth on Wednesday night and all week I really battled fear and doubt. Fear that I would be so nervous I wouldn't be able to share the Word and doubt that I could actually teach anyone anything. I was so scared that I was going to say something wrong and so I prayed ALOT. When it came down to time for me to speak my nerves were actually pretty settled but the enemy knew how much prayer I had put into that night and so he attacked me in a way I wasn't prepared for. He attacked me by using distraction. I knew the material I was teaching inside and out. It was a message that had transformed my life and had been burned in my spirit ever since. What I didn't know was how to present it. I studied to the best of my ability but no matter how much I had prayed and studied the enemy still knew where to attack me. You see I believe that Satan was also prepared for this message, he had heard me pray, he saw me studying, he knew where I had focused my prayer and he attacked by instrumenting a distraction. Satan knew there would be people in that room who needed to hear what God laid on my heart and so his goal was to do whatever he could to cause distraction.

As I reflected on this, I was so discouraged that I didn't recognize this attack and that I allowed it to interfere with how I wanted to present the message that God had been so faithful to lay on my heart. Yesterday, I decided to speak to a Pastor friend of mine that I went to school with and I asked him how he handled discouragement. He told me that as a Pastor he often battled discouragement and shared some instances in the Bible where he thought key people in the Bible may also have dealt with discouragement. As I looked at these instances, I can't help but think that our Pastor must feel discouragement from time to time as well. I mean just because they're a Pastor doesn't mean they're immune to these things. I would say that when they have earnestly sought God, studied all that they can study, prayed until they don't know how to pray anymore and poured their heart into a message and it appears to fall on deaf ears, surely they don't just jump for joy afterward. They have to wonder what they could have or should have done differently which is exactly where I was and exactly where the enemy wanted to keep me. When I look back on the very thing I was teaching about in Acts 26:24-32, Paul was sharing his testimony with King Agrippa and Agrippa rejected the gospel. He said to Paul, "You almost persuade me to become a Christian" I have to believe that Paul got discouraged from time to time as well. Discouraged because he wanted so badly for King Agrippa to be saved and really know Jesus the way he knew Jesus.

Last night almost as soon as I walked in the door I was hit with one thing after another. This morning, God began showing me that when we let our guard down and submit to discouragement that we open the door for more attacks from the enemy because we are at a weakened state of mind. My whole mentality of thinking was completely opposite of what God desires out of me and that if I remained in this state of discouragement the attacks of the enemy would become harder for me to resist. So I had to make a decision to RESIST discouragement and stop SUBMITTING to it. I had to acknowledge that my feelings do not rule me. I have control over what I choose to think about and I will not meditate on the "what ifs" and discouragement any longer.

I'm saying all this to say that as easy as discouragement came on me I think it can easily come on our Pastor and even the people leading our Praise and Worship every Sunday. Let's pray against discouragement this week, let’s pray that God will help us to easily recognize and resist discouragement in our lives and to keep our focus on him, his Kingdom and his purpose.

Read for encouragement:
John 16:33
Romans 8:18
Romans 8:28
Joshua 1:5
Prayer List

1. Divine Protection for Pastor and Family
2. Holiness
3. Heart like Hur to pray through the battle/strength when weary
4. Revival
5. Steadfastness
6. Surrender/Church about our Fathers business
7. Discernment
8. Worship in Spirit and Truth
9. Trust
10. Pray to be led by the Holy Spirit
11. Resist Discouragement