I want golden streets, lollipop streetlights, unicorns, and candy colored skies filled with rainbows (otherwise known or defined as unity).
So, um, yeah... there has been something getting under my skin for a while. It's this thing called unity. Or rather, the lack of it. I have this silly idea in my un-brushed and wild looking head of mine that we should all be able to get along. Now, let me clarify, I am not talking world peace or anything. I mean that seems grand, but I am a little more close minded than that. I am talking more about my own little world. Unity or harmony or oneness... in our home and in our church or even *gasp* in our little missionary community. (I know you all thought us missionaries were perfect! Sorry to disappoint you, but we are in fact just regular old sinners saved by grace.)
I really have been pondering on this a good bit lately. Trying to figure out why we just can't get along. I mean it's not like we are all at each others throats all the time. We do "like" each other. We even "love" each other most of the time, but we don't for a great big part of the time see eye to eye. I have even tried to simply avoid the reality of it... but it's sorta hard to avoid isn't it? The lack of unity in my relationships, in our home and even in our community really frustrates me. Silly I suppose. Gracious me - if you put any strong willed group of people together, throw on a ton of stress, mix in a bunch of different cultures, family dynamics and languages together - voila' - everyone will not like everyone else all the time and people will disagree.
The thing is that I am strong willed enough to still hold to that wild idea of my perfect world of peace and unity and oneness or even the concept of Ukarumpa being a place with golden streets lined with lollipop streetlights where unicorns fly through candy colored skies filled with rainbows. You got it, I want the impossible. I want to live and serve and love in a world where we all get along. It's been through my desperate plea to God to show me how I can have this that He hit me with quite a shocking revelation.
He took those fingers I was pointing at others and those pesky thoughts of "what's wrong with them?!" and "why can't they see that I am right!?" and turned them around and pounded them (gently by firmly) against the side of that wild un-brushed head of mine... He opened my eyes to what's really up in me. Pride.
"stop thinking that unless everyone sees things exactly as we do, they must be wrong" Oswald Chambers
But. But. But. Yeah, that was my rebuttal. Lame and I know it.
The only way to fix "them" is to start with me. In order to have unity, harmony, oneness - my pride must die.
"What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you" James 4:1 NIV
This past Sunday I was very convicted by the sermon I heard entitled, 'I Exam'. The Lord used what was shared from James 4:1-10 to reveal to me that at the very core of my inability to find this unity my heart yearns for - is my pride. Pride is at its worst in defense of itself. My pride, our pride, is like a disease. It hates humility. It is essentially competition. And the solution to pride: death to self.
And so I praise God! Because once again the answer lies in Scripture and is found through Jesus:
"We know that our old sinful selves were crucified with Christ so that sin might lose its power in our lives. We are no longer slaves to sin." Romans 6:6 NLT
I really have been pondering on this a good bit lately. Trying to figure out why we just can't get along. I mean it's not like we are all at each others throats all the time. We do "like" each other. We even "love" each other most of the time, but we don't for a great big part of the time see eye to eye. I have even tried to simply avoid the reality of it... but it's sorta hard to avoid isn't it? The lack of unity in my relationships, in our home and even in our community really frustrates me. Silly I suppose. Gracious me - if you put any strong willed group of people together, throw on a ton of stress, mix in a bunch of different cultures, family dynamics and languages together - voila' - everyone will not like everyone else all the time and people will disagree.
The thing is that I am strong willed enough to still hold to that wild idea of my perfect world of peace and unity and oneness or even the concept of Ukarumpa being a place with golden streets lined with lollipop streetlights where unicorns fly through candy colored skies filled with rainbows. You got it, I want the impossible. I want to live and serve and love in a world where we all get along. It's been through my desperate plea to God to show me how I can have this that He hit me with quite a shocking revelation.
He took those fingers I was pointing at others and those pesky thoughts of "what's wrong with them?!" and "why can't they see that I am right!?" and turned them around and pounded them (gently by firmly) against the side of that wild un-brushed head of mine... He opened my eyes to what's really up in me. Pride.
"stop thinking that unless everyone sees things exactly as we do, they must be wrong" Oswald Chambers
But. But. But. Yeah, that was my rebuttal. Lame and I know it.
The only way to fix "them" is to start with me. In order to have unity, harmony, oneness - my pride must die.
"What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you" James 4:1 NIV
This past Sunday I was very convicted by the sermon I heard entitled, 'I Exam'. The Lord used what was shared from James 4:1-10 to reveal to me that at the very core of my inability to find this unity my heart yearns for - is my pride. Pride is at its worst in defense of itself. My pride, our pride, is like a disease. It hates humility. It is essentially competition. And the solution to pride: death to self.
And so I praise God! Because once again the answer lies in Scripture and is found through Jesus:
"We know that our old sinful selves were crucified with Christ so that sin might lose its power in our lives. We are no longer slaves to sin." Romans 6:6 NLT
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