How the body of Christ can have unity in this divisive world

Welcome to episode 226.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. Spending time in the Word of God is the best way to spend time with God. Welcome to No Doubt, No Fear, Only Believe podcast, where we will encourage, inspire, and empower you to live your best life in Christ. Here's Greg.

Welcome to episode 226. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Well, I am starting a new week, and with a new week comes a new lesson, and it's kind of a continuation on the last week. I had the Thanksgiving message that, uh, if you listen to the 225, it was just more being thankful, but I wanted to kind of turn into the unity message. And I understand that unity, it's kind of like world peace, you know, if we want unity. It's kind of like if you're on the stage and they ask you a question, what is it that you want? I'm thinking specifically of the Miss America contest. They would ask the people, what is it that you want? And they would say, world peace. I'm not looking for world peace. I'm not really looking for everyone to think the exact same way that I think. In fact, there's no way that that can happen, and I understand that, but we can have unity. We can all be looking at the same Savior if we're in the body of Christ. Now, with the world, you know, we're going to be at— we're going to be at odds with the people in the world, and that's okay. We're not here to fight flesh and blood, and we've talked about this before in our battle. What we are to do is we are to find some common ground within the body of Christ, because the Bible is clear that we should love one another, and that we need to love the people of God like Christ loved us, and we— he gave himself for us. All of those things, we are to just come together. And the only way I think that we can do it is to simplify it instead of complicate. And I think a lot of people want to complicate it because there's so many people that want to be the smartest person in the room. And I thank God that I am not that person. I'm not going to say that I don't like talking to people And I don't mind feeling good about myself occasionally, but when I walk into a room, I'm confident if there's more than 3 people in the room, I'm pretty confident that I'm not the smartest person in that room. And I'm fine with that. I have come to grips with the fact that I am not the most intelligent person walking this planet, and normally I am not the most intelligent person in any building that I'm standing in. And to be okay with that and to be comfortable in my skin with not being that person. But I will be honest, I am opinionated. I can't get over that. I'm passionate. I enjoy talking about the Bible. And when things— when I find things that I really like, I tend to promote those things. And I've got a probably a leg up on a lot of people as far as not caring. I really honestly don't care when I stand up in front of somebody to talk, or like on this podcast. That's why I picked this podcast system, is because I just, I'm more of a ready, fire, aim guy, and I have not let myself go into, well, what if I, what if so-and-so, what if I'm upsetting somebody, or what if I said this and it upset that. Now, I tend to not try to make waves, but I'm at that point now after 58 years old there's a place where, you know, we're going to have to make some waves. We're going to have to break some eggs to make an omelet. We're going to have to make some waves to get somebody's attention. And I'm not trying to be over-sensational about this. We need to have a biblical worldview. That is my humble opinion. I believe that the Bible is the inerrant word of God. I believe there is not any error in what the Holy Spirit had the writers write. I believe there may be some errors in the different translations And that's only because that, you know, they've just translated, they've mismatched words, or the original transcript was miscopied or something like that. But God's Word is true. I also believe that Mary, the Virgin Mary, was a no-joke virgin. She was a young girl, don't know how old she was, doesn't really matter, but she had never been with a man. She was a virgin. So it was a miracle birth. I believe as the body of Christ, I think we can have unity on that. If you don't think that that's true, I mean, I think I'd go back to reading the Bible. I mean, number one, if the Bible is not true, if we can't use the Bible as a standard, then everything else falls apart. We cannot have a standard that is constantly changing. We have got to anchor into the rock, and the rock— Jesus said that I am the way, the truth, and the life. Nobody gets to the Father except through me. The Bible also is very clear in what I use on my intro every single time. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. These are things that I'm just not going to compromise on these things. But if you were to ask me a question, what do I think is the leading cause of all this chaos and all of this division I believe that we have walked away from, the church has walked away from the Bible. You know, I think that we, I mean, I think that we read it. Some people read it. There's a lot of people that carry their Bible. If you're not reading the Bible, if you're not in it, and this is my soapbox moment, if you're not in the Bible daily, Jesus said, "Give us this day our daily bread," and he called himself in John 6, he called himself the bread of life. And he's talking spiritual. And you know, I know people get all wrapped around the axle when they start reading this. If you're not all in, I mean, there's a lot of things that we could take tangents on and we can go draw different angles. The things that I'm talking about are the things that you and I can lock arms with, that we're not going to have to argue about. We don't have to argue about if it's mid-trib, post-trib, pre-trib, whenever Jesus is returning, or if you think that he's already come back. I mean, we're not even going to talk about none of that. But we are gonna talk about the fact there is one true God, that there is only one way to heaven, and that is through Jesus. Now, if you don't believe that, we're never gonna have true unity, you and I. There's two different thoughts, and we're gonna stand and we're gonna defend each one of these. I'm standing on the Bible, and I believe that the Bible is the Word of God. I believe that God inspired this, God breathed this word, and he gave it as an example, as a way of life. And the Bible has held the test of time. The Bible has been around for many thousand years. There are nations that have come and gone. There are people that have ridiculed the Bible that have come and gone, but the Bible still remains. Now, whether you and I put the Bible into practice, that's the whole reason I'm here. I am here just to jump up and down and just to encourage you, get in the Word of God and let the Word of God get in you. It's not going to hurt you. Just ask the Holy Spirit. He's there all the time. He's— he said he'd never leave you nor forsake you. If you will just ask the Holy Spirit, what is it in your word that you want me to know? I need to know what you want me to know. I believe another thing that we as the church need to come into unity on is that God is a good God, that God loves you, that God wants the best for you. Now, we do have an enemy, and he is a punk. I like to call him the punk. He has been defeated by Jesus, but he has not been banished. And we don't even have to get involved with all of that. I just want us to concentrate on God. We don't need to concentrate on our enemy. Because if we know that God is good and we know that God is faithful and we know that God is the Father and he is sovereign, he is in control and watching over his word, there are so many things that we can agree on that the things that you and I would maybe disagree on or cause argument, why would we even worry about that? And I want to go to Matthew 12 22 Then one was brought to him who was demon-possessed, blind and mute, and he healed him, so that the blind and mute man both spoke and saw. 23 And all the multitudes were amazed and said, "Could this be the Son of David?" 24 Now when the Pharisees heard it, they said, "This fellow does not cast out demons except by Beelzebub, the ruler of the demons." 25 But Jesus knew their thoughts and said to them, "Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation, and every city or house divided against itself will not stand. If Satan casts out Satan, he is divided against himself; how then will his kingdom stand? And if I cast out demons by Beelzebub, by whom do your sons cast them out? Therefore they shall be your judges. But if I cast out demons by the Spirit of God, surely the kingdom of God has come upon you. Or how can one enter a strongman's house and plunder his goods, unless he first binds the strongman? And then he will plunder his house. He who is not with me is against me, and he who does not gather with me scatters abroad. Now I know that was a lot. You know me, I just need to read a bunch of scripture. That's one of the deals when we're talking about unity. And I want to kind of draw this all together in the body. I'm not going to go to the body of Christ reference that Paul makes. I think it's in 1 Corinthians. But I want to bring all this together that if, if we're divided as a church, as the body of Christ, if we are divided and we're fighting against ourselves, how are we going to take a step forward? If we can't even get our ankle and our foot and our knee and our hip to go in the same direction, how can we ever go where God is telling us to go as the body of Christ if we are fighting against each other? We We need to quit fighting against flesh and blood. We need to quit worrying about what everyone else in the church is doing. Just understand that we're different parts of the same body. It's okay to not agree on every single thing. In fact, I don't think that anybody's got better than 50% grip on this whole Bible. You know, some people arrogantly can say, "Well, I understand the whole thing. I understand from start to finish what's going on." I think I have a concept of— I mean, just in general, I think this is a beautiful love story. And this is, this is my take on the Bible. I think it is a beautiful love story with the backdrop of a spiritual war in the background. I think it is God's love for mankind. He created man in his image. Adam and Eve then they bite the forbidden fruit or they eat off of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and they have— the relationship is severed or the sin comes into the world. And the rest of the Bible is God's plan to bring he and mankind back together. And it's just fought over centuries. And that's what makes this Bible so cool, why I continually get in it and read it, is it's not about a bunch of perfect people doing perfect things. This is— if you read this Bible, you can see yourself in the Word of God, and God created that. God's not nervous or anxious. God knows how— who we are. God knows exactly what you're thinking all the time, and he loves you anyway. God is not mad at you. In fact, God loves you. And I say all the time, if God had a refrigerator in heaven, your picture would be all over it. God is madly in love with you. You can't make him love you any less or any more. God is love. And I just wanna stop here because I can feel myself rattling on, but I just wanna pray. God, thank you for your word. God, I pray for unity. I pray that the person listening to this episode will dig in and try to find some common ground with everybody in the body of Christ. I pray that that would be our goal in 2022, Lord, would be the body of Christ, the church, your true church, would come together and we would lock arms in unity, Lord, on 2 or 3 topics to where everyone can agree. And Holy Spirit, I pray that you would put that into my soul, and I pray that the people listening to this episode would get a hunger for unity. God, it is your kingdom that is gonna come. Jesus said, "Your kingdom come, your will be done." God, I pray for your kingdom to come, and I pray for your will to be done. On earth as it is in heaven. God, we thank you, we love you. We ask it all in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Well, thank you for being a part of this, and I look forward to visiting with you in the next episode.

Thanks for listening to the No Doubt, No Fear, Only Believe podcast at www.nodoubtonlybelieve.com.