Only 4-weeks ago, our 7-person team left Turkey with positive attitudes and excitement. We were eating together, praying together, and living in Acts 2:42-style fellowship.
Then, two weeks later in Kazakhstan, a toxic attitude came upon the entire team. People’s unresolved emotional pain developed into bitterness, impatience, unhealthy idealism, and offendable spirits. We had a choice to make: allow our pain to control us or release everyone from our expectations and their past actions.
Destructive Behaviors
“An empire toppled by its enemies can rise again, but one which crumbles from within… that’s dead forever.” – Captain America Civil War
As the team leader of our 7-person church, I observed the following behaviors destroying our church from within:
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Scriptural truths used to justify wrong heart postures
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People asking me probing questions about the other people
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Slander under the guise of “telling the truth”
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Wallowing in pits of emotion, unchecked by reality
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Projecting the pain from past relationships onto the opposite sex
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Turning to friends and relationships at home instead of God
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Lack of desire to understand differences in values, levels of independence, and perspectives
And somehow, God is suppose to use my leadership to align us as one body of Christ? I was about to scream like Moses:
“If this is how you intend to treat me, just go ahead and kill me.”
– Moses in Numbers 11:15 (NLT)
Be Careful What You Pray For…
Then I remembered what I had prayed the past few weeks … “Lord, use me to unify your body.” Then, it struck me as I heard God laughing from heaven saying, “Charles! Don’t you see that I gave you what you asked for! Haha.” So what’s a guy to do to achieve unity?
Ephesians 4:11-13 says that we are destined to come to “unity of faith and the knowledge of Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ” (Ephesians 4:11-13 NRSV). But how? Well… We are still are work in progress but here’s few focal points that have been yielding fruit!
1. Know Who Christ Is For You
According to John 17:22, Christ has given us his glory – which is God’s overwhelming goodness (read Exodus 33 Moses says to God, “show me your glory,” and God responds, “I’ll send my GOODNESS before you.”). We as Christians have this goodness in us. Knowledge of the Son should be our #1 focus! So, who is Christ in us?
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The Word (John 1:1)
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Light and Life (John 1:3)
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The True Light (John 1:9)
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Bread of Life (John 6:35)
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Son of Man (John 8:28)
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The Good Shepherd (John 10:36)
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The Way, The Truth, The Life (John 14:6)
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The Vine (John 15:5)
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God’s Love (1 John 4:9)
We MUST meditate, know, and confess who we are in Christ. Or, as Paul writes, “speak the truth in love” (Ephesians 4:15). Jesus is “the truth” and the manifestation of “God’s love” (1 John 4:9). So we must know and confess the truth of our new nature in Christ.
We now proclaim we are love. We are kind. We always protect, always trust, always hope, always persevere (1 Corinthians 13:4-7).
2. Maturity and The Stature of Christ
Two big opposites of maturity are pettiness and pride. As mature people, we counter these with perspective and a humble awareness of our fallen nature as human beings. Knowing we “all falling short” empowers us to reconcile the differences in the body of Christ because no one is good outside of Christ.
We cannot grow in maturity by focusing on other peoples’ sins. We grow only by allowing God to correct our wrong attitudes and ego toward the people who challenge us the most. Unsurprisingly, this process requires the MATURITY to admit we have not attained “THE MEASURE OF CHRIST.”
3. Understand Unity Through the Cross
Jesus did not live to only die as payment. Jesus lived and died to model how we are to take up our cross, crucify our flesh, and live in the power of his resurrection. In my opinion, this is key lesson of Jesus’ life: We must embrace the world’s brokenness as well as our own, grieve our fallenness and ignorant actions (forgive them for they know not what they do), and then take this brokenness to the cross with complete assurance that God’s mercy, grace, and love await us.
I truly believe that most struggles with unity are because we do not understand this process of sanctification. We struggle to show God’s grace, mercy, and love towards others is because we haven’t accepted those same levels for my own brokenness.
4. How Community Wants What God Wants
“The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.” – Psalm 51:17
God doesn’t desire arrogance or pride in our pasts. God wants brokenness that begets the humble interactions that he cherishes with his children. To approach God in humility, we must set aside the stories of our past we use to boast or compare how tough we are. These triumphs were not because we are great. They are because God, before we knew Him, gave us strength to find Him – because he loves us. All is loss for Christ!
So, if God wants a broken spirit, shouldn’t the Christ is each of us desire this in our brothers and sisters?
Curse OR Blessing in Disguise
“[We] are now justified… through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus… He did this to show his righteous, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over sins previously committed.”
Romans 8:22-23
In closing, God wants us to understand and enter our brokenness because that is where he sent Christ to meet us. If not for God’s divine forbearance, we could not even choose place limits on our love. But, because God is love, we must expect that God will place us in situations that push our limits – because His love has no limits.
So community is killing you (your ego)? Why yes it is! It’s showing you what’s broken in you. So give it up to God already, because God loves you and wants to bless you with something better!
