In our last letter we established that the foundational principle that Kingdom Unity is built on is the Lordship of Jesus in our personal lives. Kingdom Unity and networking is what the Spirit of God is speaking to the church all over the world.
The Holy Spirit does not speak on His own. He speaks only what He hears. JOHN 16:12-15
In JOHN 17:20-23 Jesus prays for complete unity in His followers. Irregardless of revival, transformation, outpouring of the Holy Spirit, salvations or any other name we want to put on our expected outcome of this unity, that should not be our motivation.
If those things do not come to pass in our expected time schedule, many will get discouraged and quit working on unity as has happened in the past. Our motivation must be in the fact that Jesus wants this for Him and for us. He is the Lord of our lives and our foundational thinking must be in our obedience to His Lordship and His will for our lives. There are so many things that can come against unity, but not one of those things come from Jesus or His Kingdom. He has overcome all things and has given us the victory by grace through faith.
Many people want the results of unity and want to know the formula or the steps of how to bring those results or they are not too excited about putting in the time or effort that it takes to bring about unity. Anybody that has been in ministry for a while can most probably say that their expectations of what would happen when they started have not been fulfilled, or at the very least not the way they thought they would be and in many cases they tried everything they could to bring those expectations to fruition.
Most of what was done was motivated out of the call on our lives and obedience to that call as well as our desire to please the Lord. Because we are all still growing, some of what we did was out of the leaven of the Pharisees and Herod that Jesus told the Apostles to beware of.
We wanted to be successful, have acknowledgement or a position of importance in the eyes of others. That part of us could affect the way we received offerings, hyped people up to get the results we wanted, or disciplined too much or not enough as it pertained to the benefits of our personal desires or expectations. In other words, we may have tried to help God along at times as Abraham did by having Ishmael. Look at the price we are paying for that today! PROVERBS 13:12 NIV states “Hope deferred makes the heart sick but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life.”
I CORINTHIANS 3:7 “So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow.” (Gives the increase)
Because our expectations of ministry did not turn out as we had thought, our hope was deferred. Our expectations were in the increase that only God can bring. We can not bring one iota of change in the Kingdom of God. We are only servants that God works through.
We need to be faithful and obedient and rest in Him.
I CORINTHIANS 5:6-8 KJV His ways are higher than our ways.
Could it be that Jesus, in His love and compassion for His Bride, has deferred our hope so that the Holy Spirit can purge out the old leaven of the Pharisees and Herod that is still in us. That we come to the end of ourselves and our abilities through this deferred hope and sick hearts. That we then give Him our ministries and rest in Him which is the spiritual condition we need for Kingdom Unity. Remember Abraham’s faith in God was made complete when he was willing to sacrifice his son Isaac on the altar (JAMES 2:20-23). Are we ready to put our ministry on the altar, rest in Him and let Him bring about this unity as He desires.
When He is complete Lord over our lives and our ministries then we can become the true Bride and Church. He can then co-ordinate and network us in such a way for the greater good of His Kingdom and His plan for our cities and region. He can then command His blessing on that unity (maturity) and all our longings in Him will be fulfilled as a tree of life and our hope will not be deferred any longer. Then we will have transformation, revival, outpouring of the Holy
Spirit and whatever else you can think of or call it
God is preparing His Bride all over the world for this world wide event of His harvest at the end of the age. Let’s not forget that praying together is also essentially important.
