2 Cor 5:18-21 And all things are of God, who has reconciled us to Himself through Jesus Christ, and has given to us the ministry of reconciliation; whereas God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them, and putting the word of reconciliation in us. Then we are ambassadors on behalf of Christ, as God exhorting through us, we beseech you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For He has made Him who knew no sin, to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.
As we’ve been traveling across the United States, one of the messages we’ve been carrying is being a minister of reconciliation for bringing restoration of relationship between parties that have been divided and wounded.
Throughout this journey, we’ve spoken at multiple venues hearing numerous stories of congregations who have split for one reason or another. Yet through our outreach, divided communities have come together, in some instances for the first time since they parted ways.
The enemy works skillfully and diligently to divide, disrupt, and destroy the body of Messiah. But we have a duty and an obligation to be ministers of reconciliation and work toward spiritual unity.
When, through humility and prayerful seeking of God’s mind, we learn to resolve conflicts, we will realize the unity of the Spirit and display the reconciling power of love (agape) and give testimony of Yeshua as He said,” “They will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” [John 13:35]
The spirit of reconciliation does not necessarily require uniformity of belief, but a unity in deferential love, where disagreements are not in essentials. My wife and I disagree in a number of areas, for example, but we will not allow these disagreements to override our love for one another.
One of the greatest revivals in history, the Moravian revival endured for 100 years, as all the saints were committed to practicing this maxim, “In essentials UNITY, in non-essentials LIBERTY, and in all things LOVE.”
If we can unify in the essentials of our faith … without surrendering sound doctrine … not based on the spirit of ecumenism, but the unity of the Holy Spirit, our testimony will be authentic and powerful as we bring the message of the Kingdom, “Repent, for the Kingdom of God is at hand.”
Reconciliation is the work of the Messiah, accomplished on His cross to reconcile men to God. Yeshua’s exemplary work of reconciliation lays a completely sufficient foundation for us to walk in as well. We must diligently seek unity and reconciliation with one another, both individually and corporately through humility, prayer, confession, and forgiveness. Our enemy the Devil loves and knows how to divide us. Will we pursue the Lord’s way? By the power of His Spirit, we can love one another and fight to achieve the Unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
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[worthy_plugins_devotion_single_body]As we discussed last week, the word for “sign” in ancient Hebrew is “oht”. It was used in Genesis to designate God’s covenant sign with Noah, (the rainbow). And we see now the same word again, in Exodus, identified with the deliverance of the Jewish people from the tenth plague, when the angel of death passed through all Egypt to strike the firstborn. Anyone under the “sign” of the blood was spared.
Yesterday we wrote about one of the greatest moves of God … the Moravian Revival. When the community was in complete disarray, Count Zinzendorf focused on how they could live together in love despite their differences. He called all the men together for an intense study of the Scriptures to focus on how Christian life in community was portrayed. These studies combined with intense prayer convinced many of the believers that they were called to live together in love and that their disunity and conflict were contrary to the clear calling of Scripture.
In the late 1800s, an awakening in South Africa led by Andrew Murray was a powerful move of God. Studying that revival yields essential insights concerning the events occurring now throughout the United States. As the spirit of God began to move in Cape Town, Murray compared the SA revival with past experiences of revivals in Europe. He decided that the intense “emotionalism” was a false experience of God and charged in to break up the meeting. Stepping out of the church, he encountered his father standing and weeping. His father rebuked Andrew, “How dare you stop something that I have prayed to happen for 30 years!”
Revivals, that is, genuine Divinely ordained seasons of the activity of God among men, have a universally unusual character. Normal activities and behaviors give way to the tangible influence of God’s Holy Spirit, whose inspiration brings a freedom of expression, emotion, conviction, worship, and other variations from normal experience.
During the Catholic inquisitions, as millions of Christians were being killed by the Jesuit Priests for apostasy, throughout Europe, Christians were fleeing. In Bohemia alone, there were an estimated 4,000,000 Christians before the Jesuit inquisition, and ten years later, only 800,000 people remained in Bohemia – all of whom were Catholic. These terrible events prepared the ground for one of the greatest moves of God that have ever been recorded, the Moravian Revival, which lasted for over 100 years. Gustav Warneck, the German Historian of Protestant Missions, testified, “This small church in twenty years called into being more missions than the whole Evangelical Church has done in two centuries.”
I love to study past revivals and in studying them, there are two recurring themes that stand out:
First, that He has often used obscure and unknown individuals to lead revivals, and that even these men whom He used so powerfully never considered themselves to be “special”, but often wanted to stay out of the limelight.
During the Great Depression, poverty swept across America like a whirling tornado, ripping up dreams and scattering hopes to the wind. One such poverty twister hit a small part of Texas where a man named Yates ran a sheep ranch. Struggling even to keep food on the table, Yates and his wife did all they could to survive. Finally, they had to accept a government subsidy or lose their home and land to the creditors.