become unified

unity. isn’t this something that we desire so much in our culture? to feel that we are one with someone? something? heck even ourselves? to have unity means to be joined as a whole and i believe this is where our problem starts. we don’t know what we want to be whole about! i know i sure didn’t when i was younger. back in my first couple years of college, i knew i wanted to walk with God, yet looking at my life you would have never known that is what i desired. i was talking with a friend when he asked me ‘what do you think helped you grow in your faith the most throughout college?’

that question got me thinking because i’m not the best at self-reflecting, and that is a question that definitely requires some self-reflection. so, as i was thinking about it, i realized it had a lot more to do with my heart than me ‘being a Christian’. what i mean by this is not that when i turned my life around and gave my life to Jesus, i decided to act better because i was a Christian now. Rich Wilkerson said it best, ‘it’s about heart transformation not behavior modification’. my heart had changed, the desire of my heart had shifted from all the worldy things that i thought i loved. and due to the desires of my heart changing my behaviors began to follow. it wasn't that i just tried to make decisions that made me seem more like a Christian to keep up the appearance, but that my heart fell in love with Jesus and His redemption.

in this book that i read about unity – talking about how the church and Christians need to come back together as one, just how God intended it to be. yet, as i was reading the scriptures Francis Chan placed in the book, I got a revelation –

to have unity with each other, we must first have unity within ourselves.

how can we begin to even fathom becoming a unified front as Christians if so many of us are not unified in ourselves? if so many of us are claiming that Jesus is at the center of our life, that he is the most important thing in our life, though we don’t act like it and have no good works to show for it, then is He really at the center of your life? or are you lying to yourself? how can we be a unified person if I say, ‘yes Jesus i give you my life!’ and act as though we do not know Him? “If we say we have fellowship with Him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth” (1 John 1:6). another word for fellowship is togetherness. so, if we are together with Him – who is Light, then we cannot also be in darkness. for “God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all” (1 John 1:5)

therefore, we ourselves cannot be of both light and dark, there is disunity between our spirit and our actions. this is the problem in our culture today, we think that it is possible for us to live in sin and still be walking as Children of Light. this is not to say that we will never slip up, or that if we do slip up then we are no longer in Jesus. that is what the Enemy wants you to think. the Bible tells us “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23).

but there is a difference between slipping up and living in or practicing a lifestyle of sin. we know that we are going to sin. we were born sinners. there has never been anybody that has lived a perfect and blameless life besides Jesus.

too many of us are in this comfortable Christian lifestyle - where we are living in darkness while saying we worship a God of light. too many of us just think that believing is enough, yet we are called to have a faith comprised of zeal; great energy or enthusiasm. don’t take part in this lukewarm Christianity, you will miss so much of what God has in store for you. become unified with the one who created you, not the world that is molding you. ‘the one who says he remains in Him should walk just as He walked’ (1 John 2:6).

walk in unity with Jesus and see how beautiful life truly is.

-n0tbychance