And We Can Make Things Pretty Messy
Last week we discussed that our mission is building God’s kingdom here on earth. We talked about how messy disagreements happen when we lose sight of our mission. The Holy Spirit is our guide in this mission.
There is one mission and one Spirit.
Why is it that we are so easily divided? There are several different reasons. Here are a few: God made us all different and this causes us to see things differently. These different perspectives can cause us to lose sight of our mission. We agree with some people more and this common perspective gives us more courage to disagree with those that don’t see things like we do. Satan knows where we are weak, and he will use that weakness to cause division.
Messy division among people isn’t anything new. Just like today, there were disagreements in the early church. This is evident in the letter Paul wrote to the church in Corinth. In 1 Corinthians 1:10-17, Paul tells these people to stop their arguing and remember who they are supposed to be following and what His mission is:
He said, “…some of you claim to follow me, while others claim to follow Apollos or Peter or Christ. Has Christ been divided up? Was I nailed to a cross for you? Were you baptized in my name? Christ did not send me to baptize. He sent me to tell the good news without using words that sound wise and would make the cross of Christ lose its power.”
These people had lost their clarity of mission!
A few verses later in verse 20, Paul goes on to point out the foolishness of the world. “What happened to those wise people? What happened to those experts in the Scriptures? What happened to the ones who think they have all the answers? Didn’t God show that the wisdom of this world is foolish?”
We are so easily sucked into the foolishness of the world.
Some things we should ask ourselves to see if we’re being sucked into worldly foolishness or are we focused on the mission:
- What is God saying about this? This should be the first question we ask and will be answered through prayer and reading God’s words in the Bible.
- Is this battle worth the time and energy? Is it important to the mission or just my selfish worldly desire?
- Will it make a difference to the advancement of the mission if I win? Or is it just my competitive desire to win?
- How can I state my position kindly?
- Am I contributing to the mission or the conflict?
If we’re letting worldly things control us, we’re not focused on the mission.
Jesus has called us to share Him and His word with the world. This is our mission. If we focus on that and align our actions with His, we can accomplish the mission we’ve been given.
We won’t get it right every time. That’s where His grace comes in. We need to learn from the mistakes we make in this messy world.
Focus on the mission and try again!