Sin Separates. Sin Divides. Sin Brings Death To ...  PRO

Sin separates. Sin divides. Sin brings death to relationships and destroys fellowship.

God unites. God brings oneness and unity. On the day of Pentecost, God reversed the Babel process, and with one language from heaven, He demonstrated that all in Him will be sharers of one divine ‘language’.

No, I’m not talking about the gift of tongues, which typified what I really am talking about.

Believers from every time, from every continent, every nation, every culture and tribe, speak one language.

It is a language of love. It is a language of brotherhood in Christ. It is a language of the Spirit of God that only those with the Spirit in them can comprehend.

As I sat preparing this sermon, my daughter popped up on Instant Messenger and began to chat with me. She asked what kind of songs we sing in church, so I listed a few as examples.

When she saw the title, “Shout to the Lord”, she began telling me a story about her trip a couple of years ago to China. I copied it here to read to you.

When I went to China it was with the understanding that while we were there (for 4 weeks) we would probably not go to church. Because it is difficult to find a church that is not "underground".

We were actually in China for a total of 5 Sundays. The 4th Sunday we found a church that meets in a little building. Well, one of the teachers said that the church started at 10:30am so we all got ready and left for church around 10:10-10:15am.

We got there and they were already almost done with worship time. They saw us pull up and cleared the first 2 rows for us. Mind you it is standing room only in that church. Literally there are people standing outside at the windows, listening, whether rain or shine.

We sat down and they started the service completely over just for us. They were singing hymns. Some we knew some we didn’t.

The hymnals were in Chinese so it didn’t do us much good. But we sang along with the songs we knew...i.e.: The Old Rugged Cross

Instantly I began thinking that that is kinda what heaven will be like. Everyone coming from far and wide and yet we’ll all be singing the same songs.

(this is what I’m talking about, folks)

Anyway,...

The 5th Sunday we were on our way back home. We were in Beiging. We’d just gotten in at 8am and they told us church started at 9am. We wanted to go sooooooo bad.

We found out that the church they were talking about was International Christian Fellowship. In order to get in you have to live somewhere other than...