Unity In Diversity

Becoming a parent has taught me so much about my relationship with God and patience. I look at my children and I know that if I were put into a situation where I had to choose to save my life or my children’s lives I would always choose to save my children and sacrifice my own. And what I find fascinating about parenting is that even though my children have blatantly disobeyed many times, multiple times a day at the end of the day I would still, without a second of hesitation, give my life for them. Why? Because I love them with a love that is beyond comprehension. It is unconditional. It is this love that allows me to have unending patience for my children. It is this love that helps me wake up everyday and continue to teach them, guide them, give them advice hoping they will listen and obey because I know what is the correct path for them to take in life and it is this same love on an even greater level that God has shown to us. Even though you and I blatantly disobey him every day, go against his will for us, at the end of the day Jesus still died for us. He is still patient with us, he still longs for us to come to him and become his children. That love and patience is what we must show others. People make mistakes, we must be patient.

Each of you will make mistakes within this body of believers. You will say things you wish you wouldn’t have. You will selfishly push things to happen that God has not blessed. You will insult others whether on accident or on purpose. You will lose your cool, get in arguments, debate and openly disagree. It will always be like this. Believe it or not no matter who stands up here as the pastor they too will make mistakes. They will say and do things they shouldn’t have said and done. But we must be above the world which says eye for an eye and we must be like Jesus who fulfilled the law and said love everyone, be patient to all, turn the other cheek, and live with humility by treating others as better than yourself. Going along with patience Paul next says, “make allowance for each other’s faults.” As I said mistakes will happen. The church remains unified not because mistakes never happen and it’s a perfect church. Unity in the body remains because the people have learned how to deal with difficulty and disagreements as one. (School closing- smeared in the paper by Christians, gave them $100,000 in equipment- could have made it an us verses them but instead we chose to love and we helped them) Relationships were mended, forgiveness was given, and allowance was made for others mistakes. Why? I already said it. But I will let the bible say it for me. Romans 3, “ “No one is righteous—not even one. No one is truly wise; no one is seeking God. All have turned away; all have become useless. No one does good, not a single one.” For everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God’s glorious standard. 24 Yet God, with undeserved kindness, declares that we are righteous. He did this through Christ Jesus when he freed us from the penalty for our sins. 25 For God presented Jesus as the sacrifice for sin. People are made right with God when they believe that Jesus sacrificed his life, shedding his blood. This sacrifice shows that God was being fair when he held back and did not punish those who sinned in times past, 26 for he was looking ahead and including them in what he would do in this present time. God did this to demonstrate his righteousness, for he himself is fair and just, and he declares sinners to be right in his sight when they believe in Jesus.