Jesus prayed for unity

This is John posting.

Over the past couple years God has been leading me to unity. This has been something I have been lead away from over the past few months by distractions of the world. God has been highlighting it again and is leading me into studying unity and what that looks like. John 17 is an amazing piece of Gods word. Here, Jesus is praying to God, yes Jesus praying to God for unity within the church. But that is not what struck me. What struck me is why Jesus was praying that prayer. In vs. 1 Jesus states is his prayer to God,

"Father, the time has come. Glorify your Son, that your son may glorify you."

Jesus knew that the whole purpose of his life and death was to bring God glory. We are to be unified as a church so God is glorified. With that being said, if we are not unified in Christ Jesus, God is not glorified!

I think this may be why God is leading us to relational missions in Puerto Rico. Without relationships how can we be unified as a church? If we are going to fulfill the Great Commission, we need to be unified Church!

I was asked today, "Unified in what?" To that I responded with, "Unified in Jesus." Paul said, I may not know much but I do know Christ crucified and that is what I am going to preach. (paraphrased)
We need to know that as the church we can differ on most things. But we must be unified in Christ crucified, died, buried, arose from the dead and ascended into heaven.

We are the body of Christ. Each one playing a different role, reaching different people. If the arm acted like the foot we would not get very far with eating. We must recognize that God has designed each of us uniquely different, playing uniquely different roles. This may mean that we may differ on our view of baptism, communion, prayer, fasting, spiritual gifts and so one, and that is ok(as long as its not counter biblical). But we cannot differ on our view of Jesus Christ.

Lets unify the church in Jesus and fulfill the great commission together!