Over the past year I’ve met a lot of people. I’ve entered into relationships with them and I’ve done my best to keep relationships with them, and as I grow to understand people's lives, do you know what I'm seeing? Division. More and more of it. Maybe you've seen it too. Maybe you've felt it yourself. It has been bothering me and making me sick to my stomach to see the ways that divisions are rising and cutting people off from one another.
As I think about this division that I see and that you see, I’ll tell you what. I’ve been praying a lot about this week’s sermon.
You see, what we have on tap this Sunday in Ephesians 4:1-16 is a teaching on unity. How do we do get unity? How do we, as a church, be unified when even the rest of the church and the rest of the world is breaking apart? How do we do this? How do we stop from being what Paul says we can be sometimes- infants tossed back and forth on the wind and the waves of the times? How do we do this? How do we be what Paul calls us to be? This strong church that grows up into Christ where the wind and the waves beat against us and we don’t move because we are so unified. How do we do this? Paul gives us three answers. I'll give you the spoiler. Boil the three answers down and you'll see- it's a call to grow into Christ!
