unity part 2

so now that i am back from the conference what does this unity look like? I said that it was like a little peek of what it must of been like in Acts when they shared everything, not keeping things for themselves, but giving as needed. I was even offered a car to drive from someone i had literally just met! When she heard that I was going to walk somewhere to get lunch she simple said' take my car'. But it seems easier to walk in unity at a conference where everything is pointing you to God and to focus on Him and His love. Now back home I am called to walk in that same spirit of unity. When I am having a rough day, when i feel under pressure, when others dont sem to be loving well- still im called to love as if they were myself. When it is not so easy to see Jesus in people, I am still called to love- not with a fuzzy feeling but with tangible actions. When someone is smelly, or has a characheristic that annoys me these are times where I cannot ignore the very prayer of Jesus but I have to still love, still give as if it was I that needed. But it can be hard and I think it must all come down to Jesus being our everything. Me not letting little distractions to take a place that they shouldnt have, to make a mountain out of a mole hill.Jesus give me eyes to see the Jesus in others, no matter differences or surrounding circumstances. And guard my heart that you may be my everything and nothing else.

Unity

So a few weeks ago I went to an IHOP conference. How it came about was all rather random and surreal. About two weeks before the conference I look online to find some kind of young adult Christian group. I end up finding a social event for younf adults going on at a church and with a hunger for fellowship and friendship I go find this church. After watching a movie together and conversing I was invited to go to an IHOP conference with them. I love the heart of IHOP and so i jumped onboard and went along for the ride!So i find myself two weeks after excepting the invitation, driving to a conferencve with a group of people I have never met and a few that I have met once. And I started to think about the beauty of this family of God. Ever since I was a child I have sung about being a child of God and being in his family. However, it has only been in the past two years that I have really started realising the implications of that. It didnt matter that I had never met these people before, inside of each other we saw something that we new so well- The spirit of God. And as we began talking about passion for prayer and cities to be captivated by Jesus and as we sang to the same God, I felt at home- surrounded by family. Then one of the nights at the conference, as I was in the back dancing and enjoying being in the presence of God, I started to look around, to take in the beauty of all these children of God coming together. I saw young and old, black and white, fat and thin. I saw people kneeling, people jumping, being swirling, people standing with their head transfixed above. I heard yelps and laughed, and cries of sorrow in repentance, whispered prayers and shouted prayers.So many differences, so many diversities, yet that was the beauty of it. There was no sense of seperation because of it. What mattered was the same, the heartbeats were one, the hunger was for the same, the one being pursued and romanced with was the same Lover. I dont think that the picture there was too much different from the picture we have of the early church in acts. I have always wondered how all those people had everything in common, but as I was taking this beautiful scene in, I realised that all those differences were irrelevent, that dispite them we trully had everything in God. That it is Christ who is to be our everything, when he is our heartbeat, the end that we are hungering after all the other stuff will fade from the forefront.As the children's song goes 'when the Jesus in me sees the Jesus in you it's so easy to love'. I have always thought this song wasn't true. That it wasn't easy to love. But the truth is that it is only hard to love when we are so focussed on the other things in someones life that we forget that what matters is the Jesus in them. You could dye your hair green and they could dye theirs pink. You could like metal and they could like folk but if your heart cries out for Jesus and their heart cries out for Jesus you won't be able to help but have everything in common.