Page 4 - Demo

If you knew you were going to die, this time tomorrow, what would you do today? There might be all kinds of answers, but wouldn't you focus on priorities? Don't you think you would spend your time doing the most important things?On the eve of His crucifixion, Jesus' priority was to spend time in prayer and to pray for the unity of His believers. '\you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one: I in them and you in me.'\and have loved them even as you have loved me.'\In the last part of that statement Jesus prayed; I want those who believe in me to be one so that the world may know that you sent me. Unity is the key element in Jesus' master plan for world evangelism. Mankind lives in such disharmony that Jesus knew that the visible oneness of His church would be a convicting testimony that God was in the world, and that He was reconciling the world to Himself through Jesus Christ. Unity is the foundation to world evangelism. You know as the early church got started, that's exactly the way it worked. \believers were together and had everything in common.\to meet together in the temple courts.\mind. No one claimed that any of his possessions were his own, but they shared everything they had.\let them be one in me, then the world will know that you sent me.\The early Christians were \added to their number daily those who were being saved.\Where you have real unity, you have growth. That is why Jesus prayedfor it so hard, and that's why the devil fights it so fiercely.The first century church in Rome was not like the Jerusalem church. The church in Rome was not as homogenous as the one in Jerusalem. No, this church in Rome was a hybrid fellowship of Gentiles and Jews which led to problems. 1. Tension over different ideas people of different cultures brought to the Body. Any time you have a diverse group of people, you're going to have diverse opinions, and that will create tension. Most of the time throughout history, just as was the case of Rome, it's not so much matters of doctrine as it usually is matters of opinion.The root of the problem was that the majority of the Christians were Gentiles, and as the majority, they wanted to do things their way. On the flip side the Jews were saying \been God's covenant people for a long time; we should do things our way.\heard anybody talk like that? Or say \we do this or that, go somewhere else.\church. Now that's what is going on in Rome. It's not a tension over major doctrine.