On Sunday, my sermon was “Our unity is our strength!” While I was speaking to an audience of Christians, this is true even if one is not a person of faith. Unity gives us protection, power, courage and strength. These usually equal a certain level of success.
Ideally, the concept starts in your nuclear family. In this environment we learn that parents protect and provide for us. They encourage us to learn and do new things. As when we teach a toddler to walk. The toddler falls, but under the watchful and encouraging eye of a parent, gets up and tries again, until finally she walks to mom. Then the whole world smiles, applauds, and celebrates the child’s success.
Such encouragement gives us courage to try and do new things, a key to success. Knowing that failure is part of the process, this encouragement gives us the strength to keep on trying.
So many of our greatest success stories happened after numerous failures. Thomas Edison’s teachers said he was “too stupid to learn anything.” Edison failed many times, but today he is know for his success with inventing the light bulb, not for his many failures.
Let me encourage you today to start working toward unifying, building bridges, forming relationships. Start first with your immediate family: wives, husbands, significant others, let’s make up and start looking and moving in the same direction. Let any pettiness go. It’s divisive, which spells failure.
What about that relative with whom you had a fight years ago, and you haven’t spoken, because someone is holding a grudge over something that really doesn’t matter anymore and many times, has been long forgotten. Make the first move toward reconciliation.
There is such power when Christians work in unity. In Acts 4:32-36 the Bible says, “All the believers were one in heart and mind….With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And God’s grace was so powerfully at work in them all that there were no needy persons among them.”
When Christians work together, we can experience a bit of heaven right here on earth just as David did when he exclaimed in Psalm 133, “How good and pleasant it is when God’s people live together in unity!” It is so precious.
My friends, our unity is our strength.
I wish you love, peace, and unity!
Pastor Larry Dozier is the spiritual leader of The New Earth Christian Church, an online ministry based in Gardena, California.
