Today’s devotion is from Romans 15:5-6
Now may the God of patience and comfort grant you to be like-minded toward one another, according to Christ Jesus, that you may with one mind and one mouth glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
The bible does not exhort us to be like-minded in everything, the Holy Spirit wants us to have one mind and one mouth glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. In other words, even though we have different opinions, differences in doctrine and even though we differ in personal taste, our unity should be in our focus… to glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Our focus as a movement is to glorify the Lord in all that we say and do. All ministry, all teaching and preaching, every outreach, every song that we sing, every offering that we bring, every thought that we think and every word that we speak needs to be to glorify the Lord. When we become like-minded in that, we open the door for the river of God to flow powerfully without obstruction. The Lord has called us to unity – a house divided will never stand, but the source of our unity will never be believing exactly the same in everything, or everybody having exactly the same vision, or everybody enjoying exactly the same type of music… the source of our unity can only be in glorifying the Lord in all that we say and do.
When different people with different opinions and different talents, from different ethnical backgrounds come together with one purpose… ‘To glorify the Lord’, it is a beautiful thing to behold. We are all in different stages of spiritual growth, we all have different revelation concerning different aspects of God, and we all interpret our revelations uniquely, but when the one goal is to glorify the Lord, unity will emerge out of diversity and freedom of expression will become a beautiful harmony.
Never attempt to change each other or to try to get another to fit into your mold, your way of thinking, or your way of doing things – God made us different for a reason! Instead of suppressing individual expression for the sake of unity, let unity freely emerge out of diversity as we all glorify the Lord in all that we do – Selah!
