THE CHURCH IN THIS CITY  

         Chapter 8      COMING TOGETHER WHERE IT COUNTS

             Every so often friends are shocked by the news that a husband and

         wife who were regarded by everyone as the ideal couple are throwing in

         the towel. Why should these two beautiful people who were always so

         devoted to each other be getting a divorce? What none of the friends

         suspected was that this man and woman were having it rough for years.

         Countless times they sat down and talked about their problem and pro-

         mised each other that they were going to do everything in their power

         to make it work. And they tried. They took a vacation in Florida,

         which they could ill afford. Later, they started entertaining friends

         a great deal. As finances improved they joined a ski club. They

         bought a boat.

             And always they seemed to be so in love, so devoted to each other.

         But when their friends went home and they were alone, there was nothing

         to talk about, They had nothing to share but their common hell. So the

         resentment in each heart continued to build. The distance between them

         grew, until they were a universe apart while they lived in the same

         house and ate at the same table.

             You ask how this could happen to two people who were once in love.        

         When they saw their marriage starting to totter, why didn’t they try to

         save it? Did they not come together again and again in a genuine effort

         to be one? Yes, they came together on their trip to Florida. They came

         together in beautiful harmony when they had to put on the show of a

         successful marriage for their friends. They skied together and boated

         together. They tried terribly hard at making love, but they never came

         together where it counts.

             They never came together at the meal table, for instance with

         their children, blessings from God, at their sides. No opening of the

         heart. No listening. No thoughtfulness. Or when the children were

         asleep and they were alone, they never learned to talk or to listen or

         even to share the silence of a peaceful room. When a crisis hit the

         family, they never learned to stand and face it with arms around each

         other. Instead they let the crisis divide them, each blaming the other

         for the money problems, the loss of the job, the mess their child got into.

             If a man and woman are going to make it in a marriage, they have

         to learn to come into unity with each other in the places that really

         count. Not up on the surface for their friends to see, but down deep.

             Not just with their bodies, but with their wills, their hearts. If

         they learn to have unity where it counts, the rest of the marriage will

         take care of itself.

             In exactly the same way brothers and sisters in the Body of Christ

         have a tendency to put a great effort into achieving superficial unity.

         We try to stage it, to engineer it. We know that unity is lacking

         both in our local assemblies and across the city. So, like the couple

         who think a Florida vacation is going to heal their marriage, we try

         naive cures. Coffee hours. More entertaining. Recreation. “Maybe

         if we get to know each other better.....” To bring the city together

         we start holding meetings for all the leaders around town, working

         perhaps toward a city-wide campaign. “Maybe if we bring in a well-

         known evangelist and fill Convention Hall for two weeks, the church

         in our city will start coming together.” We can try all kinds of

         things to bring the Body into unity and in the end we find ourselves

         like that couple, farther apart than ever.

             We have to learn to come together where it counts. There are

         three places where brothers and sisters in Jesus Christ need to come

         together, If we will draw near to each other in these three places,

         we will soon have heaven-sent unity in our assemblies and across our town.

             We need to come together before the throne of God. The first

         thing we’re conscious of when we come into the presence of the living

         God is not ourselves, nor our differences, nor our similarities, but

         God himself. We see our heavenly Father. We see his love. We see

         the Lamb seated at his right hand. We see the blood, the seven torches

         burning before the throne, glory. Seeing these things, what can we do

         but worship? We lose ourselves in the worship of the true and living

         God. And as we praise him, the Spirit of God lifts us out of ourselves

         and brings us together in the mind of Christ. When Mary, carrying the

         Christ in her body, and Elizabeth, carrying John the Baptist came

         together, they worshipped! When the disciples met the resurrected

         Lord on the appointed mountain, they worshipped!

                      When they were released they went to their

                      friends and reported what the chief priests

                      and the elders had said to them. And when

                      they heard it, they lifted their voices together

                      to God and said, “Sovereign Lord, who

                      didst make the heaven and the earth and the

                      sea and everything in them, who by the mouth

                      of our father, David, thy servant, didst say

                      by the Holy Spirit, ‘Why did the Gentiles rage

                      and the peoples imagine vain things?”’

             Worship was the normal atmosphere of the apostolic community. And

         surely if we want to come before the throne together, God will help us

         find our way. And the trivial things that have absorbed our minds will

         vanish as we stand in awe before glory that never fades.

             We need to come together where the walls between us still stand.

         Why is that wall still standing? Can I honestly say that it’s all the

         fault of the man or woman on the other side of the wall?

            “He put up the wall, man, and he’s going to have to take it

             down!”

             When is the last time I went to that wall and called the name of the

         person on the other side? When is the last time I wrote that person

         a letter? Or held out my hand? If I’m so sure that I am not the

         slightest bit at fault, what’s the harm in going to that wall and making

         some attempt at reconciliation? And if I know that I am wrong, why am

         I not admitting it and doing what I can to make it right? God is not

         nearly so interested in declaring who’s right and who’s wrong as he is

         in seeing the wall come down. The main thing is to get rid of the wall.

         This will never happen so long as we go on pretending that it isn’t

         there and carry on our lives as far from the wall as possible. God help

         us to admit where the walls are. To repent before him, and go make it

         right in whatever way he shows us. A handshake. A word of concern.

         A letter. A plea for forgiveness. Sometimes it will take two or three

         “knock-down-and-drag-out” air-clearing conversations.

                      “Lord, how often shall my brother sin against

                      me and I forgive him? As many as seven times?”

                      Jesus said to him, “I do not say to you seven

                      times, but seventy times seven.”

        Every time we tear down a wall, the Spirit of God rushes in with life.

             Will anyone dispute that there is a wall between black and white        

         believers in our city? Are we relieved of the responsibility for that

         wall by hanging with our own kind as if it doesn’t exist? Or the wall

         between the charismatics and the non-charismatics? Or the wall between

         the Catholic and Protestant followers of’ Jesus? Or the wall between

         Jew and Gentile, suburban and urban, young and old? There will never

         be unity in the Body in this city until we come together at these walls

         and by God’s grace, tear them down, painful and humiliating as this may

         be to us.

             We need to come together out in the harvest. Unity meetings with

         other believers in the Hilton may be pleasant, but in the long run they

         are about as useless as they are painless. When will we see the day

         when brothers and sisters from all sides of our city start fishing to-

         gether in the main shopping districts or on the waterfront, or on skid

         row. How quickly our narrow minds will crack open to God’s light when

         we all start combing the streets and lanes and highways and hedges

         together. When sisters in a particular neighborhood start pitching in

         together to minister to women who need transportation to the hospital

         to visit a sick child, or a ride to the welfare office, or somebody to

         talk to when they’re coming off a drunk, or some groceries to put in

         their empty refrigerator, more happens to bring healing to the Body than

         in a dozen meetings. If we have to miss a few Bible studies to take

         care of these things, then we have to miss. If we spend all our time

         going to Bible studies and no time ministering to others there will be

         no life in us and no unity in the Body.

             There is a place in the harvest for every single one of us. God

         will show us where it is, And when we get out there we will always

         find saints we never knew before. We will see God’s hand at work in

         them too and we will have to praise him.

                      When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for

                      them, because they were harassed and helpless,

                      like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said

                      to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful,

                      but the laborers are few; pray  therefore the

                      Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into

                      his harvest.”

             And we can be sure that the laborers God sends will be one. They

         will not be competing. They won’t be at each other’s throats. Their

         very unity will be a sign to the world of the reality of our Christ.

             May God help us to come together where it counts. Saved by the

         death of his Son, washed in the blood of the Lamb, may we come together

         before God’s throne and worship. May we come together where the walls

         still stand and tear them down. And may we stick like a brother to

         every disciple of Jesus we meet out there in the harvest, no matter

         where he comes from.