Do You Have the Unction to Function?
Good Morning Friends,
God has placed in each of us an inward drive to express His love through Christian service for the lives of those to whom we minister. Here the Holy Spirit creates the change it desires for all of us. Here God’s plan of belief, action and results is better than my plan…your plan… He has a plan for us to be in fellowship encouraging each other in the Spirit to grow together. The design is to be about making disciples. And somewhere we have lost our way as a society. Do You Have the Unction to Function?
Scripture: Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,
Matthew 28:19 (NRSV)
Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ.
1 Corinthians 11:1 (NRSV)
For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you should follow in his steps.
1 Peter 2:21 (NRSV)
All these are activated by one and the same Spirit, who allots to each one individually just as the Spirit chooses.
1 Corinthians 12:11 (NRSV)
For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of yourself more highly than you ought to think, but to think with sober judgement, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. For as in one body we have many members, and not all the members have the same function, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another. We have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us: prophecy, in proportion to faith; ministry, in ministering; the teacher, in teaching; the exhorter, in exhortation; the giver, in generosity; the leader, in diligence; the compassionate, in cheerfulness.
Romans 12: 3-8 (NRSV)
Message: Is life a ladder or a path for you? It is both of course, but do you have the unction to function on the climb… on the journey? My experience is that life, especially in the spiritual sense, is best lived as a pilgrim on the path in fellowship not as one climbing a ladder in a world designed to isolate us. My experience is that God has graced us… grafted us and gifted us to help each other to grow in love, maturing in the faith, experiencing the motives, ministries and manifestations of His will for us in our lives. I am not referring to talents that we develop but our natural God given gifts that we begin to use in concert with the gifts of other to serve God’s purpose for His Kingdom. Indeed, no group, congregation or church will be as strong, healthy and productive as we could be, what Jesus prayed it should be, what the Holy Spirit gifted and empowered it to be until we use and understand the spiritual gifts we have been given…doing together that which we could not hope to accomplish alone. Here making disciples is a direct by-product of Jesus’ command to love God and one another as ourselves. It is all about love. For here in this process of making disciples we connect to the power and the purpose of Jesus. Even though we are powerless…even though we have doubted… we can in fellowship and grace still move from vision to victory….we can learn to love. Here we take steps on this journey by association with the sacred, sharing whatever faith we have, demonstrating our commitment and delegating Spirit led assignments until we begin to see the reproduction of what has been made manifest in us in others. The hurdle for each step is unbelief. We have to unlearn what the world has taught us. When it comes to Christian discipleship I wonder if we have institutionalized the message but lost the method. Unless we replicate Jesus in our lives…unless we employ a love that multiplies those who are called to be Christians, we miss the mark. The power in becoming doers of the Word of God is in the surrender, fellowship, honesty, and grace of the Holy Spirit. Here when we take personal responsibility for character development in ourselves and others we receive the assets necessary to live life abundantly. Here God is faithful to His promises. Here we learn how to receive. Here we grow in Christ-like love and faith. Powerless…we are to give away in love what has been given to us for that is the way we are transformed on the journey.
Pray that we bear witness to the miracle of love that He performs daily in our lives. Pray we have faith and reason. Pray we love God with all our hearts, minds and souls as a community of love. Pray we have the blessings of belief shared. Pray that more of God’s generous givers in search of a ministry get matched to those in Christian outreach…that we recognize that we all have a role to play. Pray that no role is viewed as more important than any other in our mind. Pray that each of us are recognized as important in our own way…that if we are climbing an education or business ladder we do not step on each other’s fingers….that we discover that we belong to one body, intimately connected, intimately related, bound in the love of Jesus Christ…that if we are on a spiritual journey, we help each other stay on the path…growing together.
Blessings,
John Lawson
Daily Devotionals 