Sunday, January 31, 2010

Commissioned Living & Unity

During Friday prayer at WMPL, we discussed commissioned living. I'm going to briefly summarize some of the points that were striking for me.

1. What's the difference between willingness and eagerness? Are we willing or eager? Are we standing on the outside and sitting on the inside? But, then again, willingness at times seems to be more surrendered than eagerness. Sometimes they don't have to contradict, and the willingness may simply need an external stimulation like eagerness.

2. Do we have unity, or do we need to create it? This is something that we discussed for our organization, but I also think about it for other areas of my life--marriage, ministry, church, etc. I think it's important to always work at unity, but I often forget to exercise simply recognizing the unity that may already be present. Instead of thinking "Do something to be unified." maybe I should think more "Don't do anything to break the unity." For example, Josh and I are already unified. This takes work yes, but it may be more productive to work on not breaking it rather than striving to find ways to be "unified" in deed (which is also important).

3. There are several characteristics of unity such as similar vision and sense of purpose, but even more importantly, unity must have humility and love. Other characteristics may include openness/acceptance, support, relationship/responding to one another, dependence (giving and taking), confession/forgiveness, embracing, tolerance, respect, understanding/patience, coaching, enthusiasm... One that really stood out to me was dependence. Being one who naturally thinks independently, I've come to understand this a bit differently when it comes under unity. One must choose to depend on another to be unified, I think.

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