Unity to Oneness

I was struck when I was reading an email talking about prayer for revival in our state.  I have believed that unity will be a mark of this revival in Colorado, especially since their has been so much "stake claiming" since the days of the Gold Rush.  In these days men would do anything to claim their stake and defend what they believed would bring them gold and riches.  This same attitude has prevailed in many churches where there is a need to protect their flock, their church, and build it up rather than see the Kingdom of God brought to all churches in Colorado and many lost brought into the Kingdom.  This is what I read in the email:  "In John 17, the Lord cried out to the Father asking that we be ONE as He and the Father are ONE.   Unity speaks to being on the same page in a horizontal relationship with one another that tends to focus on a common goal, project or objective. The challenge is that unity is easily broken based on man's issues of pride, offense or being self-serving.  Greater than the concept of unity, Oneness is all about being in a vertical relationship with Jesus through the Holy Spirit.  If we are truly submitted to the Lord and are one with Him, it is much easier to be ONE in the Spirit with other believers who are also one with Him....God's unconditional love will reign in our hearts making the bond of spiritual oneness difficult to break  regardless of man's issues (the three-stranded cord).  This spiritual oneness can attract the Presence of God to a home, a school, a church or a whole community and lead to sustained transforming revival."  The Holy Spirit had taught me a lesson back a few years ago about unity that transformed the way I saw ministry and the Body.  I was meeting with an entire family that included the parents, three adult children and there spouses.  This is not typical of my ministry, so I was crying out to the Lord for help and direction.  I felt the Holy Spirit dropped into my spirit, Ephesians 4:2-3 says, "with all humility and gentleness, with patience, showing tolerance for one another in love, being diligent to preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace."  It was the Holy Spirit changing my lens from thinking about this family one way to another, "what am I going to do to help them heal as a family" to "there is already unity in the family because of what Jesus did on the cross, you just need to help remove the stuff that gets in the way."  I realized that I no longer had to try to bring unity, peace, and harmony in the family because through the finished work of Jesus Christ it already had been purchased, since each of the family members were "born-again".  So I had a high view of unity, since this encounter with the Holy Spirit that taught me to look at relationships in a whole new way.  Yet I sensed that Father wanted to take it to a whole new level by showing me that what He is truly after is Oneness.  The unity that I had seen in the family came from the unity of the Spirit which is similar to Oneness, yet Oneness is what Jesus prayed for in John 17.  In John 17:21 says, "that they may all be one; even as You, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they also may be in Us, so that the world may believe that You sent Me."  The Father's plan through Jesus Christ was to bring all the people who were so separated, disconnected, and lived as orphans into One family "in Christ".  Jesus is praying this prayer before He is about ready to go to the cross, it is said that you say your most significant words before your death.  Did God fulfill the prayer that Jesus prayed that we would be One as He and the Heavenly Father were One?  The answer is yes, through His death on the cross.  And yet, I am one who wants to know- How did Jesus make us One not only with the Father but with one another?  I will be exploring what He reveals in answer to the question.  Knowing the sacrifice the Father made to make us one is unveiling another dimension of His love for us.

One in Him,
Bret