“Stop imitating the ideals and opinions of the culture around you, but be inwardly transformed by the Holy Spirit through a total reformation of how you think. This will empower you to discern God’s will as you live a beautiful life, satisfying and perfect in his eyes.”
We will flourish in our differences when we embrace the uniqueness and so build a temple of diversity which will fit all together under the one capstone of Jesus Christ.
We have looked for homogenous and have been our own ruin.
We are not all the same we are uniquely and beautifully made.
We take delight in finding like minded and gathering in that set.
You bring the same as me to the table.
I love the me I see in you.
Therefore I love you.
God’s kingdom loves the different to me’s as well as and embraces the diversity brought to the table to be gleaned from.
Reconciliation is the over arcing bringing together the whole package.
The beginning to the end.
The inclusive of all people especially the marginalised, especially all cultures, especially all systems, especially all nations.
When we love ourselves as God loves us.
Special as He made us.
We will love the special of others, not the like me in them but the them in them.
Suspicion or jealousy of them will disperse to be replaced by love and celebration of them.
Then we will accept and flourish in our personal lives, our church five fold ministries, our governance our world.
Unified in our essential purpose to the functioning of the one body. Diverse but not divided. All celebrated.
Everyone has a value and a view point and there is a good tension to be held in the oneness of those divisions.
The gifts the Holy Spirit gives are expressed differently in each .
It can be described as the dancing hand of God over us.
It is healthy to to share what He gives us with others to weigh. We need to come together.
When we have understood unity in diversity we will get to, as one, become the dwelling place for God and His Holy Spirit and comfortable with all aspects even if it doesn’t always look like me.
God dwells in the diversity not in the homogeneous.
There is no competition to be alike.
We celebrate who God has made us and who He has made others
The individuality in us all is collectively beautiful.
There is no pressure to conform. We are all bespoke design.
Therefore always inclusive and never exclusive.
Always sympathetically respectful because we are God’s creation.
The illustration shows the Holy Spirit as the ‘dancing hand of God ‘ moving people in worship as He chooses in His unique and diverse way with them. This being the new light that pushes back the darkness
Six Scriptures that come to mind:
“Stop imitating the ideals and opinions of the culture around you, but be inwardly transformed by the Holy Spirit through a total reformation of how you think. This will empower you to discern God’s will as you live a beautiful life, satisfying and perfect in his eyes.”Romans 12:2 TPT
“Yet look at you now! Everything is new! Although you were once distant and far away from God, now you have been brought delightfully close to him through the sacred blood of Jesus—you have actually been united to Christ!”Ephesians 2:13 TPT
“Ethnic hatred has been dissolved by the crucifixion of his precious body on the cross. The legal code that stood condemning every one of us has now been repealed by his command. His triune essence has made peace between us by starting over—forming one new race of humanity, Jews and non-Jews fused together in himself!
“And he has appointed some with grace to be apostles, and some with grace to be prophets, and some with grace to be evangelists, and some with grace to be pastors, and some with grace to be teachers. And their calling is to nurture and prepare all the holy believers to do their own works of ministry, and as they do this they will enlarge and build up the body of Christ. These grace ministries will function until we all attain oneness into the faith, until we all experience the fullness of what it means to know the Son of God, and finally we become one into a perfect man with the full dimensions of spiritual maturity and fully developed into the abundance of Christ.”Ephesians 4:11-13 TPT
For the Messiah has come to preach this sweet message of peace to you, the ones who were distant, and to those who are near. And now, because we are united to Christ, we both have equal and direct access in the realm of the Holy Spirit to come before the Father!”Ephesians 2:15, 17-18 TPT
“You are rising like the perfectly fitted stones of the temple; and your lives have been built up together upon the foundation laid by the apostles and prophets, and best of all, you are connected to the Head Cornerstone of the building, the Anointed One, Jesus Christ himself! This entire building is under construction and is continually growing under his supervision until it rises up completed as the holy temple of the Lord himself. This means that God is transforming each one of you into the Holy of Holies, his dwelling place, through the power of the Holy Spirit living in you!”Ephesians 2:20-22 TPT
The song Morning By Morning. Pat Barrett
https://youtu.be/7r0x4UMekkY
Lessisgreater 