This morning I had a dream where my honey and I were at a conference and we were talking about flexibility and creativity in the Holy Spirit in the Body of Christ. There was a focus on specifically breaking molds and ideas of how things should go, to get people out of their preconceived notions, to enable them to see and be open to the Lord moving in different ways. When I got up to speak, the Holy Spirit hit me hard and gave me the word "bend". The idea was that we needed to learn to move with the breath of the Holy Spirit, but stay rooted, much like stalks of grain. The idea was flexibility over rigidity. The second word He gave me was "swell" as in waves that aren't crashing but causing natural up and down movements. Again the sense was being willing to move in synch with the Holy Spirit. Being rigid when the waves are swelling causes points of contention, and ultimately damage (If you think of a solid dock trying to withstand significant swells).
As I sat down to pray this morning, I felt led to read from John 19, which is his recounting Jesus' crucifixion and death. I was reading through that and was drawn to the comment about Jesus being given wine vinegar on a sponge shortly before His death (John 19:28-30). As I did a little research, I was immediately confronted with all sorts of ideas, research and religion concerning this simple fact. This particular event is recorded in all 4 of the Gospels, and so it was significant, and it did fulfill a prophetic picture of the Messiah.
What caught my attention in reading the different statements, was how much religion was influencing different people's comments. By religion, in this case, I mean specific teaching about rules and interpretations around certain topics of which drinking alcohol is one. There are certain denominations that teach that drinking any alcohol is sinful, and thus, there were people that were commenting from this point of view. Other denominations don't have the same strict belief concerning alcohol, so people were commenting from that perspective as well.
My point is that this isn't really an arguable point, nor is it in anyway related to salvation, to God's mercy, to His love for us, to our identity as His son's and daughters, and yet it is something that people get all bent out of shape about. It is a small example of how religion can cause division and conflict where it should not exist. We can become so confident in our particular opinion or perspective, that we can get offended by, or judgmental towards those that have a different opinion.
Many of us have sat under teaching from specific denominations, with particular emphasis and opinions. I believe the Lord is calling us to learn to lay down our strongly held opinions to allow us to see His perspective, and to more fully join ourselves to the Body of Christ. God is so much bigger than our petty arguments about how to interpret certain scriptures. He is God and He is perfect, and none of us will ever, this side of heaven, grasp and understand His perfection. We can however learn to bend in our understanding, seeing Him as being bigger than our understanding. We can learn to allow others to have different interpretations, perspectives and opinions and still be in relationship with them in the Body of Christ.
I dare say that no single denomination, or church, has all the truth or perfect theology. We are still learning and understanding God's ways, and this will always be the case. God is bigger than all of our combined understanding of Him, so let us give each other grace and press into God for greater understanding. Let us repent of our sins of judgment towards our brother and sisters from other churches and denominations, and let us pursue unity in spite of our differences. Let us learn to bend and be flexible while rooted in Him!
Amen!
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