Prayer That Unites

*** Read the message from Rick Kaestner ***

Please stand as you are able as we read God’s word:

John 17:11 NRSV

And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.

John 17:20–23 NRSV

“I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.

Last week I introduced you to a man with a long name - Count Nicolaus von Zinzendorf (pic). A man of deep faith who gave his life to fulfill the secret society he began - the Order of the Grain of Mustard Seed:

To be true to Christ

To be kind to all

To send the gospel to the world

Christian David (pic) was from the neighboring state of Moravia. Map. He had been raised Roman Catholic but hadn’t found the relationship with God he desired. He wondered from town to town looking for something but unsure what it was. He finally met to clergymen from the Pietist tradition - an early form of Protestantism. Through them he had a profound experience of God’s love and found the peace he had been looking for. He began going around Moravia telling others about the joy and peace he’d discovered.

However, there was a problem. Moravia was a Roman Catholic state. In that time there was no concept of freedom of religion. You were whatever your government said you were. And to choose an alternate religion - even if Christian - was seen as seditious behavior. And so the Pietists in Moravia came under intense persecution.

Feeling for his countrymen, David was introduced to Zinzendorf. Saxony was a Protestant state and sympathetic to the Pietists. Would Zinzendorf allow Moravian refugees to settle on his land? By sheer luck, this moment in 1722 was actually captured (David & Zinzendorf pic).

Zinzendorf was uncertain initially - he had no idea who these people were. Yet he felt honor bound by his commitment to the Order of the Mustard Seed to grant whatever assistance he could. He decided that, if they came, they’d be allowed to stay.

David was overjoyed, and he headed back to Moravia to share the good news that he’d found a place of refuge. He led his first settlers to Zinzendorf’s land on June 8, 1722. A site was chose by Zinzendorf’s manager. It was near a small hill called the Hutberg (watch-hill). The settlers began swinging their axes, and a community began to take shape. The manager wrote to Zinzendorf to inform him of the plans. He closed his letter:

May God grant, that Your Excellency may be able to build on the Hutberg a town which will live under the Lord’s Watch, and whose inhabitants will keep the Lord’s Watch day and night.

The German word for “Lord’s Watch” is Herrnhut. This became the name for the new town and the destiny they would fulfill, a place eventually known for 100 years of day and night prayer.

David would go on to make 10 more trips into Moravia at great personal risk to point refugees to Herrnhut. Over the next six years the community would grow to over 600 people. But the truly impressive thing about it was that, while they were all loosely Protestant and shared similar beliefs, they were by no means homogeneous. There were Calvinists and Arminians, people who believed in predestination and those who believed in free-will, those who practiced infant baptism and those who didn’t, there were different understandings of the Lord’s Supper, vague evangelicals and hard life Pietists.

Zinzendorf saw the diversity in Herrnhut - and in Christianity at large - as a positive, not a negative. Each denomination was a gift to be celebrated for each one offered a unique gift to the whole church. He determined that the basis of unity would not be complete agreement on doctrine or practice, but a shared commitment to Jesus. By God’s grace they would live by a simple creed: In essentials unity; in non-essentials liberty; in all things love.

It was this dedication to prayer and unity that made Herrnhut a shining star in the dark days following the wars and religious cleansings that had wracked central Europe for the past 30 years. People would begin to travel from all over Europe to see this new thing that God was doing. The unity practiced in Herrnhut became a lighthouse that drew others out of darkness. What if the church was known for this kind of unity again?

Pray...

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It seems like unity is a big deal to God. In doing a simple Google search I was surprised to see so many verses in scripture about unity. Here are just a few examples:

Psalm 133:1 “How very good and pleasant it is when kindred live together in unity!”

Ecclesiastes 4:11–12 “Again, if two lie together, they keep warm; but how can one keep warm alone? And though one might prevail against another, two will withstand one. A threefold cord is not quickly broken.”

Romans 12:4–5 “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.”

Galatians 3:28 “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”

Ephesians 4:3 “making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.”

God loves unity. Unity is powerful.

Negative example - Tower of Babel. Power of a mob.

Positive example - saw last week example of unified prayer that brought revival to the Scottish Hebrides

Unity is persuasive. There is something winsome and attractive when people come together around a righteous cause.

Ultimately, unity is compelling. It seems to have an irresistible draw to the Holy Spirit and to people. Unity is a lighthouse to a lost world. Jesus shares some things about unity I want to look at briefly. He says that unity describes...

God’s relationship with God.

“… that they may be one, as we are one… As you, Father, are in me and I am in you… so that they may be one, as we are one…”

Jesus offers us a peek into the core of the Trinity. And at its core is unity. Though the eternal Trinity has three persons - Father, Son, and Spirit, they share in such a unity that we can also rightly say there is only one God. In the Bible, each member of the Trinity takes the lead on certain works - the Father creates, the Son redeems, and the Spirit sanctifies. Yet, they each do their part in absolute unity with the other members of the Trinity. There’s never been a moment of disagreement or disunity.

At the center of the universe sits a Person in complete unity with himself. Unity describes God’s relationship with God.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Unity also describes…

God’s relationship with us.

John 17:21 “As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us… I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one…”

At the center of the universe sits a unified Person who seeks unity - or union - with us. This is the incredible truth of God’s nature - he desires to be in relationship. If you took part in a small group this week, as we worked through the implications of the Lord’s Prayer, we heard something that sounded almost too good to be true - God has a welcoming heart toward us.

Hinted at in this passage is what God would do to reconcile us to relationship with him. What immediately follows it is Jesus’ betrayal, arrest, abuse, crucifixion, and death. The restoration of unity with his beloved creation led Jesus to offer himself to a brutal death to make it possible. Unite describes God’s desired relationship with each of us.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, unity describes the Lord’s intent for

Our relationship with each other.

John 17:11 “…that they may be one, as we are one.”

Jesus prays that those who follow after him will be one - in the same way and to the same degree that the Father and Son are one.

How do we do that when we all think so differently? We have people here who are going to read Genesis differently. Did God make everything in six literal days, or is this metaphorical language? We have people who will have different idea about the end times. Will the rapture happen before the tribulation, after the tribulation, or is neither of those views correct? And let’s not even get started talking about differences about political policies!

How can people will such differing ideas ever hope to be one? Let’s recall who Jesus was speaking to. There where blue collar laborers. There was someone who had collaborated with the Roman occupiers - Matthew the tax collector. There was someone who actively fought against Roman occupation - Simon the Zealot. Talk about a powder keg! Broaden the circle of disciples and you have people who had been demonized, those with questionable backgrounds, there’s this diverse mix of people following Jesus. And yet somehow, in spite of this, they were able to find unity. How did they do it?

Their eyes were on Jesus. Not their differences.

Illustrate: bicycle wheel. Further out you go, the farther apart. Closer you move to center, closer together.

When our focus is on our differences, we can’t help but move farther apart. We “other” one another.

When our focus is on Jesus, we can’t help but move closer together. We become unified.

And most surprisingly, when our eyes are on Jesus, our differences can become strengths. Our diversity within unity can actually make us more beautiful.

Illustrate: Piano chord - individual notes that produce harmony.

Our differences, when we have our focus on Jesus, creates a harmony. We make a beautiful sound. And guess who hears it? The world.

This is the unity we must protect and maintain in our church. It’s also the unity we must foster with other churches.

It’s not as well known as his other statements, but probably my favorite John Wimber quote is “We love the whole church.” That resonates deeply with me. We love the whole church, bc there is really only one church. We put signs on the door and divide up in denominations - that isn’t all bad - but Jesus doesn’t have multiple churches. He has One, Holy, Catholic (universal), and Apostolic Church, as the Nicene Creed states.

Jesus doesn’t divide us out. Everyone who confesses Jesus as Lord is a member of this universal family. So please don’t come tell me that our Catholic brothers and sisters aren’t really Christians. I won’t listen. I have Catholic friends, and they love Jesus. They may have some beliefs or practices I don’t follow, but that doesn’t exclude them from the family. If our membership in the family is dependent on perfect theology, how many of you really think we’ve got it all right?!

Jesus’ prayer before the cross is that all his family would be one.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sadly, this is a prayer Jesus is still waiting to be answered.

But every now and then it happens, and all Heaven breaks loose.

William Seymour (pic) was the one eyed son of former African slaves. As a young man he was a student of the preacher Charles Parham, a man who was convinced that the gifts of the Holy Spirit, in particular tongues, was still for today. Seymour began to preach the experience of the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Oddly, he himself hadn’t yet experienced it, but he believed and preached it.

In 1906 he was invited to speak at a church in Los Angeles for a month of Sundays. The first week he preached about tongues being an evidence of baptism in the Spirit. When he showed up the next week, he found the church doors locked. The elders rejected his teachings.

However, several church members heard him and wanted to hear more. A small group began meeting at a home on North Bonnie Brae Street. This fellowship began to grow. Most surprisingly, white families began to attend. We need to remember that this was during the height of the Jim Crow segregation laws. But this group didn’t let that separate them. They continued to meet and pray to receive the baptism of the Spirit. After about five weeks, a man named Edward Lee spoke in tongues for the first time. Soon after, six other members received the gift of tongues. A few days after that Seymour himself experienced the gift.

News of this event began to spread, and now a diverse crowd of African Americans, Latinos, and white people started showing up. One neighbor described it this way:

They shouted three days and three nights. It was Easter season. The people came from everywhere. By the next morning there was no way of getting near the house. As people came in they would fall under God's power; and the whole city was stirred. They shouted until the foundation of the house gave way, but no one was hurt.

The group found a new place to meet at Azusa Street. Seymour continued to preach, and on any given night between 300 and 1500 people would crowd their way into the building to experience the outpouring of God’s Spirit. And again, what most marked the crowd as unique was it’s diversity. People from every walk of life came together to worship: men, women, children, black, white, Hispanic, Asian, rich, poor, illiterate, and educated. It also included Baptists, Mennonites, Quakers, and Presbyterians. And God’s Spirit continued showed up in power.

Among first-hand accounts were reports of the blind having their sight restored, diseases cured instantly, and immigrants speaking in German, Yiddish, and Spanish all being spoken to in their native language by uneducated black members, who translated the languages into English by "supernatural ability".

The Azusa street revival, as we now know it, lasted from 1906 until 1915. This is the birth of the Pentecostal movement, still the fastest growing segment of the church worldwide. Our own roots in the Charismatic renewal of the 1970s traces it’s lineage to Azusa Street. Great power was released when God’s people prayed in unity.

Guess what caused it to end? People began to look at their differences. Particularly, white people looking on were offended that blacks and whites where praying and worshipping together. The public outcry against this mingling of the races became so intense that the meetings were finally shut down and the power of God was quenched.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This is both an encouragement and a warning to us. The apostle Paul says it plainly: 1 Thessalonians 5:19 “Do not quench the Spirit.” To the extent that we allow our differences to divide us, we will quench the Holy Spirit. But to the extent that we keep our focus on Jesus, accepting our differences and loving in spite of them, I believe we can see a fresh outpouring of God’s Spirit on us again.

What do you want them to do as a result of this message?

What might God do today if his people prayed?

What mountains need to be removed in your life?

Sunday night prayer @ 6pm

Tuesday and Wednesday small groups on prayer

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Communion

We read often in the gospels that Jesus often went away to solitary places to pray and commune with his Father. In the Lord’s Supper he gave us a way to commune with him in a tangible way - through bread and wine. In these elements we are reminded of his sacrifice and experience his nearness.

On the night that he was betrayed...

Come Holy Spirit and overshadow these elements. Let them be for us your body and blood so that we can participate in your redemptive work for us. May we find mercy, healing and salvation through the finished work of the cross. Amen.