<\/p>\n
\u201cI in them and You in Me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that You sent Me and have loved them even as You have loved Me.\u201d \u2013 John 17:23<\/p>\n
A story is told about F.B. Meyer, the great Bible teacher and pastor who lived a century ago. He was pastoring a church and began to notice that attendance was suffering. This continued until he finally asked some members of his congregation one Sunday morning why they thought attendance was down.<\/p>\n
A member volunteered, \u201cIt is because of this new church down the road. The young preacher has everyone talking and many are going to hear him speak.\u201d<\/p>\n
His name was Charles Spurgeon. Meyer, rather than seeking to discourage this, exhorted the entire congregation to join him and go participate in seeing this \u201cmove of God\u201d as he described it to his congregation.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf this be happening, then God must be at work.\u201d<\/p>\n
Meyer, even though he was an accomplished preacher and teacher, recognized where God was at work and joined Him in it. [The author heard this on a radio show from Key Life Ministries with Steve Brown, based in Orlando, Florida.]<\/p>\n
Can you imagine this story taking place in our competitive world today? Competition has penetrated the Church so much that many churches and Christian organizations approach ministry like a sports event. They view their mission as a business that seeks to gain market share among Christians \u2013 donors, members, influence \u2013 all under the name of God. I am sure God looks down at us and asks, \u201cWhatever happened to John 17:23?\u201d Sometimes we must remind our fellow servants that we are all on the same team! We should be seeking to impact the Kingdom of God, not increase our own market share.<\/p>\n
When Jesus made this statement about unity in John 17:23, it represented the key to bringing salvation to many. He was saying that when His Body is unified, the non-Christian would be able to see who Jesus really is \u2013 the Son of God. Are you contributing to unity in the Body of Christ? Or are you contributing to a spirit of competition? Ask God where you can be an instrument of unity in His Body.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Spirit of Competition \u201cI in them and You in Me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that You sent Me and have loved them even as You have loved Me.\u201d \u2013 John 17:23 A story is told about F.B. Meyer, the great Bible teacher and pastor who lived<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11331,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[2760,182,1016,181],"class_list":["post-11330","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-devotionals","tag-competition","tag-god","tag-spirit","tag-today"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11330","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11330"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11330\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11331"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11330"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}