Pursuing God Together: Unity That Displays God's Glory

Pursuing God on your own outside of community doesn't even make sense. That'd be like me saying that, you know, I pursue my wife Julie in a loving relationship, except we don't live in the same house. That's weird. It doesn't make sense. Relational unity can only happen in proximity. It can only happen when we're around one another. [00:42:57] (35 seconds)  #FaithInCommunity

Right? And pulls up a picture. But instead of pulling out a picture of the galaxy, pulls up a picture of the church. He says, here's my glory. But it's not because the church is impressive in and of itself. It's because the church reflects Jesus. [00:48:13] (23 seconds)  #ChurchReflectsJesus

So my question to us, another question to us is who actually knows you in here? Who actually knows you in this church? Are you like me when I was a ninja church attender? You know what that is? Is that you slip in during the last half of the first song and you slip out while the while the preacher's praying, closing the sermon. I was so good at it, man. [00:43:31] (31 seconds)  #BeKnownInChurch

But have you ever thought that as you are leaving that review, what you're doing is that you're capturing in words the glory of that thing that you're reviewing, the the service, the book, the movie, the restaurant. You're cat trying to capture in words the glory of that thing that you're reviewing. But it's really to give something glory is to declare its goodness, its pleasure, its value, its worth, its beauty, its loveliness, its power, etcetera, etcetera. It's giving something glory. [00:26:06] (36 seconds)  #DeclareItsGlory

when the world sees the church, they see the glory of Jesus. So when Jesus prayed this prayer in John 17, he didn't envision isolated believers just disconnected. He prayed for a united people whose life together reveals him to the world, reveals his glory to the world. And that's why our unity isn't just so that we feel good about each other. Our unity is missional. It has a mission. It has a purpose. [00:52:32] (28 seconds)  #UnityIsMissional

Before creation, there was already fellowship and communication and delight within God himself. Relationship already existed. So when God created humanity, when he created us, me and you, he didn't create us because he was lonely. He created us because he wanted us to experience the deep relationship of the Godhead. [00:41:52] (30 seconds)  #FellowshipInGod

So, you know, in Paul, he lists the the fruit of the spirit. Right? In Galatians chapter five, the one thing we need to know about this fruit is that it can only be seen and experienced in community. This fruit like love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self control, these are relational fruit. [00:44:40] (22 seconds)  #FruitSeenInCommunity

See, when the world looks at the church, they should see the glory of Jesus. They should see Jesus' love, his power, his kindness, his forgiveness, his holiness, his splendor. They should see Jesus, not an NGO or a Kumbaya club. They see Jesus, and they see that in our unity. [00:50:02] (24 seconds)  #ChurchRevealsJesus