Christians Must Pray for Unity

Christians around the world are praying for the body of Christ to become one once again during the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, which started last Thursday.

This is a great time to turn to God and ask for His Spirit to unite us, not only with Him but also with each other. And it is a wonderful thing that this week of prayer has such great support and engagement from the churches in Britain.

But one of the most important things about the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity is that it calls us to check on our own hearts. How often and how earnestly do we pray for unity?

Christ broke down the barriers, the dividing walls that separated us, but have we put them back up again by confining ourselves within the walls of our denominational and church identities?

Jesus exhorted his disciples, "Ask, seek, knock." Jesus is telling us to ask our Father for anything in His name and it will be given. As we pray for unity between churches around the world, the first thing we must believe is that when we pray and ask, God really is listening.

The second thing we must believe is that prayer works: God is ready to answer. The prayer to be one must be a prayer of faith. It must be a prayer rooted in an earnest desire to be one and an absolute conviction that it will be so.

Do we really believe that one day we can be the Church of Christ, not simply this church or that church? Have we grown so used to being separate that we no longer dwell with much sincerity on what it would be like to be one? If we have lost this then we have lost the dream of God.

The theme for 2007 is taken from Mark 7:37 "He even makes the deaf to hear and the mute to speak".

And the theme is apt: to become one we must communicate. When we have love we can listen to one another and we can open our mouths and speak to one another. We must communicate with God, asking Him to join us together in His love, and then we must speak with each other, giving God the opportunity to work His miracles and heal misunderstanding with His love. The churches must make this effort to establish intimate and trusting dialogue.

Church leaders must get behind this week and they must impress upon their flocks the absolute necessity of prayer for Christian unity. The prayer to be one, just as Jesus Christ and God the Father are one, must be our prayer each and every day.

In other words, the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity must not simply be another event in the church calendar; it must be the kick-start of a new year of continuous prayer for Christian unity. Prayer for Christian unity must be woven into the life fabric of the churches.

To expand the circle of God's love to the ends of the earth the family of Christ must one. Children who have difficult home lives tend to want to spend all day and night at the homes of friends who have enviably loving - and therefore peaceful - families. It is the same with the people in this world who do not know God's love and who are searching for a place to rest their spirits. We can only draw people to Christ, the embodiment of God's love, when we are one.

Where there is division, everything is slowed down. If all the wheels on a car spun in different directions how could the car move anywhere? If the midfielder in a football team doesn't want to pass the ball to the centre-forward the entire team suffers and the chances of a goal become negligible. And if not to score a goal, why bother playing?

Division in the body of Christ is as serious as determining whether people can find eternal rest in this life or not. The longer it takes us to build heaven between us the longer everyone in this world has to suffer, including us.

Jesus has the power to unite us. He had the power to unite his disciples - tax collectors, zealots, prostitutes. If Christ's blood had the power to reconcile each one of us to the Almighty God on an individual level, then it also has the power to reconcile brother to brother and church to church.

For the world to become one, the believers, the chosen people of God, must be one. In love there is no division. We must use this week to pray to God and ask Him not only to reveal the divisions to us clearly but also how we can overcome them. Let's use this week to remind ourselves once again of the will that God wishes to fulfil through us.