Friday, March 28, 2014

The Mission Foundation

March 28, 2014

Our dear friends, we’re off to a great start in my 21st year at the Louisiana State Capitol!  I give thanks to our Lord that I was asked to lead in a prayer for unity at the Louisiana Black Caucus Prayer Breakfast.   There was a great crowd and a wonderful spirit at that prayer breakfast.  This Monday, March 31st, I will be opening the House of Representatives in prayer.  Also, the weekly LA Legislators’ Bible Study Prayer Breakfast (which I have led since 2000) has been very well attended by both the House and Senate.  Here are some notes from our last two meetings:

“How Can We Who Are So Diverse Be Truly Unified?”

“In our diversity, let there be unity!”  That was last week’s theme.  We focused on the reasons for which our unity is of paramount importance to all of us.  Often it is said that we must be unified in order to accomplish greater things.  However, as we have seen, there are much more important reasons:

  • We were made in the image of the Holy Three-In-One.  God, the Eternal Community, who lives in the perfect unity of love within Himself, said, “Let Us make man in our own image, after our own likeness” (Genesis 1:26).  He designed us to live as a holy community, being united in love, even as He is united within Himself in love. 
  • But we foolishly broke our bond of love with God and with one another and chose to go our own self-focused way (Genesis 3; Isaiah 53:6).  In His unconditional love, our Lord Jesus died to restore our unity with God and with one another forever. (Romans 5:8, 18; Eph. 4:15)
  • On the night before He was crucified, Jesus prayed for our unity, saying that our oneness would be our testimony to the world that God actually sent Him and that God truly does love us in the same way that He loves His own Son.  Jesus prayed, “I do not ask for these (disciples) only, but also for those who will believe in Me through their word, that they may all be one, just as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You, that they also may be in Us, so that the world may believe that you have sent Me.  The glory that You have given to Me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and You in Me, that they may be perfectly one, so that the world may know that You sent me and loved them even as You have loved Me.”  (John 17:20-22) 
  • Our Christ, Whom we all follow, has blessed us with the privilege of sharing in a beautiful seven-fold oneness:  “There is one body and one Spirit – just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call – one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.”  (Ephesians 4:4-6)
But now we must ask, “How do we do this?  How can we who are so diverse be truly unified?

  I.  We must be HUMBLE LISTENERS: We must listen to one another with the ears of humility that Christ will give us.     

o        James 1:19 “Know this, my beloved brothers: let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger.”

o        Proverbs 12:15 “The way of a fool is right in his own eyes, but a wise man listens to advice.”

o        Proverbs 18:13  “If one gives an answer before he hears, it is his folly and shame.”

By listening we not only learn; we not only become aware of our blind-spots; we also are communicating loving respect for one another. 

 II.  We must be MERCIFULWe must extend the same mercy to one another that we have received from our Lord.   

o        Matthew 5:7  “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.”

o        Luke 6:36  “Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful.”

o        James 2:13  “For judgment is without mercy to one who has shown no mercy. Mercy triumphs over judgment.”

o        Ephesians 4:32  “Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, just as God in Christ also has forgiven you.”


III.  We must develop KALEIDOSCOPIC VISIONEach of us must have eyes like a kaleidoscope whose mirrors are set at perfect angles so that it becomes kalos + eidos + skopeo, an “observer of beautiful forms.”  We must learn to look at one another with the eyes that Christ will give us.  We must allow Him to grant us the ability to marvel at the ever-changing shapes and colors of the humans around us.  1 Corinthians 12 teaches us that there are “varieties of gifts” and “varieties of service” and that we who are “one body” cannot say to another part of the body, “I have no need of you.”  Ephesians 2:10 reminds us that every believer is God’s poiema, His “work of art.”  

Please pray for an ever-growing unity among our legislators and in our churches and in The Church (even as our Lord Jesus prayed). Please pray against any influences that would cause division.  Thank you again for making it possible for Bec and me to do the work to which He has called us.

In the Savior,


Rod and Bec       














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