Glenn Clark, a great teacher and football coach, would be sure before his football team played a game that they had settled all differences among themselves. He knew that the halfback could not be jealous of the quarterback or the guard hold a grudge against the tackle if the team expected to win. Those athletes had to love one another without carrying any bitterness among themselves. That’s what makes a winning team.
If athletes can learn to work together in love in order to excel at a pastime sport, surely God’s people should have the joy of constant success. But so called “Christianity” has sometimes become a losing team because it has failed to exercise the love of God within in its members. True Christianity esteems the love of God higher than denominational differences. The household team of believers bears no animosity in its ranks so that it can move forward with God’s Word in a powerful, united way. God’s household team competes in life’s highest game without one member ever having to lose, unless it is through his own lack of commitment or failure to renew his mind to love’s supremacy in the Body of Christ.
If God’s household team is going to travel light by walking without bitterness or anger, we must also walk in forgiveness. There will always be some differences among believers, for no one can walk perfectly, but with forgiveness in operation the sharpness of difference softens with God’s tenderness and mercy. What is required of the believer is whatever it takes to stand and walk together on God’s Word. Without forgiveness, Satan will get an advantage of us and we will not maintain our triumphant place on God’s winning team.
Take your Bible NIV and read Romans 12:21. The believer should not allow evil to prevail in his life, not even to the smallest degree. He is to overcome the influence and persecutions of the Devil by doing good. That means that the believer is on the offensive with God’s Word, reaching out with its goodness and delivering power. Evil will not overcome the believer who is allowing love to govern his thoughts and actions.
God’s household is a first place-only team. When God (Who is Holy Spirit, the Giver—capital H and capital S) gave the gift of holy spirit (the gift is lower case h and lower case s) to believers on the day of Pentecost (read all of Chapter 2, Book of Acts. Verses 4, 33 and 38 should be holy spirit), He formed a team in which every individual has spiritual winning potential, which by the true definition of Christianity is: “God is in Jesus and Jesus is in you.” God never intended His household to lose by allowing Satan to divide and conquer. Without the love of God in the renewed mind in manifestation binding us together, we are nothing. When God’s best, the believers, set aside differences, jealousies or whatever hinders them from standing together on God’s Word, they guarantee victory to God’s winning household team. We should experience the fantastic reality of being more than conquerors, victorious together day by day. Amen.
Sidney Terhune
P. O. Box 6 Wash. Ct. Hs., OH
