We are the church, all of us, the body of Christ and we must embrace our diversity. We are male and female, we are many colors, many backgrounds, many stories, but yet still all one in Christ.

When we pray the Lord's Prayer we say, "Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven." We are literally praying that earth would look like heaven.

His church on earth should look like heaven!

So what does heaven look like? Well we know for sure it isn't segregated. There isn't a Baptist heaven, or a Methodist heaven, or a Charismatic heaven, etc. There isn’t a male heaven or a female heaven. And there for sure isn't a black heaven or a white heaven. So if we want heaven on earth we must contend in prayer for what God desires. HE desires ONENESS for us! We are one Body!

We are one in the spirit and we must pray into this oneness to see it manifested in the natural realm. We know it is already so in heaven, now heaven must invade earth. And we are just the ones to do it.

But not just pray about it, we must do something. One friendship at a time. One relationship at a time. We must work to find unity and fight against all that tries to divide us and that seeks to splinter the work of the Kingdom of heaven.

We must trust God to give us strategies and plans to break down years of prejudice, lies, hurt and pain. We must contend to bring forth the will of God on earth. It may be a mountain, but we have authority over it.

We must contend if we want a breakthrough in this area. There has to be a change in thinking. We must see ourselves as One in Christ if we ever expect the world to see the unity that Jesus prayed for us to have. There may be a long history over this region of racial division. Though many strides have been made, we know that in some churches, there is still a culture of whites and blacks just shouldn't do church together, woman have no place in ministry, everyone must look and act a certain way or live by certain rules to play church games. We must break this lies off of us and off of our churches!

We can do the work to walk in the unity that Christ died for us to have.

We must learn to confront the brutal facts. We must acknowledge the elephant in the room. We must acknowledge the prejudice in our church. We must deal with it. If anyone in our leadership, staff, or even membership does not desire diversity on all fronts, then we are kidding ourselves thinking we can have it. It will take work to walk this out, but we can do it!

Our oneness in Christ as His body is already a done deal. However learning to walking in this unity is another issue. It is kind of like a toddler who is learning to walk. Their body is all theirs, and they are one body, but some of the body doesn’t know how to function yet. Legs frail about as they learn to keep balance. They topple and wobble as they try to gain their balance. It takes time, but eventually the body becomes coordinated and is able to work together to accomplish moving forward.

We will not just tolerate diversity, we will celebrate it. There is room for all of us to be who we truly are without fear and judgement. We can learn to walk together in unity. We need each other.

What area of community do you feel Holy Spirit calling you to work on?