INTRODUCTION TO GUIDE

Welcome to the One Heart prayer journey towards reconciliation and oneness. This is week 7 of a 7-week series. Congratulations if you have joined us for the full series. You are nearing the end. We trust you have been so blessed by the journey. If you have been journeying with us, please feel free to jump to the study part today. If you have not, you will certainly benefit from this week. We want to encourage you to start at Week One or move there after this week (One Heart: Father Let Them Be One).

This One Heart series is based on one of the last prayers Jesus Christ prayed while He walked this earth as a human being: “…I pray that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us.”Jesus also said in John 13 that if we love one another, the world will know that we are His disciples. We need to intentionally reach out to one another to truly love one another.

The unity Jesus prayed for is very difficult to achieve because Christians all over the world are so fractured and divided. What must encourage us, however, is that if He prayed it, it must be possible. Time and time again, there are testimonies of God’s Spirit breaking through all the divisions as we surrender to Him, die to self, and choose love. Only when we do that can we see how the Love that covers a multitude of sins starts flowing through us to bring healing and wholeness. It is a daily decision. May we become less so that He can become more so that we can be One with Him and one another and so that the world may know that we are truly His disciples.

THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE UNASHAMED

“But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere. And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.” James 3:17-18 ESV

Sometimes, we hold on to sin because we’re convinced that what others tell us is not true, right, or biblical. We suggest that their interpretation of truth differs from ours, so we live on in our sin until the consequences become too great (Proverbs 18:1; James 3:13-18; Matthew 18:21-35; 2 Timothy 2:10-14). The time has come to lay the past to rest. We cannot change the past or allow the past to influence us. We have been called by God to a higher purpose, to the ministry of reconciliation, to proclaim the gospel of God's forgiveness. God has been gracious to remove all our collective debt of sin in the past through forgiveness. Let us do the same so that the present and future generations can be restored as happened in the generations that followed Daniel and Nehemiah’s confession (Dan.9; Neh.1:5-6). Those who are in Christ have become a new creation; the old has passed away, the new has come (2 Cor.5:14-21).

CORPORATE PRAYER (Ideally)

The story is told of a young pastor in Zimbabwe who lived maybe a century ago. He was coerced either by his tribe or some outside group to renounce his faith in Jesus Christ. Rather than giving in, he wrote what is now called the creed of the FELLOWSHIP OF THE UNASHAMED. Louise Robinson Chapman, a veteran missionary to Africa (1920–1940), writes that the poem was found among the papers of this young pastor after he was martyred for his faith in Christ. Let us recite it together.

I’m part of the fellowship of the unashamed. I have stepped over the line; the decision has been made: I’m a disciple of Jesus! I won’t look back, let up, slow down, back away, or be still. My past is redeemed, my present makes sense, my future is secure. I no longer need to be praised, regarded, or rewarded. My face is set, my gait is fast, my goal is heaven, my road is narrow, my way is rough, my companions are few, my Guide reliable. I cannot be bought, compromised, detoured, lured away, turned back, deluded, or delayed. I will not flinch in the face of sacrifice, hesitate in the presence of the enemy, ponder at the pool of popularity, or meander in the maze of mediocrity. I am a disciple of Jesus. I must go on till He comes and will work till He stops me. When He comes for His own, He will have no problem recognizing me.

“But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Let those of us who are mature think this way, and if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal that also to you.”– Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ.

John 17 was Jesus' prayer for His disciples the night before He was betrayed. It is still His prayer today. We would like to encourage you to memorise the chapter of John 17 or at least the verses that speak to your heart, to pray it daily, and to ask that Jesus' prayer would be fulfilled in you and through you.