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Well, good morning everybody. Welcome to Prairie Lakes Church. We are live right now all across the beautiful state of Iowa, and this morning we have over 3000 people joining us at Prairie Lakes Church from one of our campuses spread all across this beautiful state.

And God has been really, really good to us and God has been good to us in another way because it's officially meteorological spring. We have arrived everybody. We are here. And in the upper Midwest, uh, weather calendar, we've passed full spring, second winter, and last week was the spring of deception.

So now I know we're finally at spring and I know that because Robins are flying around my yard. So that has to count for something. All right, spring is finally here and we are already in week three of our Lenon series and, uh, during Lent, which is the 40 day period between Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, uh, the purpose of one is to prayer our hearts, uh, for the, uh, crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus for Good Friday and for Easter and this year we've decided that during this Lenin series we're gonna focus on the last week of Jesus' life, what we call the passion Week.

And we're gonna look at different aspects of Jesus' life from the Gospel of John. And we're gonna ask the question, what did Jesus die for? What did Jesus die for and his last week on Earth? What did Jesus prioritize? What did he say? What did he do? And uh, here's the thing that we've highlighted each week during the series so far.

It's this that Lent invites us to shift our focus from being the Savior to needing a savior. And Len invites us to lay down our lives like our savior laid down his. And the topic this weekend that we're gonna look at absolutely is gonna require us to surrender, sacrifice, and lay down our lives for one another.

Because the question we're gonna answer this weekend, the topic we're gonna look at is this. Is it possible for Christians to live together in unity today? Is that even possible? And I know as I asked that question, some of you automatically are like, Nope, that is a pipe dream.

Like no way. But here's the thing to Jesus. It's not a pipe dream, it's a possibility. In fact, one of the last prayers of Jesus recorded in the Bible is a prayer for Christians to live in unity. It is not a pipe dream. It's possible, I believe it is.

So I'm gonna talk about that this weekend. Now here's the thing. We live in a divided fractured world. And we all know that because we see it everywhere we look, we see it in our American political context. We're bombarded with political division. It's left versus right and Republican versus Democrat and Donald Trump versus the world and fox versus CNN.

We see it everywhere and we see it geopolitically in our world. We see conflict and war and unrest all across the globe. And we see division in our workplace. We see it in our families. We see it through news and social media and marketing and advertisements.

Here's what we know, peace and unity doesn't sell, but conflict and division absolutely sells. If you need clicks, if you need sales, if you want interaction on social media, all you have to do is create an enemy and all of a sudden you've got a following every single time.

And nowhere is division seen quite as clearly in our world that in our flags, our hats and our t-shirts, if you know where somebody, if you wanna know where somebody stands, look at their hats, their flags and their t-shirts, you know, really quickly what somebody's for or against, like this beautiful flag.

Look at this flag here today. Please don't boo. There we go. I got a little support. Okay, this flag means I used to support a team that was really good at football and now is really good at wrestling and volleyball. Okay? Or how about this hat right here?

This hat says I hate the New York Yankees. Sorry Pastor Jesse, not sorry, right? Uh, how about this shirt right here? It says, I support the winningest NFL franchise of all time and the Vikings still haven't won a Super Bowl Go pack. You know, go pack, go right, go pick, go now.

Now those are funny examples, right? Those are obviously funny examples of ways we divide and there's conflict and we cheer on weekends for different teams. But, but a lot of times the division that we face in our world goes way beyond the, the, the teams that we cheer for are who we support on weekends to things that are really deep-seated things that we value or don't value or push away against.

Like, like this sign that you see in a lot of yards right here, the science is real sign, right? That says, I support more left-leaning causes politically and socially. Or how about this hat right here that you see all the time that says, now I support more right-leaning things politically and socially.

Or how about this flag that says I'm an ally to the lgbtq plus community. Now, what happened in your body when I showed those three things? What did you start to feel like? What, what's kind of rising up in you right now?

'cause my guess is no matter where you land on the political spectrum or the social spectrum, you started to feel something at those images. Some of you felt angry or defensive, some of you wanted to cheer, some of you want to go to war right now against someone or some, cause some of you're like, why in the world would a pastor put those on a screen at church, right?

And if you're wondering that, it's exactly my point. I showed those images not because I want a bunch of nasty emails this week, but I showed them because listen, those things are inside of us. Those things are inside of people outside the church that will come into our church.

We feel those things, believe certain things, understand certain things, and there is division among us and there's division out in the world out there. And what happens is we bring that into the church with us. We bring our baggage and our values and our feelings into the church and into our walk with Jesus.

And sometimes it bleeds into disunity in the church, within our campus, within our small groups, between other followers of Jesus. And there's division and lack of unity. It can be really easy sometimes to lose heart because if we elevate anything above Jesus, if our top flag isn't following Jesus and Christianity, if we try to put any other flag or any other hat or any other shirt on above that, disunity is often the result.

In fact, how many of us have asked these questions before? I know I have. How could a Christian possibly believe blank or how could a Christian possibly vote for blank? So the question is, that's our reality. So what do we do with that? And how do we live in unity? Amidst all of that, that's what we're gonna talk about this weekend.

And as we begin, I wanna level set just by defining a few terms. So if you're taking notes, you can start taking notes here. If you're, if you want to do a screenshot, take a photo of some of these things as I define them, I want you to do that.

But here's what Christian unity means. It means this Christian unity is choosing to live in community with one another, followers of Jesus by sharing alignment around essential beliefs, character and mission. You say, how do we live unified in the church state?

We have different values. If we're all over the map on things, how do we live together? It's essential beliefs, character, and mission. We are aligned around those three things, and I'm gonna dive more deeply into those in just a moment. But there's two caveats I wanna give you before we start reading scripture about this.

First is this, Christian unity does not equal uniformity, okay? It's really important. Christian Unity does not equal uniformity. Unity in the church does not mean that we all look alike and dress alike and sound alike and value all the same things all the time.

It doesn't mean that we're gonna be aligned around politics. In fact, diversity within unity has been something the church has had for 2000 years. The people from all kinds of ethnic backgrounds and ethnicities and socioeconomic status and language and countries have and continue to be a part of the church, this body of Christ, that there is unity within diversity and that's what makes the church beautiful.

And one of the things I love about a no matter church is that we aren't aligned around things like politics. And we don't stand up here and say, here's the candidate that you should vote for, or Here's the party that you should align with or vote for. We don't do that. And I think that there is beauty in that.

Now I say that and I go, Hey, here's what also is true about a no matter church, we believe the Bible is true. We believe the Bible is the inspired word of God, and we believe that the Bible's really clear on a lot of things.

And so we're not soft on truth and we wanna keep biblical truth and unity around biblical truth at the top. That is a high priority for us, but we don't want our political stance or our stance on certain social issues to interfere with unity.

We just don't wanna do that. Which leads us to this last part that I wanna talk about. Unity real quick is this, unity in the church is difficult. It is hard, and it has to be fought for. It is difficult to be unified and we have to fight for it. It's really easy to be divided.

It's really easy to pick things and fight and go to war over things. But living in unity requires humility and intimacy and conversation and love. And one of the tactics of the enemy, Satan, he loves it when the church is divided.

He loves it when we squabble and when we fight. Being unified is hard work and we have to fight for it. So all of that is the intro to go, Hey, let's see what Jesus says about this. I think it's really, really important. So we can open your Bibles right now to John chapter 17, verse one.

If you've got your Bible app turned to John 17 as well. And here's the context of the scripture we're about to read. It's part of the high priestly prayer, one of the last prayers of Jesus on earth. It's in the last week of Jesus' life. So Jesus just washed the disciple's feet and he shared communion with them.

And Judas just took off to betray Jesus. And right before Jesus goes to the garden and is arrested to be crucified, here's what John 17 says about Jesus and about unity. It says, after Jesus said this, he looked toward heaven and he prayed.

Now just imagine this moment. You're one of the 11 disciples and you're sitting around and Jesus has just done a lot of amazing things and he is just taught about a lot of amazing things. And now he says, let's pray. It's like you could hear a pin drop in the room, skip down to verse eight, and look what Jesus prays for.

I gave them, that's the disciples, the words you gave me. And they accepted them. They knew for certainty that I came from you and they believe that you sent me. I pray for them. I'm not praying for the world, but for those you've given me for they are yours. All I have is yours and all you have is mine.

And glory has come to me through them. So here's what we learn. Jesus says, Hey, these disciples, these 11, they're following me. They believe in me. They know that you sent me, they're unified around this, that I'm the savior of the world.

And look at verse 11. He gets to the heart of the matter. He says, I will remain in the world no longer. Right? I'm leaving, but they are still in the world and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them by the power of your name, the name that you gave me so that, look at what it says, they may be one as we are one.

Jesus's prayer for unity is this, that in the same way that God the Father and God the Son relationally are one and connected and unified, that these 11 disciples would live that way, unified together, one connected, not divided, not squabbling, not fighting, but living together as one.

And you go, well, yeah, but there are 11 dudes from Israel. So like they're gonna be united, right? No, listen, here's who the disciples were. And these are the seven disciples who we know their occupation. So just think about this for a moment.

You got seven dudes here, but 11 dudes total now without Judas, who are all 16 to 20 year olds. Young men full of bravado and hormones and competition. Okay? Then you pile on top of that, this Simon, Peter and Andrew were brothers and fishermen from Galilee, and then James and John were also brothers and fishermen from Galilee.

So you're like, great, those four would get along perfect, right? No, and here's why they didn't. Simon Peter was the oldest. He was given all the authority. He's the one that's mentioned first in the list of disciples over and over and over again.

His brother Andrew was not, not only that, but Simon, Peter, James and John were the three closest disciples of Jesus. They were the inner circle, which means that Andrew was left out. And I don't know if you know much about young men who are competitive, but that hurts and that stings.

And that would've been a bummer for Andrew going like, why am I not a part of this crew? And why does my brother get all the authority? Right? And then it gets really spicy because Philip was also a fisherman, but he had a Roman name, which means he came from a Roman family, which means that those in Israel would've hated this guy.

Philip, like he would've not have been someone they associated with. And likewise, Philip wouldn't have associated with those other four fishermen, but he had to because they were disciples. And then Matthew was called Levi was a Roman tax collector with a Jewish name, which means he was a traitor.

The Jews in the group, the group in Israel would've hated Matthew 'cause he collected taxes for the Roman government and he probably ripped off their families. And then you've got Simon, who was called Simon, the zealot because he hated Romans. He was zealous against the people of Rome.

And so he would've hated Philip and he really would've hated Matthew. And everybody would've hated Matthew because he was a swindler. So that's just seven. So you got these seven guys who come from different backgrounds, different perspectives, different families of origin, different values and priorities.

And by the time Jesus prays this prayer, these guys are all unified. They've been traveling with Jesus for three years, and now they learn how to live together amidst all of their differences. Political, socioeconomic, family of origin, cultural.

They learn to live together with Jesus in unity. And Jesus says, I want this to stick. I want this to stay. I don't want this to be lost. And then he says this in verse 13, what's the outcome of living unified in Jesus? He says, I'm coming to you now, but I say these things while I'm still in the worldwide so that they may have the full measure of my joy within them.

What's the byproduct of people from different cultures and political persuasions and backgrounds learning to live together in unity? What's the outflow of that? It is joy. Joy. Joy is the fruit of the spirit. Joy is what happens when we have the Holy Spirit of God inside of us and we're living for God.

But joy is also something that God produces in us when we live in unity with other followers of Jesus. When we choose not to divide, when we say I'm gonna live unified, joy is the byproduct. So my question for you today is this, how is your joy level right now?

Are you experiencing a lot of joy today? Because that can be a really good gauge of whether you're living in unity and community with other followers of Jesus. If your life is full of division, I got news for you, you're not gonna experience a lot of joy.

But if your life is full of unity according to Jesus, you can experience a lot of joy. Now, here's what Jesus does next, which is astounding. He prays for us, all of us, right before Jesus goes to the cross, he takes time to pray for you.

And he prays for me. And here's the prayer He prays for us. The same prayer he prayed for the disciples. Verse 20, my prayer is not for them alone, meaning the 11 disciples. I pray also for all of those who will believe in me through their message, which is all of us and all of the people in the history of Christianity.

Jesus is praying for all of us. And here's his prayer verse 21, 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. Why? So that the world will believe that you have sent me.

Jesus says, I want all believers, all the people that are gonna respond to the gospel, all the people that are gonna believe in me, I want all the people that are one day gonna share heaven together. I want them to live together in unity on this earth. And here's the byproduct of that. It's not just joy.

Here's the byproduct of this. That all the world would know that this thing is real, that God is alive, that Jesus is Lord. Because when the church lives together in unity, there is no other explanation other than that, that God is alive and Jesus is Lord that this thing called the church is real.

That the body of Christ is alive, that there is validity and truth to it. Listen, when people from every tribe and nation and language and political affiliation and socioeconomic status, when they gather in unity to worship the same God, the only explanation is this God is alive and Jesus is Lord, that God's kingdom is here.

That's the only possible explanation. And that is an incredible witness to the world around us. When the world looks at the church and they go, wait a minute, he is worshiping with her and that person over here is with that person. This makes no sense other than there must be something to this Jesus.

And there must be something to this church if that's what happens within the walls of this church. And it's so important to Jesus that he prays it twice. He says it again in verse 22. I've given him the them the glory that you gave me that they may be one as we are one I and them, and you and me sow that what then he brought together in complete unity.

Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. Our unity together in the church, my friends, is proof that God is alive and that Jesus is Lord. And when the church lives together in unity, when Christians choose to be unified, it literally changes the world.

People come to faith in Jesus Christ. A big part of why I came to faith in Jesus is when I was 18 years old at Hases College, I joined a Christian fraternity. Why did I join a Christian fraternity? I didn't know at the time, but here's what I saw.

I saw guys that grew up Catholic, guys that grew up evangelical, guys that grew up with no church background at all, joined together in unity. I saw young men who grew up in Chicago or Denver or Bennington, Nebraska, worship together in unity. I saw guys who were athletes and guys who couldn't dribble a basketball together in unity.

And it was so magnetic and attractive to me that I said, I wanna be a part of that. And I know many of you have the same story where you were drawn and magnetized by the unity in the church and you said, it is so magnetic that I need to be a part of this thing.

I don't wanna miss out when the church and Christians live unified together. It is an irresistible force in the world when we choose to live together as a unified community. There's joy and life and grace and love in the church. So go do that, right? Go be unified.

Everybody sounds pretty easy, right? Just go do that. But what does it mean to live unified as as Christians? 'cause we do have differences and there's things that we're gonna disagree on. So how do we live in unity? Do we just sit around in a circle and hold hands and sing kumbaya and just kinda like sweep differences under the rug and pretend they don't exist?

Like, like what do we do? Because I know some of you right now are sitting there and you're just like, pastor, this sounds great. Awesome, live unified, but like you don't work with my coworkers who claim to follow Jesus and they don't look like him at all or, or you don't live in my family that doesn't gather anymore because we can't even sit down without arguing about politics or my small group that I used to have that got blown apart and we don't even talk anymore.

And how am I supposed to be unified with people that that I can't see eye to eye with about social issues, right? I'm gonna give you three things that we have to be unified around as followers of Jesus. Three things that that are just non-negotiable. There's a lot of things we can talk about and negotiate and argue about, but these three things we have to be aligned on if we're gonna be unified in the church.

And then I'm gonna talk about three things that threaten the unity of each. Okay? So the first thing you need to know is this. We have to be unified around essential beliefs. If we're gonna be unified as followers of Jesus, one of the things we have to rally around are essential beliefs.

And these are foundational truths that we believe the Bible's clear on. Things that you have to believe in order to be a follower of Jesus. And some of you're going like, okay, well what beliefs and how many, and who gets to decide, right?

Well, at Prairie Lukes church, the list is pretty short. Um, in fact, our statement of faith is nine statements. And I would say that that even being a part of Prairie Lakes Church or even being a follower of Jesus, you don't even have to be aligned on all nine of those. I think the list is pretty short of things that we have to be aligned around.

They're very important. But I think the list is pretty short. And I grew up as a, as a good Lutheran. And so I learned the Apostles creed before I even went to confirmation, and it's found on page 71 of the Lutheran Book of Worship.

Not that I haven't memorized, but I might. But I think the Apostles Creed is a really, really good guide to the things that we have to believe and be unified around. And here's what the Apostles Creed says. I believe in God, the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth.

I believe in Jesus Christ, God's only son, our Lord, who was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary. He suffered under Pontius Pilate. He was crucified, died, and was buried. He descended to the dead. On the third day, he rose again.

He ascended into heaven. He deeded at the right hand of the Father where he will come again to judge the living and the dead. I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Holy Catholic church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting.

Amen. When people say, Hey, what do I need to believe to be a follower of Jesus? I say, that's it. What do we need to be unified as followers of Jesus? That's it. Because without alignment around these core foundational truths of our faith, there cannot be unity.

There can't be unity if you don't believe clear foundational teachings of scripture, there are things in scripture that we can argue about, but this list is really, really good when it comes to what are the things we have to believe and rally around. I think it's those. And here's the greatest threat to unity with this.

The greatest threat to unity is when we elevate our personal theological beliefs on secondary issues or smaller, debatable theological points. And we make them the battleground for unity or disunity. That's the greatest threat here. Not the core foundational things that are true, that we believe that like we can't argue about these closed hand, closed fist.

Every follower of Jesus that knows him believes these things. It's the other things that we argue about and fight about. For instance, I've seen this happen over and over again where a couple or an individual or family leaves Prairie Lakes Church because we don't agree with their narrow specific view of end times theology or we don't talk about end times enough.

I've seen people leave the church and abandon Christianity altogether because the church won't adopt their view or their theology of gender identity or sexuality. But what if we fought around and fought for theological essentials instead of our denomination, instead of our secondary things?

Things are tertiary things, the things that are less important. What if we decided that we were gonna be aligned around the Apostles creed and the things that we believe are very fundamental to our faith?

What kind of joy might exist in the church? What kind of community would the world see in the church? And I want, I want you to hear me on this. Okay, so here what I'm saying, what I'm not saying at Prairie Lake Church, we've got really clear biblical convictions around secondary issues.

We think they're important. We have very firm beliefs around human sexuality and marriage and gender and baptism and the way that we do communion. Those are very valuable to us. And I'm not saying that anything goes, so don't mishear me, okay?

I'm not saying secondary beliefs are not important. I'm not saying that. What I'm saying is this, as followers of Jesus, when we say I'm not going to be connected to that person over there because they view communion different than me, that's not right. We shouldn't be doing that. We need to be living in unity.

And every couple months I get a, I get to live this out. So I get together with four other pastors in the Cedar Valley of some of the bigger churches around here. I get together with Pastor Peter from Trinity Bible, which is a Westland church. I get together with uh, Cody, pastor Cody from Canda, which is a Southern Baptist church.

I get together with Pastor Q from Hope City, which is a non-denominational church, and they get together with Pastor Daniel from Scent Church, which is, which is an Assemblies of God church. And we get together about every other month. We have lunch, we eat together, we pray together.

There's a lot of joy in the room. And here's what you'll find. There is unity around essentials. There is unity around the things that we go, like closed fist followers of Jesus. We believe these things. And guess what?

There's a lot of disunity around the circle when it comes to secondary issues. If you went around the room and said, Hey, what do you believe about the role of women in ministry? We'd all be different if you say, Hey, what do you believe about the gifts of the spirit?

And speaking in tongues, there'd be differences across the room. If you said, what do you believe about baptism or communion? There would be differences around that room. And that's just within some of the biggest churches in the Cedar Valley.

But what we have together is unity. Unity on the essentials. The essential beliefs are core, and we hang onto those. And by the way, I love it when someone walks up to me and starts talking crap about one of those churches or pastors and I get to smile and say, Hey, they're my friend.

Knock it off. There's unity there. Unity around the essential beliefs. That's number one. Number two, to be unified in the church means this. There's unity of character that we have unity of character. What do I mean by unity of character? Ephesians four says this, Paul says, as a prisoner of the Lord, then I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you've received.

Be completely humble and gentle. Be patient bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the spirit through the bond of peace. For there is one body and one spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God, and Father of all who is overall and through all.

And in all you say, what is our character? What's the character that unifies us? There's four things that Paul said there that are really important. It's this humility, gentleness, patience, and love. What is our character as followers of Jesus?

It's humility, gentleness, patience and love. That is what we're about. We're unified around that type of character. And what is the greatest threat to that character in our world today? The greatest threat to that unity is this politics.

Without a doubt, it is politics in the church. In fact, dividing over politics is the fastest way to see humility, gentleness, patience and love disappear. If you want to have those things, poof, just disappear. Start talking about politics. And I know so many followers of Jesus who willingly toss aside unity for the sake of surrounding themselves with people that agree with them politically.

And rather than align with fellow believers that they're gonna share eternity with, they align with a political part of your candidate first. And they get into echo chambers where everybody believes the things that they do. Everybody says the things that they do.

Everybody watches the news channel that they do, and they're just in this echo chamber and there's this political litmus test to be a part of the group. And I see so many Christians today who are so enmeshed with their theological beliefs and their political beliefs that they cannot see any good in the opposite party or the opposite candidates.

Their theology and their politics are so enmeshed they can't even pull the things apart, that God is exclusively on my side or my party or my candidate and not theirs, which happens when you idolize one party or one candidate, you have to demonize the other.

And I've seen this happen in the church over and over again. Now, please listen to me in heaven, there are gonna be a lot of Democrats and Republicans and independents and libertarians and a whole lot more people that don't give to Youknow whats about American politics? Because there's a lot of people that are gonna be in heaven that are outside of the American context.

There's gonna be more Christians from Africa and South America and Asia than there are in heaven from America who don't even care about that stuff. And if all you do is build your life on a political foundation, you're gonna get to heaven and you're gonna be really, really surprised in Christ.

You are gonna share eternity with people that you disagree with politically. So why not learn to live in unity with them today? Please my friends, do not let politics or political views ruin your unity with other Christians. Do not lead with anything other than humility, gentleness, patience and love.

That's our character and we agree on those things. What if we fought for unity of character rather than our political party? What if we fought for humility and gentleness and patience and love? What kind of an irresistible community might we become?

Friends, you need to know this. I've got very strong political convictions and leanings. I've got very strong social convictions and leanings, but I will never elevate those above my faith and I will never let those things cause this unity between me and other followers of Jesus.

I'm not gonna go there. Number three, what do we rally around unity of mission. The last thing is this. What do we need to be unified around his fathers of Jesus? Unity of mission. Matthew 28, 18 through 20. This is the great commission.

Jesus came to the disciples and he said to them, all authority in heaven and earth has been given to me. Therefore, go and make disciples of all, all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey everything I've commanded you.

And surely I'm with you always to the end of the age. Our mission as followers of Jesus is clear. Make disciples of all nations, teach people what it means to obey and follow Jesus. That's our mission period. And every church states it differently, but a prayer lake Church, our mission is this is no matter, no matter who you are, where you've been and what you've done or what's been done to you before, God loves you and you can look for God here.

As Christians, we should be unified and rally around the mission to make disciples. What's the greatest threat to this today? The greatest threat to this today is this personal preference and the consumeristic attitudes of Christians say, what crushes unity around mission more than anything else.

It's when my personal preferences interfere with my connection to the mission that God has put me on or the mission that God has put Prairie Lakes church on. And what I mean is this, we divide over things like this, worship, music style, worship, music, volume, service time.

The pastor said something that offended me. The pastor doesn't talk enough about this. The pastor talks too much about this. When all of those little things, personal preferences start to creep in, what happens is we lose the plot in our story of following Jesus and we miss the mission.

And then unity becomes a casualty when it becomes about personal preference or convenience and not about the mission. My friends, the church is about gathering so the world may see and bringing people that don't know Jesus into the fold.

It's about unity, not division, not holy huddle, not separatist isolated communities. We are supposed to be a city on a hill that welcomes people who are outside inside so that they can experience the life that we have. That's our mission, my friends.

Are you personally on a mission to share the gospel and see the world brought to Jesus or or is your personal mission comfort and to get what you want? What if we fought for unity of mission instead of our preferences?

What if the focus is bringing those outside the church on the inside? What? What kind of joy might we experience? What kind of community might we become and what kind of church would the world see if the mission to bring those outside inside was our focus?

If that's what we were aligned around and unified around and not all the other things that we could fight about. My friends, when we are aligned around essential beliefs, character, and mission, we are an irresistible community of faith. There is joy and there is awe and wonder that the world sees.

We're the type of community where the only possible explanation for why people so diverse and so different can worship together in unity is that God is alive and Jesus is Lord. And there's no other explanation than that. The world needs to see that from us.

Jesus died to secure this possibility for us that we would live in unity. And unity in the church is irresistible. When a church is unified, it's magnetic. It's a type of place where joy is palpable and where community happens naturally, it's a community that you can't help but invite other people into.

Why? Because you know that people on the outside will experience joy and unity and life on the inside. And when you know that's true, you can't help but invite people in because you want them to experience what you've experienced.

This incredible unity in the midst of diversity, this love and joy in the midst of different political values and opinions, unity and joy. What are you fighting for the most today? Is it unity in the church? Are you fighting for joy?

Are you fighting to be a picture of Jesus the world needs to see in him? Or is it politics or secondary theological beliefs or personal preferences? What are you fighting for the most? When the world sees the church, our church living in unity, the only possible explanation is that God is alive and Jesus is Lord at prayer lakes tricks.

Let's be that kind of place. Let's become that kind of place and let's ask for God's help to do that together right now. Let's pray. And Jesus, one of your last prayers on earth was for unity. And together we'd experienced the joy and the life and being united around the most important things.

And God, so often we fight for the wrong things, and God, we divide over the wrong things. Forgive us for majoring on the minors. Forgive us for allowing our politics to cause this unity. Forgive us for allowing our personal preferences to take priority over the mission to reach people.

God help us to fight for unity. Help us to fight for joy. Help us to fight, to have an attitude of humility, gentleness, patience and love. And help us be the kind of church and the kind of community that loves each other so well that the only possible explanation is that you are alive and that you are Lord.

We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.