Working Together in Unity:

One thing we can know about God is that He loves unity.  He cares about working in unity with all those members of the Trinity, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  He also asked us to be one with our brothers and sisters in Christ. Similarly He made it so when one does get married, they become one flesh.  Teamwork and unity are very fundamental.  

In my novel, I have been reading about praying for missionaries, there was a section about praying for missionaries to work as a team and in unity with one another. It is of great importance, especially for the missionaries to avoid burnout and to really tell others about Jesus. A quote from the book , “Praying for Your Missionary” by Eddie Byun highlighting unity is, “God and Satan know the power of a united group, a united church.  This is why the enemy seeks to divide us.  A divided church in the devil’s playground.”  (pg.  83).

When we act like a team, we can get a lot accomplished and a lot of work done for the Lord.  When we are working against one  another, we will go down in progress overall.  I remember the times in middle school and high school when I didn’t completely love the girls on my volleyball team.  I often felt they were mean to me at times.  Because of this, sometimes I was secretly happy when they made a mistake or they didn’t have a good game.  This didn’t help the volleyball team I was on to win. 

I have had the opportunity to work as a coach to cross country for many different years.  I did two years while I was working as a teacher and so far three years in the Cedar Falls area. I have loved the opportunity to get to know these teams and work with them.  I love when I get the chance to run with them or when I get to cheer them on at cross country meets.  It has been such a big blessing in my life. 

I have always been very inspired by my cross country teams who work together as a team.  I will never forget when I was in my second year of coaching.  Our girls cross country team was having a great year.  They were winning meets and were now seeing a possibility of making state as a team.   I was really proud of this team.  They never became selfish.  There were clearly the best runners and then there were others who struggled a bit more.  There were individuals who had meets where they didn’t run as fast as they would have liked.  However, they never blamed anyone else for a race going badly.  They also as a team never got filled with pride for their own individual performances.  

 However, there were many other good teams out there.  The girls had to work hard and they had to work together if they wanted to fulfill this dream of making state.  I was driving the van one day when I heard them discussing strategy to do the best they could on the way to the district meet.  They did this all on their own, without any prompting.  They weren’t told to do this by their head coach or by me.  They were just being competitive on their own and were trying to figure out how to work as a team and win.  While they didn’t win this meet overall, the work they did was enough for them to make it to state through their second place finish. 

There are verses about working as a team and unity is Psalm 133:1 which says, “How good it is for brethren to dwell together in unity.”  It is good for us to be together.   It is wonderful to work together and achieve success, both in this world and in the work for the Lord. 

The challenge for the week is to spend time thinking about your particular teams.  What teams are you a part of?  Are you in a sport or coaching a sport?  Are you in a work team?  Are you a part of a small group?  If you are, do you feel as though you are a part of the union?  When you are in this group, even if it is a hobby, do you feel like you are a part of the group or do you feel like you are separated from the unity?  

The second challenge is that if you are not a part of a group, I would highly recommend becoming a part of a group for your friends or from your church and working as a team.  This overall just gives you more of the picture of the trinity and what God had planned for your life and for the lives of all believers.