One God

This is what I have observed in the mere 18 years I have come to know Christ. From the time of the first church there ever was -- even in the Bible after Christ is risen -- church split into churches, denominations...up to this day, we see churches, even within the same denominations so defined by themselves, splitting up due to conflict in certain specifics in beliefs. Don't we all believe in the same Christ and God, the Heavenly Father?

I used to feel sad -- literally anguished about it, that I was often praying, complaining, arguing and questioning God about it -- WHY? Why do You allow this when You know and can see that whichever separated ways these people have gone into, they are Your children who love You...or at least with my limited human ability of perception from what I see on the surface. Of course, often after my strange conversation with God, I'd bow, surrender, defeated in the loving arms of my Abba, cry and smile and feel my knowledge and wisdom grow a painful, tiny fraction of an inch perhaps...and I thank God. Thank you, God, Father, for Your love to relentlessly teach us about Your ways as long as we surrender ourselves willingly.

I thank God for bringing us out of the 'little well' where we come from. He brought me to brothers and sisters in Christ who found and grew their faith in a completely different environment -- deprived and controlled of the knowledge of God and Christ. Yet God's amazing grace found them here -- of course, material wall is nothing to the Almighty God who spoke this world into being from nothing! They have impressed and strengthened me with their faith and love for each other; even me, a foreigner and stranger. Yet, however, here it is again -- strong human sense of judgement of which way they feel is right or wrong -- not for oneself but imposed on others. But this time, in the eyes of God's love, He revealed a new lesson to me.

It is human weakness to fall into pride after we get better at what we do. We think we're the specialist and we KNOW, therefore others know LESS -- we forgot that it was God who placed us where we are. After that pride, when we thought we're certain, we settle down thinking and feeling secure -- hmmm...don't remember we have to refer to God anymore. When we've finally once again thought we've found security, we stop wanting to learn new things and move out of the comfort zone that we have formed.

God allow His people to be divided from the time He cast them off the tower of Babel so that they would continue to WORK and MULTIPLY and not think they can even reach Heaven with their own ability.

'Come,' they said. 'Let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top reaching heaven. Let us make a name for ourselves, so that we do not get scattered all over the world.'

Now Yahweh came down to see the city and the tower that the people had built. 'So they are all a single people with a single language!' said Yahweh. 'This is only the start of their undertakings! Now nothing they plan to do will be beyond them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language there, so that they cannot understand one another.' Yahweh scattered them thence all over the world and they stopped building the city. That is why it was called Babel, since there Yahweh confused the language of the whole world, and from there Yahweh scattered them all over the world. (Genesis 11:4-9)

God gave us wisdom and intelligence -- in the capacity He knows we can handle. He forbade Adam and Eve to eat the Fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil because He wanted to protect and bless us from the woe of evil -- but Adam and Eve thought they knew better...so here we are...they fell and our world broke down. If they'd known that evil was 'so bad', they wouldn't have tried, right? Hmmm...