September 9 sermon notes - Unity of the Spirit




I've been asked to post some of my sermon notes tweets to my blog. So I've started doing this today, with my notes from today's sermon on Ephesians 4:1 - 3. I'll try to clean up as much as I can.

Unity of the Spirit – spiritual harmony
Ephesians 4:1 – 3

Unity of the Spirit – bringing people who have the Holy Spirit together, and that individual presence brings unity. It is the unity generated by the Holy Spirit’s personal presence.

Unity that is man-made is temporary. Unity cannot be created, it is preserved. Our task is to preserve the Unity of the Spirit.

Unity of the Spirit is preserved by:

  1.)     Humility
a.  It is not easy to be humble.
b.  Humility is the refusal to compete with others in importance. You do not compete when you are not bothered by what others say about you.
c.   It is never to be arrogant.
  2.)     Meekness/gentleness
a.   It is not easy to be humble without being gentle.
b.  Meekness is complete control of your emotions. It is the wildness that has been controlled. A meek person will not react to provocations.
c.  Emotional instability is used by the enemy as one of the main entry points in our lives.  That is why we should learn to control our provokations.
d.  It is never to be provoked emotionally.
       3.)     Patience
a.  It is related to meekness.
b.  It is never to be defeated by challenges and provocations.
  4.)     Forebearance
a.  We may be provoked by others, but we choose not to do anything about it.
b.  We do something so we do not respond to the provocation right away.
c.  Wisdom will tell us not to react at the wrong time. We wait until we know what is the right thing to do, that’s forebearance.
       5.)     Love
a.   There is no other standard than the love of God.
b.   Love is to do the best for the object of your love. That is a description of God’s  love (John 3:16) and what we should be doing.
      6.)     The bond of Peace
a.    Bond – something that connects, like the ligament in the body.
b.    It makes us inseparable from one another.
c.    It is what we do that does not separate us from each other.      
d.    Diligence to preserve the unity is not easy to do, but must be done.
e.  Our presence will solves the conflict, prevents the conflict and make the relationships in your favor.

Are we actually experiencing the Unity of the Spirit? We can only experience it if we preserve it using the 6 characteristics mentioned. Do we have these 6 characteristics regularly in our lives?



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