Pastor Bell's Words To Live By

How good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell together in unity. It is like precious oil on the head, running down on the beard, even Aaron’s beard and running down unto the collar of his robes. It is like the dew of Hermon, which fall on the mountain of Zion. It is there that the Lord commands his blessing even life for evermore, Psalm 133, paraphrased. For the spiritually intelligent it is better to focus on our similarities than to highlight our differences. If we focus on the negatives they will magnify in size and become real stumbling blocks. On the contrary if we focus on our sameness then they will magnify and pull us together. You have heard the term that the devil is in the detail, meaning that it is in the details that you will find the little things that are designed to trip you up. For those who seek to understand spiritual things, it is not the devil that is in the details, but the Blessing, capital B no s. In this piece of prose, the Psalmist paints a picture of what real spiritual fulfilment would be like. It always starts of at the bottom. How pleasant it is when we live together in unity, suggesting that unity of purpose, vision and attitude causes us to achieve things that were seemingly impossible before. It was in a state of unity that Joshua was able to defeat Jericho (Joshua 6), Gideon was able to rout the Midianites (Judges 7) and Jephthah who was rejected and ostracised by his brother eventually came back and defeated the Ammonites (Judges 11). Unity is being knitted together like a mosaic or an elaborate tapestry, all the individual parts are different, but when they are brought together they paint a beautiful picture.  It is at this very basic level when all our physical needs are completely met that we can see the picture from others perspective. Here the mountain represents that magnificence of our God. He is our Hermon and it is from him that everything we need flows.  The Blessing flows from God to his people the church, depicted here as Zion. And the blessing only flow in one direction, from head to toe. So in the home, there must be headship, in the marketplace there must be leadership and in the church of the living God there must be head/leadership. In our psalm Aaron is depicted as the spiritual leader and it is from his head that that the Blessing flows until it touches every part of garment.  Today as the body of Jesus Christ puts aside its differences and prays the prayer that Jesus taught us, viz. ‘Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven’, we will see amazing things happening even in our own circles. This is the era when kingdom people must apply the kingdom principles and use the kingdom keys that we have. Unlike Willie Lynch, let us minimise our differences and maximise our commonalities so that His kingdom will come and His will be done in our local areas. Read Joshua 11:6 and watch and see if the Lord does not hand over our oppressors to us.