One: Discovering Unity with God and One Another

Copyright © 2008 by Dr. Jasper Newton Watson, III

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Contents

Introduction

CHAPTER ONE

What Divides Us?

CHAPTER TWO

Is There a God to Wrestle With?

It Starts with You

Why Am I Alive?

What Keeps Us from Living Joyfully and Being One?

Does My Life Matter? Does Your Life Matter?

CHAPTER THREE

Wrestling with Your Creator

CHAPTER FOUR

Find Truth and Honesty

CHAPTER FIVE

A New Compass for Life

CHAPTER SIX

Created to Be One

CHAPTER SEVEN

Tools of the Trade

Worship

Fellowship

Discipleship

Missions and Ministry

Prayer

CHAPTER EIGHT

God s Beloved

CHAPTER NINE

Being Fruitful

What Is Fruitfulness?

Why Be Fruitful?

How Do I Become Fruitful?

CHAPTER TEN

Multiply

What Is Multiplying?

What Keeps Us from Multiplying?

How Do We Multiply?

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Replenish

CHAPTER TWELVE

Let the Peace of Christ Rule in Your Heart

To Leslie

My Wife and Best Friend

Kathryn, Matthew, Christopher, and Hannah

Our Children and Joy

Introduction 

I have seen and experienced much division while journeying through life. Countries are divided over politics and power. Religions are at odds over doctrine and devotion. Families are alienated over self-centeredness and sacredness. Too many people are worried about being right instead of living virtuously. And, in the end, many individuals can feel alone, isolated, and even divided within themselves. We crave something deeper and more meaningful out of life.

People are looking for answers. People are looking for hope!

I have wrestled with many divisive issues as a child, brother, friend, husband, parent, and pastor. Each perspective has helped me to grow and appreciate a deeper value of life, a broader understanding of humankind, and a more humble spirit and love for our Eternal God.

With over twenty years in Christian ministry, I have counseled and cared for hundreds of individuals and families. I have heard their laughter and joy in times of celebration. I have felt their grief and sadness in times of loss and disaster. I have wrestled with their issues and my own.

What do you say when you hold a beautiful, stillborn baby in your arms? What do you do when a child dies from a freak event in the home or a teenager is killed in an accident on the highway? How do you aid a marriage when pornography, adultery, bankruptcy, drugs, or alcohol enter in? When do you offer tough love to a friend if his or her problem is being enabled by your own generosity? How do you help a person to survive divorce, a teenager to overcome sexual abuse, or a child who just wants to be loved? Where do you go for guidance?

Many times, I have referred church members and friends to more qualified experts and counselors. But each day, I have tried to listen, love, and learn from these precious souls. Together, we have searched for further understanding of their circumstances and a deeper meaning for life. I found myself daily reading scripture and in quest of wisdom through prayer and petition. My master’s of divinity and doctoral degrees helped me to persevere, but never prepared my soul to overcome evil and sin. I had to learn how to wrestle. I had to learn how to wrestle with God and myself. I had to discover the unity God offers and humankind needs. And through it all, we experienced death, despair, and disappointments. You quickly realize that no one is free of trials, tests, and temptations. But, in the end, many of us found the peace God offers. Not a peace because of what we had become, but a peace because we had embraced a deeper understanding of who God is and what all of us can be through Christ and all creation.

Yes, life is not easy. Sometimes, it is not the larger crises that drain your energy and enthusiasm. Many of us are just looking for ways to survive our everyday problems. What do you do when your children will not clean up their rooms and do not listen? Where do you turn when your job is being downsized, and your career feels like a dead-end street? How do you manage your life after becoming the primary caregiver of aging parents? Why is it getting harder to find the balance between family, work, and school? It seems like all of our activities and events fill up our schedules instead of fulfilling our lives. Is this what life is all about?

You’re right! Life is supposed to be more than just managing problems. We are all facing challenges that test our character and faith. We are all looking for some guidance and help, as we journey through life. Where do we find this help? How do we find fulfillment and success in our daily lives? This book tries to help you take positive steps toward finding a deeper fulfillment and joy in life. One helps you discover truth that is already on the fingertips of your faith.

Challenges and problems will always occur in our lives. The true test is finding personal peace and a unifying spirit with God and one another that empowers us to live life more abundantly and joyfully. I believe all of us can spiritually grow from an honest and open discussion about God’s purpose for our lives. But discovering God’s purpose is not a simple cut and paste or click process. We need to discover unity with God and one another. We need to wrestle with God and the issues and circumstances we encounter.

The truth is much deeper and broader than any book can fully address. However, a true and purposeful life can only be discovered by each individual’s unique pilgrimage with God. Beware: neither politicians, priests, philosophers, nor I have the complete answer. Some of the answers you are struggling with may never be found. You may never know why your best friend experienced financial ruin, why some marriages end in divorce, or why some little children die. There are times in our lives when the only answer we can find is the peace we discover in the mystery of God and the comfort of our friends.

We live in a changing and challenging world. If the answers you are struggling with can be found, then they will be revealed in your intimate and growing relationship with God. What may surprise you is that the answers for our lives do not unveil by finding the right answer, but by asking the right questions.

My hope is that this book will help you question yourself, inquire of God, and find yourself further down the path of righteousness, further down the path closer to God, more at peace with yourself, and further down the road of Oneness with God and all of God’s creation.

And by God’s grace and mercy, may our paths cross again. But, until then ...

May the road rise to meet you, May the wind be always at your back.

May the sun shine warm upon your face, the rain fall soft upon your fields.

And until we meet again, may God hold you in the palm of his hand.

—Gaelic blessing

CHAPTER ONE 

What Divides Us? 

The reason why the world lacks unity, and lies broken and in heaps, is, because man is disunited with himself.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

YouTube, Google, blogs, cell phones, and cable can instantaneously show and tell us what is happening on Earth and beyond. The Information Age reminds us every nanosecond, that we live in a different and diverse world. Each person has become Christopher Columbus. We all sail on the ships of the Internet, which can cross the seas of our comfort zones into a New World. As Dorothy would say, We are not in Kansas anymore. We now live on a divided and chaotic planet where new ideas, multicultural values, competing religiosity, multifaceted information, and changing values clash. We have become immersed in transglobal perspectives, when most of us have been educated and indoctrinated from a familial perspective. We look through the lens of our own presuppositions, education, and experiences and wonder why no one agrees with us. We wonder why people in the world cannot get along.

Our flat world view of ourselves and society is being challenged by competing views. Ideas, values, and cultures were once divided by oceans, language barriers, and Checkpoint Charlies. We can experience new cultures by jumping on a plane and visiting distant lands we once only read about in National Geographic. We can speak in real-time communications through cell phones or instant messaging. We can text over barbed wire and around nationalities.

At the same time, our individual worlds are becoming more filled with diversity, debate, dissension, and division instead of unity. We may have hoped that technology, transportation, and information would bring the world closer together. But, until the world casts a broader net of love, acceptance, and forgiveness, we will be divided and self-destructive.

The front pages of our minds read the conflict, consumerism, controversies, and even comedy that can sensationalize, shock, and separate society. We are repeatedly inundated by images we don’t understand, individuals who are different from us, and ideals we cannot embrace. We find ourselves primarily digesting what divides us instead of what can unite us.

For example, one person hears a sermon from Reverend Jeremiah Wright as prophecy, while another person hears the profane. One group feels the tactics of Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton as divisive politics, while another group only feels the wind of victory. One nation tastes the fears of Islamic extremism, while another nation tastes national pride. We just don’t understand each other. And we don’t take the time to discover what we have in common, whether we live in the United States, Iraq, or China. Are we sailing the high seas to divide and conquer—or to unite and empower?

The Internet, latest technology, and niche marketing have unexpectedly led us down this path of division. One would think that making the world smaller through communication and innovation would unite the world and bring humanity closer together. But we have sailed across this ocean without a spiritual compass. We need God to unite humanity now more than ever before.

In some ways, information and individualism have become our temples. We have been consecrated by technology and marketing so effectively that we emotionally and physically respond to their efforts of subdividing us. School systems, marketing firms, corporations, governments, television networks, and even religions divide us into nanocategories. Our emotions and tendencies are analyzed and classified so we can become more predictable and targeted. Organizations financially support niche marketing, because it effectively scrutinizes and predicts what we will buy, support, and reject. They know us better than we know ourselves. It appears that the more we allow ourselves to become so narrowly defined, the more humanity is divided. Each individual becomes an island and nation upon himself or herself. We have become so accustomed to having our own way that we have lost God’s way. Families, communities, churches, and countries have become less unified because we are so narrowly categorized and self-defined.

In our micro-worlds, have we lost what it means to find compromise in the bigger picture of life? Being human is not about getting your own way every day and every time. There are some times when you need to sacrifice for the greater cause—for your family, your church, your nation, and even the world. Have we forgotten that we all belong to humanity? Have we forgotten what it means to sacrifice?

We take sides so quickly that you may even feel some anger or angst as I share some of my own preferences. For example, I have been more of a University of South Carolina Gamecock fan than a sports fan. I have a hard time pulling for the Clemson Tigers or Georgia Bulldogs, regardless of who they are playing. Our individual loyalties and preferences lead us to cheer and celebrate our own cause while chastising the opposing team. Obviously, this is just an example, and team competition can be healthy. The problem is, if we do not model balance in sports, school, work, or life, then our zeal can become self-destructive. I have seen little-league parents’ zeal for winning come to physical blows, so their children then misplace the lessons they can learn from winning and losing. It is hard for us to find unity or common ground with our perceived opponents unless we place our passion for our team or group in the bigger spectrum of life.

Can we paint our passion for life and mix the colors of our individual zeal in the larger picture of humanity? Can we look beyond ourselves? Can we see a new horizon beyond our own wants and needs?

Technology has developed the capability of defining and dissecting civilization into more definable and predictable segments that can be managed, marketed, and manipulated into potential buyers and advocates for products and causes. We have chosen to become more identified and segmented by what we purchase, watch, wear, and want rather than by what we believe in. We have chosen to become more defined by secularism than by sacredness. I believe that we want to be accepted and approved by our peers and the world so badly that we overidentify with the subcategories of society rather than with humankind as a whole. Our values and beliefs have mirrored the microscopic marketing we adhere to rather than the macromessage of unity, love, and joy.

Our worlds are at odds against one another. We are pegged, segmented, and divided. And we have allowed this to happen based on our own self-desires rather than the greater needs of the whole and God’s will.

Do you believe our world needs unity? It appears to me that our culture is more divided over social, political, and religious issues than ever before. We have been at sea too long without discovering land. We need to find a safe harbor where we can build bridges of hope and understanding. Rhetoric, rage, race, and religiosity are pulling us apart with very few scholars, statesmen, or saints leading us to middle ground. In reality, any common ground has become a battlefield of ideas or nations. We need higher ground. We need a different perspective toward life, ourselves, each other, and creation. We need Holy Ground!

This is the place where God lives. And this is the time and season for us to accept God’s invitation to find Oneness with Christ