BE RECONCILED TO ONE ANOTHER

BE RECONCILED TO ONE ANOTHER Thursday - August 26, 2010

“Perhaps the reason he was separated from you for a little while was that you might have him back for good-- no longer as a slave, but better than a slave, as a dear brother. He is very dear to me but even dearer to you, both as a man and as a brother in the Lord. So if you consider me a partner, welcome him as you would welcome me.” – Philemon 1:15-16

On August 23, 2009, two churches joined together to become one church in Louisville, Kentucky. St. Paul Missionary Baptist Church, a mostly black congregation, and Shively Heights Baptist Church, a mostly white congregation, merged into St. Paul Baptist Church at Shively Heights.
More than 560 people sang, prayed and rejoiced at the unification. It was 55 years earlier that the Shively Heights area had been a flashpoint for racial violence. In 1954, just down the road from the church campus, a bomb destroyed the house of the first black family to move to Shively.
St. Paul Missionary Baptist Church’s Pastor Lincoln Bingham proclaimed: “God wants us to do bigger things. We've had a great ministry here. But God has much more for us to do. And the facility and the racial mix [in Shively Heights] will provide even greater opportunity.”
He continued: “we should all follow the biblical mandate that we all be one, and that it does not necessarily suggest disaster when we obey that command.”

The Lord desires us to be reconciled to Him and to others. Today in prayer, praise the Lord that you are reconciled to God through Jesus Christ and seek to be reconciled to others.

“The number one problem in our world is alienation, rich versus poor, black versus white, labor versus management, conservative versus liberal, East versus West . . . But Christ came to bring about reconciliation and peace.” – Billy Graham

God’s Word: “All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation” – 2 Corinthians 5:18