Morning by Morning, August 21 - “I Will Divide ... Just as I Will Unite”
Good morning, Lord Jesus. King of Kings and Lord of Lords, be King of my heart and Lord of my life, as I seek Your face and listen for Your voice (Revelation 19:16; John 10:27). ...
As I listen and look this morning, a scene is forming before me in prayer. I see a knife cutting across a map of America. It’s cutting deep and the paper on both sides of the cut is lifted up and I see an old table underneath the map. ...
My first thought is, “This is division in our country.” And it takes no prophetic vision or even vain imagination to see that. But I believe I hear Your words coming to my heart: “I will divide what I will divide, just as I will unite what I will unite.” ...
This Scripture immediately comes to mind: “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and one’s foes will be members of one’s own household. Whoever loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me; and whoever does not take up the cross and follow Me is not worthy of Me. Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for My sake will find it” (Matthew 10:34-39).
Coming from a time of prayer and fasting for unity and reconciliation in my city, with so many others from so many different branches of the Body of Christ, this image is a little jolting and honestly kind of seems like it’s “cutting against the grain” of what we’ve been praying and doing. Is that right, Lord? ...
What comes to my heart is this: “You have been praying and fasting for revival, not unity. My true unity comes out of right alignment with Me and My Word and My Spirit. I will unite what I will unite, but I will divide what I will divide. And because there is a greater unity of My Body, now I can divide what needs to be divided. I am now cutting out what needs to be cut out and I am stripping away what needs to be stripped away. I am revealing what needs to be revealed. And I am establishing what needs to be established.” ...
This written Word comes to mind to confirm what I sense is Your spoken word in my spirit: “Indeed, the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing until it divides soul from spirit, joints from marrow; it is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And before Him no creature is hidden, but all are naked and laid bare to the eyes of the One to whom we must render an account” (Hebrews 4:12-13).
Yes, Lord. Like the knife exposed the table, let the Word of God, let the living and active words of God You’re speaking by Your Spirit into our hearts, expose the truth and judge our hearts. Cut away any false unity. Cut away compromise with anything that would exalt itself in the place only You are to have in our hearts and in our land.
Bring Your unity. Reveal Your truth. Set Your alignment. Establish Your order. Divide what needs to be divided and unite what needs to be united. By the power of Your grace at work within us and at work within our land, may we be one with You and one with one another -- without compromise, without false unity, without unholy alignment with anything less than Your will and Your ways with Your priorities in our hearts.
Lord Jesus, Your high priestly prayer of true unity, as the Son of Man on this earth before ascending back to the Father, comes to mind:
“But now I am coming to You, and I speak these things in the world so that they may have My joy made complete in themselves. I have given them Your word, and the world has hated them because they do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world.... Sanctify them in the truth; Your word is truth. As You have sent Me into the world, so I have sent them into the world.... I ask not only behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in Me through their word, that they may all be one. As You, Father, are in Me and I am in You, may they also be in Us, so that the world may believe that You have sent Me. The glory that You have given Me I have given them, so that they may be one, as We are One, I in them and You in Me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that You have sent Me and have loved them even as You have loved Me” (John 17:13-23).
In true unity, in right alignment, divide what needs to be divided and unite what needs to be united -- here in my heart, here in our land, here in our world. In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.
Be encouraged today! In the Love of Jesus, Tommy Hays
