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TeacherAide Common Unity SESSION 1
ILLUSTRATING THE POINT Successful Spiritual Warfare Demands Unity In The Good Fight, Mark Buchanan offers four spiritual disciplines to keep fights from scarring your soul. Buchanan uses a movie scene to describe the necessity of unity for the church. General Maximus comes to Rome dirty and shackled. This is not the way it's supposed to be. Where's Rome's legendary pageantry to greet one of her war heroes—the heraldry, the burnished armor, the laurel crown? Where's the honor due him? Maximus comes as a slave. That's the premise of the movie Gladiator. Through a maze of events, Maximus goes from celebrated warrior, favorite of one emperor, to despised traitor, nemesis of another. He becomes a fugitive, then caged slave, then unvanquished gladiator. His growing fame in the arena brings him to the sport's pinnacle: Rome's magnificent Coliseum to face her elite warriors. The games open with a re-enactment of the battle of Carthage. The gladiators, all foot soldiers, are cast as the hapless Carthaginians. It is a stage for slaughter. They are marched out a dark passageway into brilliant sunlight and met with a roar of bloodlust. Maximus, their leader, shouts to his men: "Stay together." He assembles them in a tight circle in the center of the arena: back-to-back, shields aloft, spears outward. Again he shouts, "Whatever comes out that gate, stay together." What comes out that gate is swift and sleek and full of terror. Chariot upon chariot thunder forth. War horses pull, with deadly agility and earthshaking strength, wagons driven by master charioteers. Amazonian warrior princesses ride behind and with deadly precision hurl spears and volley arrows. One gladiator strays from the circle, ignoring Maximus's order, and is cut down. Maximus shouts once more: "Stay together!" The instinct to scatter is strong. But Maximus exerts his authority, and they resist that impulse. The chariots circle, closer, closer, closer. Spears and arrows rain down on the men's wood shields. The chariots are about to cinch the knot. Right then Maximus shouts, "Now!" The gladiators attack, and decimate the Romans. Commodus, the evil emperor, caustically remarks to the games organizer: "My memory of Roman history is rusty, but didn't we beat Carthage the first time?" Whatever comes out that gate, stay together. That echoes what Jesus prayed for us: "May they be brought to complete unity" (John 17:23). And he promises that the gates of hell will not overcome his church. Mark Buchanan, “The Good Fight,” http://www.christianitytoday.com/le/2004/004/23.52.html Leadership Journal, (Fall 2004)
THE MORE YOU KNOWIn Newsweek magazine, Jon Meacham writes that American Christians "are part of what is now the world's largest faith, with 2 billion believers, or roughly 33 percent of the earth's population." Meacham cites the following percentages: Americans who say they are Christians: 81 Americans who believe Jesus rose from the dead: 78 Americans who say Jesus was sent to earth to absolve mankind of sin: 75 Jon Meacham, "From Jesus to Christ," Newsweek (3-28-05), p. 43 Jeremy Bowen, the presenter of a new British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) documentary on Jesus stated, "The important thing is not what he was or what he wasn't—the important things is what people believe him to have been. A massive world wide religion, numbering more than two billion people follows his memory—that's pretty remarkable, 2,000 years on." Bowen couldn't be more wrong. Who Jesus is and what he did is the foundation of our faith. Alan Wilson, Nyon, Switzerland; source: Alex Webb, "Looking for the Historical Jesus," BBC News Online,(3-26-01 column)
THOUGHT I HEARD YOU SAY
"God never put anyone in a place too small to grow." Henrietta Mears “Have you ever thought what a good joke it was when Christ gave Simon the nickname ‘Rocky’?” D. Elton Trueblood “The only omnicompetent Executive chose Simon Peter--a man of great strengths and glaring weaknesses--to lead his fledgling church.” Kenneth D. Quick "The most extraordinary thing about the 20th century was the failure of God to die. The collapse of mass religious belief, especially among the educated and prosperous, had been widely and confidently predicted. It did not take place. Somehow, God survived, flourished even." Paul Johnson
"If Jesus Christ be God and died for me, then no sacrifice can be too great for me to make for Him." C. T. Studd
“Character in a saint means the disposition of Jesus Christ persistently manifested.” Oswald Chambers
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