If you are praying for oneness in the Body of Christ, then pray for maturity. If we had oneness without our full maturity as sons, we would create another Babel, another Babylon. The ending of oneness at Babel was part of the futility God imposed on all mankind because of our immaturity and rebellion. As a loving Father God restrains us under futility until we are mature enough to accomplish His will. He will grant us oneness. But first we must have maturity.

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Show Notes:

Yeshua (Jesus) prayed to the Father that those who believe in Him would be one. We know that the Father will answer His prayer, yet when we look at the Church today, we see that believers are very far from oneness. We recognize that it is something we must contend for in the Lord. But more than praying about it we need to strive in the Holy Spirit to understand what it will take for us to be graced with the oneness that Christ spoke of, because the truth is that God Himself blocks it.

At Babel God confused the languages to eliminate the oneness mankind had experienced up to that point. Why? Their oneness would have enabled them to accomplish anything that was in their hearts, and in their immaturity that would have meant their destruction and the destruction of the earth. It was out of God’s love for us that he put us under the restraint of futility to prevent us from destroying ourselves, one another, the earth, and even the heavens.

If we are going to walk with God, He will relate to us as our Father and discipline us as His sons. Just as your earthly father would not give you the keys to the car before you were mature enough to drive, our heavenly Father restrains us lest our actions cause irrevocable damage. He put the restraint of futility on us because He loves us, and He will continue to work with us until we grow up to the point that our will is linked with His and our rebellion is a thing of the past. Then we will have the oneness He desires.

Key Verses:

• John 17:21-22. “That they may all be one.”
• Genesis 11:1-9. “Its name was called Babel, because there the LORD confused the language.”
• John 3:16. “For God so loved the world.”
• Genesis 3:22-24. “God sent him out … to cultivate the ground from which he was taken.”
• Luke 9:52-56. “Lord, do You want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?”
• Proverbs 3:11-12. “Whom the LORD loves He reproves … as a father corrects the son.”
• Hebrews 12:4-10. “What son is there whom his father does not discipline?”
• Hebrews 5:8. “He learned obedience from the things which He suffered.”
• Deuteronomy 8:5-6. “The LORD your God was disciplining you just as a man disciplines his son.”
• 2 Samuel 7:12-17. “He will be a son to Me … I will correct him with the rod of men.”
• Galatians 4:1-7. “As long as the heir is a child, he does not differ at all from a slave.”
• Matthew 6:10. “Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”

Quotes:

• “God, as a Father, treats humanity like a Father. And as a loving Father, He is not going to allow us to hurt ourselves or one another or destroy His Kingdom or the earth.”
• “We may be owners of everything through Christ. We may be heirs of Christ and heirs of the promises, but we are like slaves in the timeframe that we are in. And as long as we remain in our immaturity, He will treat us in that manner and He will continue to discipline us.”
• “Our prayers must be mingled with our process of growing in God to a place of maturity where He is able to answer those prayers.”

Takeaways:

1. The futility of attaining oneness is a good example of what we face as believers. I think God directs us to pray for things that we cannot receive until certain other requirements are met. Therefore, we should understand what those things are and reach into God for the release that we need by entering into what He wants us to become.
2. When God saw mankind in their fallen state, when He saw them in their rebellion, when He saw them in their sin, He recognized that as a loving Father He needed to restrain them. He has not taken away our free will, but He has made it impossible for us to accomplish our will our way without first coming to Him and getting rid of sin, getting rid of rebellion, and growing into sonship.
3. God is still waiting for us to be the ones who do His will perfectly and not serve other gods, to be those who do not walk under the elemental spirits of this age but walk in total submission to Him as our Lord. When we do that, believe me, He will bestow on us the answer to Yeshua’s prayer that be one as He and the Father are one. The body of Christ will be one, but it will be something bestowed on us by the Father.