Cross Purposes

It's common wisdom that "everybody's got an angle." No one seems to do things out of totally pure motives; there's always a personal agenda at stake as well. Personally I find that attitude/saying a bit cynical. Not everyone is like that, and I hope not everybody (including me) is always like that, at the very least. Nevertheless, people frequently clash because one's agenda doesn't align with the other's; they work at cross-purposes.

That much certainly is universal. Intentionally or not, people work against each other -- even in churches. One group wants blue carpet, one wants red, and subtly the Blues work to tarnish the reputation of the Reds. Meanwhile the Reds are gathering strength to get the carpet changed before the Blues have a chance to object. We call this church politics, and it never seems to stop at just the color of the carpet. They get very vicious very quickly.

Imagine, though, if instead of working at cross-purposes in church, we worked for cross purposes -- the gospel of Jesus Christ. Imagine abandoning personal preferences for the sake of sharing the gospel. Imagine sitting in church every week and simply praising God and worshiping with all you are instead of worrying about who is up to what behind your back. And imagine if no one cared about church politics because we all simply wanted to do the will of God alone. Souls would be saved. Families mended. People loved. God glorified.

Every church should work together exclusively for the purpose of spreading the message of Christ and him crucified -- cross purposes, not cross-purposes. Then the Holy Spirit would bless our worship, our churches, and our souls. Let us do kingdom work.