Lost In the Prairies.....Found by God

Last week my husband was playing on Youtube and watching his favourite comics. After a while he found a skit by Emo Phillips (NB: not for the easily offended) that made us laugh out loud. It was the type of joke that you want to tell others, but can never get it right.

However, it got me thinking about the Church. How many of us when asked about "What are you?" answer Baptist, Christian Reformed, Methodist, etc..... Growing up, the only religions I knew were Catholic, Anglican, United, Methodist, and Presbyterian. I didn't realize how many other denominations there actually were. I studied the break of the Catholic Church in history, but never knew the reason for the breaks within the Protestant Church or how soon they had come.

After I became a Christian within the Christian Reformed Church (Calvinist), I started to see the difference. In fact, when I visited with my future sister in law, before becoming a Christian, she told me about the break of her own church and that some people had stayed and some people had left and that neither to two spoke. In the church I attended , there was a visible difference between services - earlier being traditional and later being contemporary. I couldn't understand the rift and why people couldn't work it out, instead of pointing fingers as to who started it and who carries it on (still an issue at that same church today).

Even now, I hear about differences in denominations and the arguments over them. My husband and I just started attending a Free Methodist Church. When I mentioned to our new pastor that we had come from a Christian Reformed Church, she was shocked about us coming to a Wesleyan church.

God then calls us to be unified in all things as we are united in Christ. We may have differences of opinions over believer's baptism vs. infant; traditional hymns vs. contemporary praise and worship; teachers (Calvin, Knox, Wesley, ...)...... Are we not all believers in Christ? Do we not all follow Him and honour Him. Maybe its because of who I am that I find the divisiveness so disheartening. Most of my Christian friends are from many other denominations. We may have difference of opinions over doctrine, but have we had large fights over them and then never spoken to each other again - NO! The arguments over doctrine and denominations is so bad that Bible Study Fellowship (an interdenominational bible study) have a rule that you are not to mention the denomination you attend so that you do not offend others.

Luckily for us that God gives us grace! Grace to forgive and to be forgiven. How many of us have judged someones beliefs and discounted them before we really studied and prayed about it? Have you been victimized by other Christians over your beliefs and have you forgiven them?