1334. News + Censorship to Oneness

Since the election, those who have been paying attention know that the public voices of Christians and Conservatives are being censored. Many platforms have already been shut down or cut off. This has quickly become a fact of life. Our freedoms are being systematically stripped away, and we must decide how we will respond. I would like to offer a positive perspective. I believe that many of the things we call freedoms are actually hindrances to intimacy with God, even to the degree of becoming idols. When the things we depend on and enjoy are taken away, we are forced to rely solely on God. Only when He becomes all we have will we learn that He is all we need.

God wants us to see that the days that have come upon us will take us to the place where God has always wanted us to be, a place where His presence is precious, and His Word is our real food. It’s Romans 8:28 in living color. Instead of focusing on what is being taken away, try to see what God is making available to us. Then we can see why adversity is one of God’s most effective tools in building us into men and women He can trust to accomplish His mission of redemption. This is why Jesus came to earth, and it is why God has gone to such great lengths to make us usable. Until God completes His work in us, we will continue to embrace the things that draw us away from Him and each other.

Romans 12:5 says that in Christ we who are many form one body and each member belongs to all the others. In 1^st Peter 1:22 we are exhorted to fervently love one another from the heart when persecution has come upon us. The degree to which we have developed a sense of belonging with others in the Body of Christ will reveal the sincerity of our love for God. Only when we have learned to fervently love one another will our love of our Lord be pure and sincere.

In the coming days we will discover just how much we really need each other and God. We will see just how far short our own efforts have fallen and just how much our “freedoms” have been responsible. We will finally understand why the Church has experienced its greatest growth (spiritually) in times of persecution. While we have become concerned, to put it mildly, over Big Tech’s censorship tactics, God will use all the enemy’s efforts in silencing Christians to bring about the oneness Jesus prayed for in John 17. It’s a spiritual version of “If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself.” After we have shown ourselves incapable in the matter, God will step in and do it for us (just as He will do for Israel as recorded in Zechariah 12:10).

It’s just like our sanctification-a work of the Holy Spirit (1 Peter 1:2), and not a result of our own efforts. Our Heavenly Father knows best, and He, through the work of the Holy Spirit and His divinely appointed circumstances, will cause us to love one another according to His perfect will. As our Christian and Conservative public platforms are silenced, God may be telling us to focus on those around us-those we can minister to in person-those with whom God wants us to become one.