When you are walking in your flesh, yielding to pride and strife, satan loves it, because in that place, you are zero danger to him at all. You are not going to be moving mountains, not going to be resisting the devil, not going to be having powerful church services – in fact, you probably can barely go to church, you are so out of step with God and His will and His people. So, you will not be very fruitful.
Satan loves strife, because in strife, the Christian has no power. When the elder refuse to teach what the pastor asked, satan is rejoicing. When the worship leader uses their social media to insult the church and the pastor, satan is happy, because there is zero power there. When the team won’t pass to each other, they won’t win games.
But those of us who choose to live above strife, those of us who choose to walk in harmony, in agreement, in peace, we will slaughter satan at every turn – the sick will be healed, the lives around us will be changed, our faith will work and our prayers will be answered.
Can you see how big a deal strife is? And the only answer to strife is to get into agreement in a big, huge, powerful, passionate way. That’s where we can ask whatever we want and it will be done – that’s the benefit of agreement, that’s the power of agreement. Agreement has power, strife has a lack of power. Our challenge is always to overcome evil with good – that is what causes the presence of God to flow through us and that’s what causes the power of God to flow through us.
That is why Amanda and I are like eagles, watching carefully that strife does not get into our church family. We have sadly encountered several people who love strife, they love drama, they might appear sweet on the outside, but behind closed doors, they gossip, they scheme, they play games. These kind of people cause conflict wherever they go. Well, we have to get to the place where we obey every verse of the Bible, including Romans 16.17, which says “mark those who cause divisions and offenses and avoid them”. We cannot afford to have pastors, elders, worship leaders who divide – not if we want to see the glory of God on our lives and bring national change to the UK. It’s that simple. If we want revival, we have to be in harmony with one another.
Nothing stops the power of God flowing like strife. God is not just unhappy with strife, it’s not a mild dislike, He hates it!
There are six things the Lord hates—
no, seven things he detests:
17 haughty eyes,
a lying tongue,
hands that kill the innocent,
18 a heart that plots evil,
feet that race to do wrong,
19 a false witness who pours out lies,
a person who sows discord in a family. (Proverbs 6.16-19, NLT)
God destests it when we sow discord in a family, and that includes a church family. Strife is exceptionally serious, but it is true that many believers are in strife, causing discord in churches. Some seem to be very good at it, skilful at deceiving, lying, causing trouble, pitting people against each other. When someone falls in the church, immediately our pastors have to be careful, because there is always someone who feels their job, their anointing, is to go and tell everyone about it. It’s never your job to gossip, it’s your job to love, and love doesn’t gossip.
Love does not expose other people’s sin, love does not point fingers at believers and pass their gossip around. Love covers sins. Love believes the best of people. Love does not go on social media and lie about people to divide a church. Love shields, restores, helps, cares. Love shows kindness to people.
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