BVOV Magazine 2013 - present

That’s a powerful way to pray! But you can’t successfully pray that way if, right after you say, “Amen,” you go right back to living in strife. For your prayers to be effective, you must cultivate a lifestyle of love and agreement. You must make it your habit to be sweet and lovely to one another. You must make living in harmony and walking together in love the goal of your marriage. If you’ll do that, not only will your prayers be answered, you’ll never be bothered with divorce. The subject won’t even come up. When husbands and wives are both loving each other with the love of God, they don’t want to leave each other; they want to be together! They want to keep enjoying one another’s company. Keeping strife out of your home will also benefit your children because, for better or for worse, you’re always setting patterns for them. They naturally tend to reproduce what they see in you so, when they grow up, their home will probably be much like yours. Even children who don’t like the way things are in the home where they’re raised, usually wind up following their parents’ example. Children who grow up with alcoholic parents, for instance, are likely to have problems with alcohol themselves. Children who grow up with abuse, even though they hate being subjected to it themselves, will often perpetuate that abuse with their own children. Whether you live for God or you live for the devil, you’re leaving an inheritance for your children and grandchildren. So, give them a heritage of love and peace and well-being. Teach them to treat strife as an enemy, and to live in harmony and love at home. Don’t Damage Your Spiritual Reputation Another very important place strife must be treated as an enemy is in the local church. If Satan manages to stir up strife there, he can rob a whole body of believers of their effectiveness and influence for God on the earth. He can use their conflicts with one another to give Christianity a bad name. We’re to be known in the world for the way we love each other (John 13:35). So when strife erupts among us, it damages our spiritual reputation. It becomes a tool the devil can use to convince people that Christianity is just another religion without any real life or power in it. Strife is a powerful weapon of Satan! It can stop the Body of Christ because everything we do for God must be done by faith. Since faith works by love, believers can’t be in strife and faith at the same time. Therefore, strife can actually paralyze revival in the earth. It can keep individual believers from growing spiritually and being witnesses for Jesus. It can thwart the advancement of the kingdom of God. “For the whole Law [concerning human relationships] is complied with in the one precept, You shall love your neighbor as [you do] yourself. But if you bite and devour one another [in partisan strife], be careful that you [and your whole fellowship] are not consumed by one another” (Galatians 5:14-15, "Amplified Bible, Classic Edition"). Talk about a dangerous foe! Strife is an enemy that can cause a whole church to be consumed. It can put entire congregations under Satan’s thumb. It can cause us to stop walking in the spirit and step over into the realm of the flesh. However, if we get into harmony and agreement, we will be doing those things. We’ll be defeating the devil at every turn because agreement will get us out of the flesh and back in the spirit. It will allow our faith to work so that whatever we ask in prayer will be done for us (Matthew 21:22). Agreement is God’s answer to strife! It turns the tables on the devil and enables us to “overcome evil with good” (Romans 12:21). It causes God’s presence to manifest in our midst. The more we promote an atmosphere of harmony in the Church, the more of His power He’ll pour out through us because He’ll be able to trust us to not hurt anyone. This is why Ken and I are so watchful to keep strife out of our ministry. We’ve seen what can happen when someone comes in with a strife-prone personality. That person can cause conflict to erupt wherever he or she goes. On occasion, we’ve had some people here who did that, and we didn’t keep them around very long. Even though we loved them, we followed the instructions in Romans 16:17 which says, “Mark them which cause divisions and offences…and avoid them.” We can’t afford to have dividers on our staff! For THE BLESSING of God to operate in this ministry in full measure, we have to be in harmony with one another. If there’s conflict among us, the anointing won’t flow like it should. 30 : BVOV

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