Now, more than ever, unity in the Body of Christ is of paramount importance. We need to be His hands and feet in a hurting, confused world. However, the enemy has fabricated plans to thwart God’s Kingdom working in the earth. One of the ways that he does this is by hindering unity in the Body of Christ and dividing it against itself. And when the Church body is not in unity, we are powerless to operate in the earth as God intended.
I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you that ye walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called, 2 With all lowliness and meekness, with longsuffering, forbearing one another in love; 3 Endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. 4 [There is] one body, and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of your calling; 5 One Lord, one faith, one baptism, 6 One God and Father of all, who [is] above all, and through all, and in you all. Ephesians 4:1-6 KJV
This is a teaching by Pastor Henry W. Wright from the archived transcripts. It is a powerful analogy of the enemy’s efforts to overthrow unity in the Body of Christ and a challenge to set us back on track to flow together as God intended as many members in one body, the Body of Christ Jesus.
Spiritual Heart Attacks in the Body of Christ
I had an impression one morning of a metaphor that has to do with the spiritual root of heart attacks. Today I’m talking about three possible causes of heart attacks, each with different spiritual roots: congestive heart failure, angina, and aneurysms. I was meditating on what kills the body, and I remembered the scripture that says the life of the body is in the blood (Lev. 17:11).
The blood carries many things to all parts of the human body; it carries the nutrients and oxygen for the life of every cell, it carries the white corpuscles for immune support, and so much more. We wouldn’t exist very long without blood flowing through our veins.
In the same way, members of the corporate Body of Christ are to carry many ingredients to sustain the Body of Christ. Jesus shed His blood for the remission of sins so that you could flow together in unity.
Fear and unbelief hinder spiritual growth
Congestive heart failure is rooted in fear, anxiety, stress, and torment. It’s when we deny the gospel of God’s provision for our lives. Due to fear and stress, the heart muscle that pumps blood begins to weaken and stiffen over time. And it beats slower and slower until finally, it stops working. And when the muscle freezes, the blood stops flowing, and death is at the door.
God spoke to my heart that His body (the Body of Christ) has stiffened and weakened because of fear. It stiffened because of occultism; it’s listening to another gospel that is not based on what God has said. Unbelief and doubt are right there to weaken it. The moment the Spirit of God speaks to you through scripture or teaching, another voice comes that says, “Yeah, but!” When it really should be: God said it, that’s the way it is, period.
Spiritual death of the church body
So I saw the stiffening of unbelief and doubt, fear and anxiety, envy, jealousy, bickering, bitterness, and anger. I saw it beating slower and slower. Then God showed me that there was nothing wrong with the blood; it just wasn’t going where it needed to go. The body died because the mechanism to carry the blood had weakened and stiffened and failed to perform. He showed me that the body is dying because God’s people are seized up and not flowing into each other like we need to.
Human pride hinders the flow
Then He led me in my thoughts to angina. I began to think about the accumulation of cholesterol and plaque that builds up in the walls of the arteries and the heart vessels. And I saw that there was nothing wrong with the body except for the plaque that was interfering with the blood flow.
Then God showed me a picture of the saints getting together on the edge of the arteries with division, schisms, bitterness, self-hatred, and self-rejection. They were all jockeying for supremacy in pride and idolatry. It was a congregation of apostate saints making null and void what God had created to help the Body survive. And they continued to build up until they began to interfere with the flow of the real source of life. Finally, the arteries became clogged. There was nothing wrong with the blood, but things had come in to clog the lifeline. And finally, the heart muscle began to die, and it failed because blood couldn’t get through.
All the members suffer
In one case, it died because the heart couldn’t beat, and in the other, the heart was beating, but the people were interfering with the flow of God’s power to bring life in and out of the Body.
It could be things like religion or superstition; it could be any number of things. I teach that the spiritual roots of angina are self-rejection and self-hatred, and that could certainly be an issue in the Body of Christ too. But I saw people grouping together around their demonic realities and interfering with God’s will for everyone’s life. The sad thing was this, when the body died because of angina, those that were congested in the veins died as well as the good ones that could have been saved.
Division and strife break the Body of Christ
Then God led me in my mind to the third type of heart failure, which is the aneurysm. In an aneurysm, there’s nothing wrong with the heart muscle; blood flows fine. There was nothing collected in the veins and arteries to cause the aneurysm. But an aneurysm is what happens when what God created is worn thin. The veins become thin, bulge, and then rupture.
Then God began to show me the violence in the church of saint against saint and the bumping and the jostling and the kicking and prodding. There was anger, hatred, violence, division, strife, and rage until finally, the walls that God designed to carry the blood couldn’t handle the pounding anymore and just erupted. And the blood spewed but didn’t go to where it would bring life and health, it damaged the good tissues, and the body died. The body died from the very thing that God gave to sustain it.
God remains steadfast, will we?
And I felt the Holy Spirit speak to my heart, “This is my church, stiffened, weak, clogging the lifeline, and bulging in anger against itself. What happens in the natural is happening in the spiritual. In all of these cases, what I created to sustain my body, spiritually, has never changed from the foundation of the world. But my church has interfered with who I am. I am the blood. I am the life.”
Father God, through the Holy Spirit, as a work of Jesus Christ – the Word, dispenses all things to the body necessary for existence, spiritually, psychologically, and biologically. Your brother is not your enemy; you’re in the same scarlet red bloodstream of Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit in which we all flow together if we are in unity. If we want to establish the Kingdom of God here on Earth, it’s time to open our hearts so the Holy Spirit can have equal opportunity and access to us at all times. We need to open our hearts so that God can come in because all that we ever shall be is in Him.
A prayer for recovery to unity in the Body of Christ
Father, tear down the generational curse of spiritual dumbness and blindness. Take away the spirit of occultism that keeps us from flowing in you. Let us not stiffen. Let us not get stuck in the road. And let us not damage people around us. It’s just counterproductive to our health. Lord, I want your body to live, thrive, and be a vibrant body. One that stands up and the world looks around and says, “Of a truth, their God is in the midst of them!”
Father, give us soft hearts, for you, for ourselves, and for others. And purge whatever interferes with the health of the corporate Body of Christ in the earth. In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.
This is a legacy teaching by Dr. Henry W. Wright
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