God Speaks through a Kung Fu Movie

I love the cinema of the Asian world. Whether from China, Hong Kong, Japan…their animation, their giant monsters, and especially their martial arts films intrigue me. The other night I was finishing watching the movie "Fearless" staring Jet Li. I was just sitting back enjoying this beautifully photographed and skillfully choreographed martial arts epic when suddenly God snuck up on me. As a big movie fan, I love it when God brings something to my heart through a movie.

In the film, we see Li's character as a child growing up in the home of his father, a wushu master. In once scene we see the father battle with the head of another household who argue that their style of wushu is superior. Even as the boy becomes an adult these battles over who is the greatest master continue, escalating until Li's character kills another master during a battle motivated by revenge. The circle of revenge then continues, and members of Li's family are also killed.

To make a long story short, our hero goes away for many years and eventually returns with a new outlook on life. It was during a scene where he is meeting with an old friend after being away that God spoke. He says to his friend (at least according to the subtitles):

"We have to be very strong for us and for our people. The reason foreigners look down on us is because we are not united. For several years now, we surely were our own worst enemies."

Immediately my brain went to one of the things that has troubled me the most in my spiritual journey of the last year or so…the subject of the lack of unity in the body of Christ. I seem to encounter people, fellow believers, who spend way too much time looking for things to complain about concerning other churches way too often. Everything from style of worship music to how a pastor dresses to whether or not someone ended a prayer with "in Jesus name…" seems to be fair game. In all honesty, it's making me sick.

Pastor Craig Groeschel from Lifechurch.tv said well it when in one of his messages he pointed out that Christians are known more for what we are against than what we are for, and unfortunately, what we against the most is each other. We are our own worst enemies. Why do so many have no interest in the Gospel ? Why do so many look down on it? We are not united.

Groeschel preached a sermon earlier this summer called "Lord Make Us One." The whole sermon is great (check it out here), but one thing he pointed out really hit me. Every Christian needs to hear this. We need to remember that as believers we have just one enemy. It's not the church that likes their music a bit louder than you like. It's not the church where they use King James only. It's not even the church down the road that has triple your attendance. His name is Lucifer, and I'll be he likes nothing more than seeing Christians arguing with each other over the stupidest things.

"Lord Make Us One," what a great prayer. Add to that the name of the movie that in a strange way brought this all to mind for me again…"Lord Make Us Fearless."