The glory which You have given Me I have given to them, that they may be one, just as We are one; I in them and You in Me, that they may be perfected in unity, so that the world may know that You sent Me, and loved them, even as You have loved Me. – John 17:22-23

Welcome! The name of this blog is Tributaries. Let me explain what it means. For some time now I have had an image in my mind or a river system with tributaries flowing into it. The tributaries all have a common source, which is a mountain range, above which is the throne of God. The river the tributaries flow into becomes a mighty rushing river of life that eventually covers the whole Earth. This will become a painting at some point. But I believe it has a prophetic meaning.

There are many streams of Christianity. We have come to call them sects or denominations. We in the evangelical stream have seen these as divisive and exclusionary of each other. We observe that each stream thinks they have the truth, therefore other streams must not. Even though we give lip service to unity, we do not have unity in the body of Christ. Unity is much more that agreeing to put differences aside to support a conference or stadium event. True unity of the Spirit is what Jesus was talking about in John 17:22-23. Instead of seeing our differences as in opposition, what if we saw them as complimentary? What if instead of seeing the different denominations forming out of division and strife, we see them as getting progressive revelation? If we could overcome our need to be right, and love value each other, we would start to see some of the unity that Jesus spoke about. I believe this “next wave of revival” will be about this. It may include stadium events, but that will just be the surface of it. We are beginning to see this already with Pope Francis meeting with evangelical leaders recently. Imagine a world where Catholics and Protestants, charismatics and Baptists, all really start to love each other and instead of thinking they are right and all others wrong in some way, we combine the good from all the streams and see a bigger more loving God than we could see by ourselves.

Back to the vision. I see the tributaries as the various streams and denominations. They have a common source, Jesus. They all merge and flow together. Interestingly I didn’t see them losing their identity, but they flowed together and formed a mighty river of life. This river represents the kingdom of God covering the Earth.

How big is your vision? In future blogs I will elaborate on this more. I may do some brave communication to address issues that I see we need to lay aside before this can come to pass. So I ask again: How big is your vision? Are you willing to lay aside your need to be right in order to see John 17:22-23 become a reality and for Jesus to get His full reward? Hop on!