The Kingdom Blueprint for Oneness
Caleb Hyers | The Resting Place Apostolic Family | Matthew 6:9-10; Ephesians 3:14 – 4:6; Revelation 7:9-10; Revelation 21:9-14
SYSTEMS DELIVER VISION
My title today is the kingdom blueprint for oneness. There is a blueprint for oneness. It is not just a command. It is not just a prayer in John 17. It is not just an aspiration in our hearts that we would be one, that the church would be one. It is a reality that requires a blueprint.
Every system actually delivers a vision. Whatever your system is will deliver a vision for you. The system of your day will deliver a vision for your day. You are going to find out throughout your day what you are designed for that day. If you wake up at a certain time, you have an alarm clock, you eat breakfast, you get ready, and you go to work — that is one system. But if you have a system of no alarm clock and you just hope the roosters wake you up, and then you show up late to work — that was a system that designed the output. Systems deliver vision.
And there are blueprints in the scripture. There is a blueprint in the Lord’s Prayer that is a sort of system that will deliver the vision of oneness. I am grateful to God that he has not just said, “Hey, be one,” and when we ask how, said, “Figure it out.” He said, “I have a way for you to do that.” So I want to get into that today — his blueprint for oneness.
It is right out of Matthew 6:9-10. You know this scripture. It is the Lord’s Prayer. Jesus said:
Pray then like this: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
That is not the whole prayer, but that is the part that carries a blueprint for oneness. And I am going to show you why.
THE CHURCH’S FRAGMENTATION IS NOT A FAILURE OF ORGANIZATION
Oneness is hard. Loving one another is hard. Loving each other like family is hard. And although there is a blueprint for oneness and although God gave us systems, I do not believe that oneness or the lack of it, unity or the lack of it, is an organizational problem. I do not believe we need to reorganize or organize better. I believe the church’s fragmentation is not a failure of organization. It is a failure of family identity.
If we knew who our Father was, we would easily recognize our siblings.
We cannot organize our way out of this. We cannot whiteboard our way out of it. Organizational planning is not the solution. Family identification is the solution. I wholeheartedly believe our struggle for oneness in the capital-C church — not just Tampa, not anyone in particular — is rooted in our desire to have everyone else look like us rather than every one of us looking like unique expressions of the Father.
I will say it again: our struggle for oneness in the church is rooted in our desire to have everyone else look like us rather than every one of us looking like unique expressions of the Father.
IT IS ABOUT A FATHER, A FAMILY, AND A FUTURE
This prayer in Matthew 6 contains a paradigm of prayer. It contains a paradigm of how we are to see God. “Our Father who is in heaven, holy is your name.” It is a paradigm of how we are supposed to see God and how we are supposed to see one another. It shows us how to operate in the kingdom in a very important way. And it is not about organizational success. It is about a father, a family, and a future. A father, a family culture, and a glorious future in God. It is all contained in that prayer.
That prayer starts with “our Father.” It does not say “my Father.” It would have been fine if Jesus said, “Pray this way — my Father, you are my dad. Abba, Father.” But he said, “Pray this way: our Father.” Our Father. This matters more than I think we understand.
EVERY FAMILY IN HEAVEN AND ON EARTH IS NAMED FROM ONE FATHER
Paul was attempting to bring the Ephesian church into this understanding. He labored over it. The book of Ephesians is a letter and the chapter markings were not there originally, so I am going to read from Ephesians 3 right into Ephesians 4 so you can see the whole concept in the letter.
Ephesians 3:14-21:
For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith — that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us — to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.
Ephesians 4:1-6:
I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit — just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call — one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.
If bearing with one another in love is not a family assignment, I do not know what is. Where do you do that most? Your house. And it does not say attain. It says maintain. Eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
Every family in heaven and on earth is named from one Father. The glory we give to Jesus throughout all generations is supposed to be given as a family unit. A cruel father produces cruel children. But a kind father produces children of the same kind. We are called to carry our Father’s likeness as one family. That is the core of this blueprint.
THE UNITY OF THE SPIRIT IS FAMILIAL LOVE
The unity of the Spirit is familial love. It is family love. It says, “You are my brother. You are my sister. We are family. We have one Father.” That is the unity of the Spirit. There are many spirits of unity, but only one unity of the Spirit. The crowd that crucified Jesus had a spirit of unity. The Tower of Babel had a spirit of unity. The Republicans have a spirit of unity. The Democrats have a spirit of unity. That does not make it the unity of the Spirit.
We need to be eager to maintain not a spirit or an event or a process or an application of unity, but the unity of the Spirit. Unity of the Spirit is not about doing the same things. It is about doing everything with the same head, the same Father. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of the Father.
And then it says, maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. What holds it all together? Peace. This is the shalom peace of God. It means nothing missing or lacking. That means we need your part and you need mine. We all need all the pieces in the same place together. Nothing missing or lacking. It also means no divisions. That is what the word peace means. Wholeness.
So the core of heaven’s blueprint — the kingdom blueprint for oneness — is that we have one Father. One Father. Our Father. We have to get this right.
THE KINGDOM OF GOD IS THE CULTURE OF FATHER GOD
Then the prayer goes on: “Your kingdom come, your will be done.” I look at this as the family culture. The kingdom of God, the will of God, is the culture of Father God. This is intentional by the Father. My family has an intentional culture. We have something called the Hyers Way. Every night when I put my boys to bed, I say, “Who can tell me the Hyers Way?” And they say it: “We honor everyone. We never give up. We are always thankful and we go with Holy Spirit.” I am chanting that into their soul every night, branding it in there — so that it is cultural for them, so that it is just who they are. God has done the same thing.
Jesus said in John 8:36, “My kingdom is not of this world.” We cannot look to the world for a blueprint for oneness in the kingdom. We cannot look to the world for a blueprint to advance his kingdom. And yet the church has adopted so many worldly systems. If an org chart shows a person at the top and then people in a triangle, top down — Jesus said, “You will not lead that way.” So how does it make it on an org chart? We adopted a worldly system.
Not here. I am fighting for the bottom. You do not sit under my teaching. I am not your covering. I am too heavy to be your covering. I am a foundation piece. You take the foundation of this building and put it on the roof — what is going to happen? Everybody gets hurt. Welcome to the Western church. We have foundations trying to be coverings.
If the king is holy, then the kingdom is holy. He has a way. We need to walk in the way. He is called the way. The ends do not justify the means. The way matters. The way we do it matters. He called himself the way, the truth, the life. If we do not do it his way, we are not doing his thing.
The culture of the Father’s family is love expressed through holiness. What does that look like? It looks like the fruit of the Spirit.
Galatians 5:22-23: But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such things there is no law.
Romans 7 says we should bear fruit for God. Fruit has the likeness of what it is rooted in. So the culture of the family of God is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness. And the blueprint has to be executed with love, with joy, with peace, with patience.
I have observed people doing things in the name of the Father very unlike the Father — doing things in the name of Jesus in a way that Jesus said you will never do it. I just hope whatever is being done in his name is being done by heaven’s blueprint.
ON EARTH AS IT IS IN HEAVEN — THE GLORIOUS FUTURE
Finally, we have the Father and the family. Now the third bucket: the future. Where is that in the prayer? On earth as it is in heaven. There is a glorious future that we all have in the Lord. It is in the scriptures in Revelation 7. John is having a vision of heaven.
Revelation 7:9-10: After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!”
The blueprint is a family because we have one Father — not because we all look or talk or sound the same. Every nation, tribe, people, and language said “our God” and it sounds like their Father. They did not all get into heaven and learn a new language. They took their language with them. They said the same thing in their own language. And we are down here trying to get everybody to say the same thing in our language. That is not the kingdom blueprint.
We have to retain our unique expression in order to have oneness. Just like the body is many parts — many parts, one body. The eye should not be telling the elbow, “You need to be more eye-like.” But they are all exalting our God and the Lamb that was slain at the same time with the same phrase in different languages. They are not all saying it in one language. They are saying the same thing in diverse languages.
MANY GATES, ONE WAY — REVELATION 21 AND THE NEW JERUSALEM
That is not the only picture in the book of Revelation. Revelation 21 gives us a picture the new Jerusalem has 12 gates. Many gates, but there is one way. There is one throne. There is one center.
Revelation 21:9-14: Then came one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues and spoke to me, saying, “Come, I will show you the Bride, the wife of the Lamb.” And he carried me away in the Spirit to a great, high mountain, and showed me the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God, having the glory of God, its radiance like a most rare jewel, like a jasper, clear as crystal. It had a great, high wall, with twelve gates, and at the gates twelve angels, and on the gates the names of the twelve tribes of the sons of Israel were inscribed — on the east three gates, on the north three gates, on the south three gates, and on the west three gates. And the wall of the city had twelve foundations, and on them were the twelve names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb.
That is the blueprint for oneness, y’all. The gates are all named after the 12 sons of Israel, the 12 sons of Jacob. There is one Father, 12 boys. There is the eternal Son in the middle, but it is many sons and daughters that are actually the gate for that way — they are the gate for the way. They all have their own personalities. Judah, Reuben, Gad, Asher, Naphtali, Manasseh, Simeon, Levi, Issachar, Zebulun, Joseph, Benjamin. All 12 are named in the book of Revelation. And they represent 12 gates for the one way.
What I see this as is this: every ministry has its own expression at its own gate.
WE ARE ONE GATE — EVERY MINISTRY HAS ITS OWN EXPRESSION
We have a gate. The Resting Place is Judah. My firstborn is named Judah. There was a whole prophetic word about me and Jamaris having twins — I think we did. We have Judah, my son, and we have Judah, the Resting Place. What is Judah in the Bible? Judah historically is the kingmaker. That is where kings are anointed. They are the entrepreneurials, the business people. We have so many business owners here. We are kingmakers, entrepreneurial, celebration-oriented, and loud. Judah means shout. You are wondering why we always shout in worship? Because we have a gate to operate here. There is a shout that has to come out of the Resting Place. I know the irony — nobody can sleep while you are shouting. But this is just the way the Lord designed it.
We are one gate. We are actually only one part of one gate. Others even in Tampa operate from the same gate of Judah. And there are other gates in our city. There are other ministries that operate from a different gate. All 12 are needed for the kingdom blueprint for oneness.
Why did God not make one gate? Why did God not say, “Here is the new Jerusalem, go in one way”? There is one way, there is one Shepherd — but he is in the middle. And he designed it so that we would be gateways for the way. The gate for the way.
And this ministry is one gate. Listen: we should not have dividing walls between us. We should have connecting ones. There should be walls, but they should not be divisive. There should be walls between us — strong walls, built to last — and they should connect us, not divide us. We need to be locked gate to gate to gate with strong walls of connection. And that means we need physical moments where we are literally connected and all together.
This is why Together Pentecost is a prophetic moment. It is a true picture of one family celebrating one Father with its unique expressions — 12 children, many gates, one way. We have to do it. We have to do it in the face of difficulty, in the face of hardship. We have to do it. It is God’s blueprint for oneness.
THE BLUEPRINT IS A FATHER, A FAMILY, AND A GLORIOUS FUTURE
The kingdom blueprint for oneness has one King of Kings. It has one Lord of Lords. It has one head of a diverse body made of many parts. It has one church with many congregations. It has one Father with many diverse children. The blueprint is a father, a family, and a glorious future. The question is: will we build from that blueprint, or will we choose another?
Are we going to choose the system of the world? Are we going to choose a way that another congregation or another region is doing it because it worked for them? Or are we going to let God’s blueprint birth God’s vision?
This matters to me. I am laying my life down. I am laying down hours and energy and time for this. It matters. The Resting Place will be there next week. The Resting Place will be at the Crossing next week. It is not about you. It is our Father who is calling us together in one place. And we are going to be there and we are going to celebrate him.
If you feel you cannot be there, maybe this is not your gate. I am fine with that. This is who we are. Nothing about it is easy. This has been a rough few weeks. Ask those closest to me. It is painful, actually. And it is worth it.
This is us submitting to the blueprint the Father gave us. Showing up, worshiping the Lord, not needing our brand or our way or our gate. We are gathering at the throne. We are gathering at the throne and letting him be enthroned in Tampa Bay. The authority over Tampa is Jesus. Amen.
Transcript of a message delivered at The Resting Place Apostolic Family — Tampa Bay, FL — trpfamily.org