Multiplication

"Sadly, many people don't really know true love--that is, God's love for them. I'm talking about a real revelation of His unwavering, unconditional love. This may be an underlying cause of many problems in relationships today. Quite honestly, many people just don't like themselves, and it's mainly due to the lack of a revelation that God, the Creator of the universe, is absolutely crazy about them," writes International Bible Teacher Joyce Meyer in her February 2013 Enjoying Everyday Life magazine.

Booker Taliaferro Washington liked himself even as a boy. People who like themselves seek to improve themselves and other people. Shortly after Washington was freed from African-American slavery as a boy, he was forced into the slavery of child labor. Sometimes he had to go to work starting at 4 a.m. in salt mines and working throughout the day. He also later in his childhood had to work in coal mines. Nevertheless, Washington and his mother schemed together for ways to send him to night school and to home school him. Washington taught himself the English alphabet.

While liking himself, it took some time to get over envy of others who were born into lives with more opportunities. Washington, an educator, speaker, author and Civil Rights Leader who was born into slavery and rose to the top of African-American leadership during Jim Crow segregation, writes in his book, Up From Slavery, about his boyhood, "In those days, and later as a young man, I used to try to picture in my imagination the feelings and ambitions of a white boy with absolutely no limit placed upon his aspirations and activities. I used to envy the white boy who had no obstacles placed in the way of his becoming a Congressman, Governor, Bishop, or President by reason of the accident of his birth or race. I used to picture the way that I would act under such circumstances; how I would begin at the bottom and keep rising until I reached the highest round of success.

In later years, I confess that I do not envy the white boy as I once did. I have learned that success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome while trying to succeed. Looked at from this standpoint, I almost reach the conclusion that often the Negro boy's birth and connection with an unpopular race is an advantage, so far as real life is concerned. With few exceptions, the Negro youth must work harder and must perform his tasks even better than a white youth in order to secure recognition. But out of the hard and unusual struggle through which he is compelled to pass, he gets a strength, a confidence, that one misses whose pathway is comparatively smooth by reason of birth and race." 

Besides his mother, a multiplicity of people helped Washington to overcome the obstacles of being born into slavery. God never meant for us to live lives of isolation. Proverbs 18:1 Amplified Bible says, "He who willfully separates and estranges himself [from God and man] seeks his own desire and pretext to break out against all wise and sound judgment."

Self-centeredness is stupid and Satanic.

Jesus Christ talks to God the Father shortly before Christ is going to be crucified, killed and resurrected in three days from the dead. One of the things Christ asks God the Father for is that all believers may be one as Christ and the Father are one.

The Complete Jewish Bible says in Psalm 133:1, "Oh, how good, how pleasant it is for brothers to live together in harmony."

Francis Chan writes in his book, multiply disciples making disciples, "Jesus prayed that we would be united. Why? So that the world would believe that Jesus was sent by God, and so that the world would know that God loves us. Isn't it amazing that Jesus believed that the unity of His church would communicate all of this to the world? So often we assume that having right and logical arguments will be enough, but Jesus said the world will be convinced by our unity. And when you think about it, haven't we all heard the objections from unbelievers who point to divisions in the church as a cause for their disbelief?

... Jesus prayed for our unity, which means that we have to focus on loving and serving each other. But we need to be doing this in such a way that the world can see what we are doing and recognize it as a picture of unity."

Let's live in advocacy without atrocity. While there is plenty we will not agree on, disagreement does not give us permission to mistreat people.

Try to understand people. Ask God for revelation about why someone is sinning.

Everyone is a candidate from coming into relationship with Christ. Don't write-off anyone. Naomi Zacharias writes in her book, the scent of water grace for every kind of broken, about women who appear to be choosing prostitution, "Someone's willingness to subject herself to something has never made a harmful act any less exploitive (sic) or relieved the offender of responsibility. If this were so, then neither should we intervene on behalf of the abused wife who chooses to endure beatings or the laborer who willingly goes to work in the sweatshop because he needs an income in order to eat."

The answer for everything in life is God. He knows how to change us, so that we can get along with people and do other good things. Jennifer Salinas sings, "Ven A Cristo" ("Come to Christ;") He is "Incomparable" (Incomparable).