Keeping God’s Church in Order.

One of the great prayers of King David is found in Psalm 119:133, “Order my steps in thy word: and let not any iniquity [sin] have dominion [rule] over me.”

Why is it so important to have our steps be ordered in God’s word? “Order is heaven’s first law.”1

But what does it mean to be orderly?

Have your parents ever told you to clean up your room or to pick up your dishes and wipe the table after you eat? Can you imagine what home would look like if no one ever did that? It would be a mess!

Keeping things in order helps us be healthier and happier. Even the angels are in perfect order. Ellen White was shown in vision:

“I have been shown the order, the perfect order, of heaven, and have been enraptured as I listened to the perfect music there. . . . I have seen companies of angels, who stood in a hollow square, everyone having a harp of gold. . . . There is one angel who always leads, who first touches the harp and strikes the note, and then all join in the rich, perfect music of heaven.”2

When Jesus came to this earth, He also did things in an orderly way at the miracle of the loaves: “He commanded [the disciples] to make [the people] sit down by companies upon the green grass. And they sat down in ranks, by hundreds, and by fifties” (Mark 6:39, 40).

Later, when the early Christian church was at work, the believers from all over the world came to study and pray together in their mission to spread the gospel—that they might be able to be a united people, one in spirit. The apostle Paul pleaded:

“Now I beseech you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye all speak the same thing, and that there be no divisions among you; but that ye be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment” (1 Corinthians 1:10).

This is why we need to have General Conference sessions. As we seek to be in order according to the Bible and to be in agreement with our fellow believers, we will enjoy another blessing that the apostle Paul speaks about:

“Be perfect, be of good comfort, be of one mind, live in peace; and the God of love and peace shall be with you” (2 Corinthians 13:11).