Genghis Khan was a ruthless bloodthirsty world conqueror. He often went on hunts with his pet hawk. On one particular hunt, his party was very successful and departed early that day. Even the pet hawk left to fly home as it was trained to do. Genghis Khan took a different path home. Along the way he became very thirsty and took a detour to find a fresh spring, but when he got there he found it had dried up. He looked around and saw water trickling down over a rock, grabbed a cup out of his hunting bag, and collected the water that was barely dripping. Just as he brought the cup to his lips, his hawk swooped down from the sky knocking the cup out of his hand and spilling the water that had taken so long to collect. Angry, he took his cup and again began to fill it, this time he only waited until the cup was half full. Again as he lifted the cup to his lips the hawk swooped down and knocked the cup out of his hands. Genghis Khan was furious; in anger he grabbed the cup with one hand and his sword with the other. He decided that this time when the hawk flew down, he would kill it. He went to once again fill the cup. As he lifted the cup he saw the hawk fly down, he threw his cup and with one swing of the sword he killed his pet hawk. He looked for his cup but he had dropped it in-between two rocks where his hand couldn’t reach. He was still determined to get a drink. He started to climb the rock, hoping to find the source of the trickle of water. When he reached the top he found a pool of water, he was immediately sorrowful. In the pool of water was a huge dead snake, the most poisonous of its kind. It had contaminated all the water. He no longer thought of his thirst, just the poor bird lying below him. “The hawk saved my life” he cried “and how did I repay him? He was my best friend and I have killed him.” He clamored down the bank, took the bird gently in his hands and returned home.I see a problem in the American church today that is very similar to this story. Genghis Khan, out of anger, struck down his hawk. Killed it! Bye, Bye Birdie. But was the hawk his enemy? The hawk was trying to protect his master from death. Today the church has gotten it’s eyes off of it’s enemy. We as Christians have an enemy. Peter warns us to be alert, “Your enemy, the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour” (1 Peter 5:8-9). God has given us weapons to use in battle, in fact Paul says in his letter to the Corinthian church that our weapons are not the weapons of the world, but they have divine power (2 Cor. 10:3-5). Our problem is we use our weapons on our brothers and sisters, the very people that are on our side. We should be fighting together to defeat the enemy. We are on the same team, why do we fight each other? We fight out of hurt. People that are hurt tend to hurt other people.A situation happened in my church years ago that caused a split. The situation was dealt with in a biblical and accountable manner, but some felt that they could no longer serve in our ministry. Nothing is wrong with this reaction at all; you should follow your convictions whole-heartedly. So as a result of the split, there were a lot of positions in ministry that needed to be filled. Those of us that stayed were swamped with extra responsibilities. We were overworked and stressed because people had bailed out and left us high and dry (so we thought). To make things worse, those who had left began to talk bad about us (which happens a lot when someone leaves a church or fellowship for whatever reason). It hurt to have people you loved and cared about say horrible things about you. We began lashing back in the name of defending ourselves. It got very ugly very fast. It was like this for a long time and still remains today with some people.I see this all over the country. My job allows me to travel the United States and see how all different types of churches and ministries operate. Fighting with each other is something that I see almost everywhere I go. Sometimes it is in the form of cliques in a youth ministry; sometimes it is people that rub each other the wrong way; sometimes it is for “righteous” reasons of defense from other churches’ gossip and slander. Whatever the reason, when we allow the enemy to get our eyes off of fighting him, he wins. He knows that if he can divide us then he can conquer us. We have got to take our weapons off of each other and put them back where they belong, on the enemy.There are hurting people in churches all over this country. There are hurting people that have decided that they will never go to church again, because Christians are the reason for their hurt. These stupid popularity contests or a tiny doctrinal issue that we allow to divide our fellowship affects our evangelism. Jesus said that the world will know us by our love (John 13:35). Today American Christianity is a joke. We are not known by our love for each other, or anyone else for that matter. We are known as always thinking we are right. We are known as hypocrites and liars. We are known as backbiters and gossips. Where is our testimony? Where is our love?We have got to change our thinking. We have got to change our actions. In my situation with my church, God had to change the way I thought about these people that were constantly speaking lies and gossip. I began to pray for them, not in a self-righteous “I’m better than them” way. I began to pray for blessings in their life. I began to see them differently. They still loved God. They still followed the Spirit. They were still going to heaven. They were still my brothers and sisters and I still love them and care about them just as much as when I served with them on a weekly basis. They were not the enemy that I had once looked at them as. They were my best friends and I had cut them and hurt them out of my emotion, out of my anger, and out of my hurt.Musical artist KJ52 says in a spoken word interlude on his 2002 album Collaborations, “If I won’t have beef with you then (speaking of in heaven) then tell me friend why should I have beef with you now?” Ask yourself this question, if I won’t fight against you in heaven, why should I fight now?