Peace

Finally, brothers, good-bye. Aim for perfection, listen to my appeal, be of one mind, live in peace. And the God of love and peace will be with you. --2 Corinthians 13:11

God has called us to lives of peace. That doesn't mean that in our fallen world there is never a reason to go to battle. The Bible is full of examples of war waged for holy reasons and we are mostly certainly called into battle every day on the spiritual level. What living in peace means is that as much as possible, we are to walk in harmony with one another, particularly with our brothers and sisters in church. Sadly, animosity and division often seem more prevelant in the church than peace and unity. This is not God's plan. God's plan is for peace among His people. Without thinking, we Christians hurt our witness to the world far more than cynics and atheists do when we walk with hostilty and agitation in our hearts instead of God's peace, love, and joy. We have to pick our battles, yes, but even more importantly, we have to remember who the enemy is. Our brothers and sisters are not the enemy, the lost are not our enemy, the guy who cut you off on the way to work this morning is not the enemy. Our enemy is Satan (1 Peter 5:8). He is crafty, he is a liar, and he is out for the destruction of God's people. He wants to use us against God, and he has no qualms about entering the church body to do so. In order to find the peace that God intends for us, we must be able to recognize the enemy and wage war against him rather than against each other. One of the key benefits of staying in the word and in prayer is that we can learn to recognize the voice of God and distinguish His voice from the voice of our enemy. Once we learn to recognize the truth, we find ourselves walking in it more often, and peace and unity become the natural side effects.

Posted by Kim at July 13, 2006 02:33 PM