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For Christ himself has brought peace to us. He united Jews and Gentiles into one people when, in his own body on the cross, he broke down the wall of hostility that separated us. Ephesians 2:14 NLT
Without Christmas there would be no Easter. Without sacrifice there can be no forgiveness. Without love, there can be no unity. Without unity there can be no peace.
Hours before Jesus was brutally murdered he knelt in the garden to pray. He prayed for strength for the upcoming test of endurance. He prayed for a way out. He prayed for the unity of his followers.
He could have prayed for our courage since we would experience hatred because of his name and even be killed because we were his followers. But he didn’t. He prayed for unity.
It’s important to remember that unity does not mean uniformity. He never asked that we would think alike, act alike, speak alike and like all the same things. In fact, one of his followers, the Apostle Paul, says that divisions among us can be useful for the health of the body (1 Corinthians 11:19).
Jesus prayed for us to be unified because he knew the Father was a God of creativity. While we are all made in his image, we are certainly different from one another! How boring would life be if everything in nature was green. The grass, the water, the sky, the rocks the trees?
God knew what he was doing when he created us in his image and consequently with a creative component. Ironically, perhaps, it’s our differences that make unity beautiful. I like to think of unity in the way illustrated by an orchestra. Each instrument playing its part but in harmony with those around it.
Jews and gentiles? Gay and Straight? Black or white? Republican or Democrat? The body of Christ is made up of all of these. The unifying factor isn’t heritage or denomination or ethnicity or orientation. The unifying factor is Jesus. The result is peace on earth and goodwill to those in whose God finds favor.
Jesus came to be the example of how we can live in unity. His birth in the manger was to be one with us. His death and resurrection destroyed the walls of hostility so that, different as we are, we can live in solidarity because of him. Unity is not uniformity, but unity is peace and peace is power.
People who accept discipline are on the pathway to life, but those who ignore correction will go astray. Proverbs 10:17
No one likes discipline. Let’s face it. Discipline is hard, painful and sometimes embarrassing.
Unfortunately, discipline is often confused with punishment and for good reason. Both are painful. Both are often the result of our own decisions, regardless of the intent of those choices.
Psychologists define the difference as: “Discipline means “to teach,” while punishment means “to correct or cause pain.”
Punishment’s goal is to ‘make you pay’ for your crime. Discipline guides you to restoration.
Disciple is done in love; punishment is done in anger.
Discipline requires relationship; punishment does not.
Discipline results in life-long lessons, punishment causes short term results and life-long scars.
Does God punish or discipline?
All have sinned against God. All deserve his punishment, but Jesus took that punishment on the cross.
God will discipline us because he wants us to be the best we can be. It may be painful, but his discipline is always done in love and for our good.
Therefore, since we have been made right in God’s sight by faith, we have peace with God because of what Jesus Christ our Lord has done for us. Romans 5:1
All the ‘Bible people’ had a dark side. If a background check were given to any of them, it would come up dirty.
Adam was a man who failed to take leadership.
Abraham slept with his wife’s servant girl.
David was a lust-filled, murderous, absentee father.
Samson was arrogant.
Isaiah struggled with his mouth.
All of these men and more had a part of their lives which betrayed the picture of perfection we’d like to elevate them to.
Yet, time and again, God refers to these men as his friends and men after his own heart. They were far from perfect. But God has a tendency to use imperfect people for amazing results.
The natural human tendency when we love someone is to do things that please them. Human love is performance based, Godly love is positionally based.
Human love lives or dies based on what you do. God’s love perseveres because of what he did through Jesus.
In Jesus we have peace with God. That’s positional. Sin in our lives may rob us of the peace OF God, but not peace with God.
Be thankful that peace with God isn’t dependent on your actions but on his action. We fail. We doubt. We procrastinate. But he remains faithful.
Lord, my heart is not proud; my eyes are not haughty. I don’t concern myself with matters too great or too awesome for me to grasp. Psalms 131:1
We’ve all met that person. You know the kind. The person that always interrupts you to tell you that they ‘know what you mean’.
Another variation is the person who always knows exactly what you should do in ever situation because they have been there and ‘this is what they’ve done.’ If you don’t know anyone like that it may be because you ARE that person.
King David, mighty and powerful as he was, didn’t hesitate to admit that he didn’t know everything. Humble people aren’t people who degrade themselves, they are people who realize their own limitations and would rather listen than talk because they know that they will gain more knowledge by listening than they will by talking.
In a culture where many get their information from social media, truth becomes more clouded. Yet David implies in this verse that he won’t get involved in arguments he knows nothing about, but will put his faith in the knowledge he gets from God.
In spite of the many Biblical resources we have available to us, we are more and more Biblically illiterate! The source of all knowledge needs to come from God’s word and not social media.
Be careful who you listen to. The only real source of truth is madly in love with you and has promised that the closer you draw to him, the more you will be able to discern truth.
After the sun went down and darkness fell, Abram saw a smoking firepot and a flaming torch pass between the halves of the carcasses. So the Lord made a covenant with Abram that day and said, “I have given this land to your descendants, all the way from the border of Egypt to the great Euphrates River— the land now occupied by the Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaites, Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites, and Jebusites.” Genesis 15:17-21
Some think Grace is a New Testament thing, but Grace is a thread that begins in Genesis and will continue through all eternity.
The story in these verses is one of grace. God seemingly randomly calls a man named Abram to a new land of promise. Abram was anything but perfect, yet he believed God and God credited it to him as righteousness. Grace. It’s about believing, not action.
God tells Abram to cut up two animals and lay them in such a way that there was a walkway between them. Later, God appears in the form of a smoking fire pot and flaming torch. In ancient days, a covenant was finalized by both parties passing through the carcasses, but here, only God passes through.
Grace isn’t a two-person event, but God reaching down to mankind knowing full well he could not fulfill his end of the bargain. If you know the history of this Abram (later Abraham) you know his descendants constantly rejected God and his ways. They rebelled. They fought against each other (the ultimate family feud) they worshipped other idols.
But God’s grace continued to put up with them, and in Jesus their salvation was complete.
Amazing grace, how sweet the sound. My chains are gone. I’ve been set free! You are always within the reach of God’s grace. His covenant promise is for all eternity.
Mike Fisk & Built with Grace 