|
Pastor's September 2009 Message |
|
|
|
|
PEACEMAKINGPeace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid. John 14:27Whoever would love life and see good days… He must turn from evil and do good; he must seek peace and pursue it. 1 Peter 3:10-11 Peace… when you think about it, having peace in our life has got to be one of most important goals we have. It lays the foundation on which other positive experiences in life can be built. Without peace, it’s hard to enjoy what could and should be positive moments in life. The problem is - finding peace can be so very illusive because we can be robbed of it on so many levels: physical (illness, dangers of travel, terrorism), economic (stock market, savings, health care, home care), relational (including, and maybe often, within our own families), and spiritual (guilt and shame). Though Christ came to bring us peace, to be our peace, we so often do not live in peace. Some of the things that rob us of peace are beyond our control. Living in a sinful and fallen world, they simply happen and they test our faith as we give those situations over to our Lord and trust that somehow, He will “cause all things to work together for our good.” And some we bring onto ourselves by our own selfishness and short-sightedness which is also a result of sin, our own sin. But what really robs us of our peace is our perspective on these things. When we learn to approach the potential peace robbing issues of our lives asking different questions, we may find peace “in the midst of the storm” and we may find ourselves bringing peace to others. For example, simply changing the question from “Why me, Lord?” to “Why, Lord?” presents a whole different perspective that takes the focus off of the problem we are experiencing and places it on how we can grow through this problem. Or instead of saying, “Why are you doing this to me?” and asking instead “What role am I playing in this conflict?” takes the focus off of what you can’t control, namely what the other person is doing, and places it on what you can control, namely what you are doing. There are many more examples of things that we can be doing to help us find peace and from that sense of peace become peacemakers. Peacemaking will be our focus this month as we, in the Sunday morning messages, explore the peace that God would bring us. The highlight of this focus will be Sunday, September 20th, when Bryce Thomas, a synodically trained “Peacemaker”, brings us the message on Sunday morning and when he leads us here at Messiah in a workshop on Friday evening, October 2nd, & Saturday morning, October 3rd. Imagine how different your life would be more often if you could experience the peace that Christ died and rose again. Jesus didn’t promise to give us that peace ‘hypothetically.’ He meant for us to experience it in this life. I hope that you will look forward to what you can do to help find more peace and to be a peace-maker.
|
