March 14 – Characteristics of Peacemakers, Part 2

DAILY READINGS FROM THE LIFE OF CHRIST
March 14 – Characteristics of Peacemakers, Part 2
“‘Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God’” (Matthew 5:9).

Continuing from yesterday, let’s look at two more characteristics of peacemakers.

First, a peacemaker helps others make peace with others. Once you see your duty as a peacemaker in the world, you’ll be looking for ways to build bridges between people and God and then to build them between persons.

By definition, a bridge can’t be one-sided. It must extend between two sides or it can never function. And once built, it continues to need support on both sides or it will collapse. In any relationship our first responsibility is to see that our own side has a solid base. But we also have the responsibility to help the one on the other side build his base. Both must be built on righteousness and truth or the bridge will not stand.

Often the first step in the process is to confront others about their sin, which is the supreme barrier to peace (Matt. 18:15–17). Such confrontation usually causes turmoil, yet the way of righteousness is the only way to peace. Sin that is not dealt with is sin that will disrupt and destroy peace.

Finally, a peacemaker finds a point of agreement. God’s truth and righteousness must never be compromised or weakened. But we are to contend without being contentious, to disagree without being disagreeable, and to confront without being abusive. The peacemaker should speak the truth in love (Eph. 4:15).

When you hunger and thirst for holiness in your own life, you’ll have a passionate desire to see those virtues in the lives of others. That’s a true peacemaker.

Ask Yourself

If the desire for peacemaking is missing from your heart, it points to a deeper problem—that your love for others is not what it should be. Would you say this might be true of you? What are the usual symptoms of a heart that’s grown at least somewhat cold toward others?

From Daily Readings from the Life of Christ, Vol. 1, John MacArthur. Copyright © 2008. Used by permission of Moody Publishers, Chicago, IL 60610, http://www.moodypublishers.com.

“See You in the Morning” — Harvest Daily Devotion for 3/14/18

See You in the Morning

And now, dear brothers and sisters, we want you to know what will happen to the believers who have died so you will not grieve like people who have no hope.

—1 Thessalonians 4:13

I heard the story of a Christian man who was on his deathbed and called his three sons into his room. To his two sons who were believers, he said, “Good-bye, my sons. I will see you in the morning.”

Then he turned to his other son, who wasn’t a Christian. With sadness in his voice, he said, “Good-bye, son.”

The son answered, “Father, why did you say, ‘I will see you in the morning’ to my brothers, yet you said ‘Good-bye’ to me?”

“Because you haven’t put your faith in Christ,” his father told him. “I can’t say I will see you in the morning. I’m just saying good-bye, because I don’t think I’ll ever see you again.”

The son began to weep. “But I want to see you again,” he said.

“You have to put your faith in Christ. Then we will be reunited,” his father told him. So his son became a believer that day.

The hope of the Christian is that we’ll see our loved ones again. Death is not the end. It doesn’t mean that we aren’t sad when a loved one dies. We grieve like any person grieves. We cry. The depth of our sorrow is an indication of the depth of our love. If you love someone and they’re gone, then of course you grieve deeply.

But as believers, we also have hope. We know we’ll be reunited with our loved ones who have died in Christ. I believe that thinking about Heaven is one of the best things we can do when we’re grieving. In fact, Heaven becomes much more real to us when we have loved ones there.

We don’t grieve hopelessly; we grieve hopefully. For the Christian, life on earth is as bad as it gets. Better things are coming.

C.S. Lewis Daily – Today’s Reading

Screwtape reveals a powerful tool for distraction:

What we want, if men become Christians at all, is to keep them in the state of mind I call ‘Christianity And’. You know—Christianity and the Crisis, Christianity and the New Psychology, Christianity and the New Order, Christianity and Faith Healing, Christianity and Psychical Research, Christianity and Vegetarianism, Christianity and Spelling Reform. If they must be Christians let them at least be Christians with a difference. Substitute for the faith itself some Fashion with a Christian colouring. Work on their horror of the Same Old Thing.

The horror of the Same Old Thing is one of the most valuable passions we have produced in the human heart—an endless source of heresies in religion, folly in counsel, infidelity in marriage, and inconstancy in friendship. The humans live in time, and experience reality successively. To experience much of it, therefore, they must experience many different things; in other words, they must experience change. And since they need change, the Enemy (being a hedonist at heart) has made change pleasurable to them, just as He has made eating pleasurable. But since He does not wish them to make change, any more than eating, an end in itself, He has balanced the love of change in them by a love of permanence. He has contrived to gratify both tastes together in the very world He has made, by that union of change and permanence which we call Rhythm. He gives them the seasons, each season different yet every year the same, so that spring is always felt as a novelty yet always as the recurrence of an immemorial theme. He gives them in His Church a spiritual year; they change from a fast to a feast, but it is the same feast as before.

From The Screwtape Letters
Compiled in A Year with C.S. Lewis

The Screwtape Letters. Copyright © 1942, C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. Copyright restored © 1996 C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers. A Year With C.S. Lewis: Daily Readings from His Classic Works. Copyright © 2003 by C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers.