Category Archives: Faith and Practice

Peace in the Church

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“Blessed are the Peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.”
(Matthew 5:9)

I was taught long ago that “If two people agree on everything all the time, one of them is unnecessary.”  One should expect to face conflict or difficulty in every relationship.  Best friends, spouses, teammates, colleagues; no matter how much you love and care for one another, there will come a time when you don’t see eye-to-eye, when you struggle to get along, and when it may seem easier to just give up and walk away than to stay and work things out.

The same goes for the church.  We are, by definition, a community of the redeemed; each of us are sinners who have been saved by grace and called to new life in Jesus Christ.  We are striving for the Promised Land, each of us called to encourage, exhort, teach, and pray for one another along this pilgrimage.

There are times when the Church is a thing of beauty, a glimpse into the splendor of the coming Kingdom of God.

Then there are times when it is not.  There are times when the Church looks like the triage center of a battlefield hospital, where those wounded by sin and pierced by death come for healing and life, and that healing takes time.  There are times when the old wound is aggravated, when we forget that the guy we’re arguing with is our brother in Christ, and we forget who we have been called to be.

Friends, there is no perfect Church.  There never has been.  Every church that’s mentioned in the Bible had its faults.  Even the Church in Ephesus, of whom Paul writes such glowing praise, in the book of Revelation is chastised for having “lost its first love.”  The Church in all its glory, is still just a foretaste of the coming reality of Heaven; like an appetizer, always leaving us wanting for just a bit more.

We need to remember that every member, and every leader, of the church is a sinner redeemed by Christ.  None of us has reached our destination.  None is above reproach.  We are all still limping between the “works of the flesh and the fruit of the Spirit.

Works of the Flesh

 Fruit of the Spirit
Sexual Immorality, Impurity, Sensuality, Idolatry, Sorcery, Enmity, Strife, Jealousy, Fits of Anger, Rivalries, Dissensions, Envy, Drunkenness, Orgies

Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Faithfulness, Gentleness, Self-Control

As a Church living in the power of the Spirit, peace, not warfare should characterize our relationships.

“We have been called by God to let Christ’s peace rule in our lives as we relate to one another since we are “one body” in Christ.  Each member, then, is responsible for the peace and unity of the local church.  Each individual makes a difference as to the outcome of any conflict in the church.  Imagine what it would be like to be part of a church in which every member thinks of himself as one of God’s own “peace corps.”  Each member would face conflict by thinking and acting as a peacemaker.  Each would work for a just and righteous peace rather than competing against one another to win a fight or to beat down the opposing party.  Every church in the New Testament struggled with maintaining unity and harmony.  It is no different today.  Without constant peacemaking efforts, all churches will eventually break apart or live in perpetual warfare.”*

*(Adapted from Alexander Strauch, If You Bite and Devour One Another, Lewis and Roth Pub, 2011.)

Where do you stand as a peacemaker in your Church?  Do you see those who differ with you as opponents and obstacles to overcome, or as brothers and sisters in Jesus Christ?  Do you begin by giving others around you the benefit of the doubt, assuming that they have the best of intentions at heart, or has sin so jaded your heart that you automatically assume that everyone is out to get you?  Do you freely extend the forgiveness that God has given to you to those around you, or has forgiveness and grace become a commodity to be rationed to only the deserving?

Friends, may the grace and peace of our Lord Jesus Christ reign and rule in your hearts and in His Church today!

SDG

Oh, Be Careful Little Eyes What You See

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“I will not set before my eyes anything that is worthless.”
(Psalm 101:3)

I am a recovering TV junkie.  I never needed a TV Guide, I knew the schedule by heart.  If challenged today, I could probably tell you within the first 5 minutes of each “Law and Order” episode who did it and why.  Same with “Gilligan’s Island,” “The Brady Bunch,” “M*A*S*H*” – name me an 80’s or 90’s TV show, I probably saw it.  I cannot begin to estimate the number of hours wasted in front of the TV; it would be depressing to even venture a guess.

A couple of years ago my family “cut the Cable.”  We were paying for a couple hundred satellite channels, but always complaining that nothing was on.  The price for this “entertainment” kept going up, but the quality kept going down.  That, and I knew that I was watching too much TV, and my children were beginning to follow in my habits.

Since we left TV behind, some amazing things have happened.

We talk a lot more as a family.  Sure, our children are getting older, and their schedules are hectic.  We spend a great deal of time shuttling them from one place to the next.  There’s not a lot of time for TV.  But when we are home, it doesn’t have to be on.

We read more too.  We go outside to play (when outside isn’t covered in snow).  In general, I cannot think of one adverse effect from having disconnected the “idiot box.”

That being said, I read recently that the daily average of television viewing in the US is 5 hours.  That’s 5 hours a day.  The same report showed that while the average American youth will spent 900 hours per year in school, the average youth will watch 1200 hours of TV.  By the age of 18, an average television watcher will have seen over 150,000 violent acts on TV, and been enticed by over 16,000 television ads.

Compare this to recent studies regarding Americans and their Bibles.  A 2013 study by the Barna Group showed that while more than half of Americans think the Bible has too little influence on a culture they see in moral decline, yet only one in five Americans read the Bible on a regular basis, according to a new survey.  The study revealed that 57% of those who have a Bible read that Bible less than 4 times a year.  A year!

Here’s an interesting experiment for you to try:  take a small notebook and right down at the end of each day how many hours you spent watching TV and how many hours you’ve spent reading the Bible.  That should be quite revealing.

My dad used to have a sign above his computer that simply said, “GIGO” which is simply translated, “Garbage in Garbage Out.”  The basic premise is that no matter how sophisticated the computer, what you put in is what will come out.  If you enter flawed and erroneous data (garbage in), the results will be flawed and erroneous (garbage out).

Now I don’t want to equate the human mind to a computer by comparison, but the saying “Garbage In, Garbage Out,” applies to our lives just as much as it does to our computers.  If all you feed your mind is lies, garbage, nonsense – the stuff that’s on the “boob tube” – it stands to reason that you can expect your life to be filled with lies, garbage and nonsense.  How can you “set your mind on things above” if it is constantly being filled with the things below?  The apostle Paul put it this way, “Bad company ruins good morals” (1 Cor. 15:33).  How much time are you spending with your TV?

I know how tempting it can be.  You come home after a long day at work, and all you want to do is “turn on, tune in, and drop out,” to “veg”.  But we don’t, we can’t really “veg.”  The problems at work, the things said about you in the hall between classes, that stuff keeps running through your mind. We hope the TV will drown out all the stress, but it just pushes it off till later, and gives us some pretty terrible advice on how to deal with out issues.  All those voices clamoring for your attention will lead you down the primrose path.

Turn instead to God’s word.  Begin and end each day with God’s Word of truth, the truth that establishes the way you look at the rest of the world.  Begin and end each day with God’s Word of promise, and let that promise be the source of your hope and peace.  Begin and end each day with God’s Word of love, forgiveness, and grace in Jesus Christ, and allow that love to be the strength and source of your love.

Grace and peace,

SDG

PS – I highly recommend reading this – A Stranger in our Home