Peace With God, Peace With Others

Ray DeLaurier, North Central Regional Pastor

Pastors and members of seven South Dakota CCCC churches gathered in Huron, SD for the Biblical PeaceMaking Seminar. As one of our 7 Guiding Values, PeaceMaking is a high priority. Being at peace with one another is needed in every church because we know that every church is coming out of a conflict, in the midst of one, or will have one in the near future.  Sadly, most are unprepared and don’t handle conflicts well.

This this is quite ironic actually. Believers are called to imitate God (Eph.5:1), and our Father in heaven is called “the God of peace” five times in the NT (Rom.15:33, 16:20, Phil.4:9, 1Thess.5:23, Heb.13:20). Very early in our new life in Christ we learned Rom.5:1, “Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ…” Our eternally disastrous position of being an enemy of God has been eternally renovated and God adopted us His children and we are now at peace with Him. This reality is made more amazing when we grasp the holiness of God compared with an honest look at ourselves.

One has to wonder, if we are at peace with God in spite of the great gulf of righteousness between us, why is it so hard to be at peace with one another, when we are basically the same? Maybe, if we meditate upon being at peace with God, allowing that to transform our minds, we can be at peace with others and He would be glorified.