Peace. The peace spoken of here is not peace we have within ourselves, but peace between one another or harmony with people around us. The opposite of this peace is described well in Isaiah 59:1-8. This is one area in particular where I have seen many problems arise in the church. A harmonious relationship is not necessarily one where people agree on everything all the time. Instead, harmony is cherishing the same views or beliefs. For peace and harmony to exist in our relationships, all of the people in that relationship must share a common belief in the Lord.
People tend to be like animals sometimes and can be territorial, meaning that they defend what they believe to be their territory. Creating tension, expressing anger, bullying others, gossiping, and withholding mercy especially for little things are some of the behaviors that occur in the church. These behaviors are not only found in the church but also out in the everyday world, which is one reason these behaviors end up in the church. Lack of peace is one indicator that the Holy Spirit has, unfortunately, not yet transformed every area of the lives of the people who exhibit these behaviors. The transforming power and work of the Holy Spirit will change the way we handle everyday situations, such as when people mistreat you in the store, on the road, at a park, or anywhere else in the public. This is confirmed in James 3:18, that “righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.”
We will have relationships in which the other person or people do not share our belief in the Lord or they do believe in the Lord but have not allowed the Holy Spirit to completely transform every area of their lives. In such cases, it is impossible to be in harmony with them, however, we can still sow peace. Matthew 5:9 says, “Blessed are the peacemakers.” A peacemaker is a person who intentionally makes peace with others. They sow peace in their relationships. Thus, it is still possible to rise above a difficult relationship by making and sowing peace as often as possible.
In order for the Holy Spirit to transform us completely so that we can sow peace in our relationships, we must allow Him to have access to every area of our lives. This is called complete surrender. One of the marks of surrender is obedience, as it says in Acts 5:32, “And we are witnesses of these things; and so is the Holy Spirit, whom God has given to those who obey Him.” Our obedience is a condition of our having the Holy Spirit dwelling deep within us. In his book, The Holy Spirit: Who He is and What He Does, R. A. Torrey wrote this:
Any will that is set upon pleasing self is a will in rebellion against God; it is enmity against God. There is only one right attitude for the human will and that is an attitude of absolute surrender to God and the whole aim of life should not be to please self at all but to please God in all things… We must put ourselves in such an attitude toward God, by the surrender of our will to God, that the Holy Spirit may use the written Word and make it a living thing in our hearts and thus impart God’s nature to us, and thus we be born again… Many are afraid to make a full surrender to God. They fear that if they should make a full surrender to God, that God would require of them some hard thing or even some absurd thing. Who is your God, anyway? He certainly is not the God of the Bible. The name of God in the Bible is love, ‘God is love;’ and absolute surrender to God is simply absolute surrender to infinite love. Is there anything to be dreaded in that? … When we make an absolute surrender of our wills and all we have to Him, He brings into play all the resources of infinite wisdom and grace and power, to fill our lives with sunshine. He may ask of us things that we would not of ourselves have chosen to do, but if He does, those things will be the very happiest things that we have to do… Oh a filling with the Holy Spirit brings to you not only a peace and joy you never knew before, but a power in God’s service such as you scarcely dreamed was possible, is awaiting the moment when you make a full, unreserved, unconditional, whole-hearted surrender of all you have and all you are to God.
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