Blessed are the Peace Makers: By Tim Kernan
Acts 20:25-31 “Now I know that none of you among whom I have gone about preaching the kingdom will ever see me again. 26Therefore, I declare to you today that I am innocent of the blood of all men. 27For I have not hesitated to proclaim to you the whole will of God. 28Keep watch over yourselves and all the flock of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers.[a] Be shepherds of the church of God,[b] which he bought with his own blood. 29I know that after I leave, savage wolves will come in among you and will not spare the flock. 30Even from your own number men will arise and distort the truth in order to draw away disciples after them. 31So be on your guard! Remember that for three years I never stopped warning each of you night and day with tears.
Selfishness. Indulging in paranoia. Discord. Dissent. Mockery. Defamation. Slander. Hatred. Demonization. Cowardice. Darkness. Discouragement. Despair.
These are words that I would use to describe one of the most horrible times in my life. I was a member of a congregation that had spiralled downwards into a level of bickering and sin that you would not even see in the world. I remember the disorienting hits to my faith as I saw one disciple after another falling away from the faith. Many of them still attended church but a spirit of timidity and darkness had descended over a congregation that had done so much good. After a long and bloody siege, Satan had finally breached the walls.
In many respects it could not have happened any other way. An under prepared and supervised leadership, no real leadership team of disciples, a phalanx of unresolved hurts, a massive group of saints who’s post baptism training and strengthening as Christians had been pretty deplorable.
Going through that left an indelible mark on me. As a disciple who has seen a terrible breakdown like this, it has informed and influenced me probably more than any other event in my life. I remember my discipler saying to me one time “Tim, from the moment you were baptised you have not stopped thinking about the Kingdom. You just love it.” My love for the Kingdom made the breakdown terrible. But being a Political Science major with an insatiable appetite for political philosophy, theories on leadership & team dynamics and case studies of successful organizations only made me more sensitive to the catastrophe. It made it unbearable!
So I stand shoulder to shoulder with every disciple who has seen what Satan can do to friendships and Churches and never wants to see it again. I probably cannot overemphasize that.
That being said, just being afraid of something doesn’t stop it from happening again. In fact Satan is so prepared for that fear that he has done some of his most damaging work through it: victim -hood. If we look around the world in almost every sphere of life people who see themselves as victims are some of the most dangerous people.
As Christ himself said: (Matthew 5: 9) “Blessed are the Peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God”. Another word for disciples, like Christians, is “The Peacemakers”. Our job is to help people have peace with God and with one another. Anyone who missed out on that part of being a Christian should take some time to build that conviction. That means that its part of our job as Christians to sniff out hurts, injustices, pride, discord, etc. and to resolve it.
It is totally wrong to ignore these things, quietly leave them to someone else, or worse yet to encourage sin in any way! Our job is not to be journalists, understanding and explaining problems. We are “The Peacemakers”… we solve them! This can be tough because before we became Christians we often trained ourselves to ignore the 800 guerillas in the room! Problems like alcohol, drug abuse, adultery and sexual abuse especially can warp us into conflict ignorers.
A church of Peacemakers is impenetrable to Satan’s siege engines. To be a peacemaker is to be a good disciple. That means the leader is teachable and submits himself to leadership over him (Presto! A Movement!) he attracts to himself a group of reliable men (2 Tim 2) who will be qualified to teach the rest. They are focused on reconciling the world to God to the point that “His will be done on earth as it is in heaven!” Also reconciling people to one another, especially in the church!
Right now, in the middle of an evangelistic campaign, is when the biblical principles of conflict resolution are important. Firstly because it prevents us from being sidetracked and secondly because it’s the very mission we are focused on: Reconciling people to God!
If we are not doing that… what are we doing? Soon we will be in the very same situations that we have been in before; with Satan’s minions scaling our walls.
Let us be resolved to quickly discover hurts, unresolved conflicts and sin in our midst. Let us be resolved to equip and train every disciple to be a Peacemaker and not just a “service attender”. Let us be resolved to never indulge in selfish discord and dissent which will bring us down. Let us be ever vigilant! It takes courage, it takes guts, but its worth it!
Love,
Tim
