Peace is Possible

I have spent a lifetime reading the news and seeing images of Arabs and Israelis fighting. From the Munich kidnapping and killing of Israeli athletes to the 50 innocent men women and children killed in a Mosque by a Jewish radical there has been bloodshed everywhere. We have grown immune to hope almost as if this is something we must expect…but we do not!

Where in the Bible is it written that this is God’s plan? Peace is possible. Even if everyone else in the world laughs at the hope of an accord we as Christians are required by God to pray for the impossible. We may forget that at Camp David in August of 1978 Israel and Egypt signed a peace treaty. Why not today between Israeli and Palestinian leaders? To really pray as God commands us for the peace of Jerusalem someone must begin to believe it is possible. Who knows what God can do? The giant of hatred and death who has terrorized generations of children can be defeated by a single stone of hope.

Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.” Matthew 19:26 NIV

Not as the World Gives

After reading this verse have you ever stopped to ask, “How does the word give?” Thinking back to peace negotiations from the Vietnam war to the Palestinian conflict the press has focused on ‘peace talks’. The headlines and the world’s hopes are attached to talks which drag on for years all while people are still being killed. But Jesus is offering to give us a peace that is more than talk.. His peace requires no mediation by an outside party because He is the mediator between us and God. The peace Jesus offers us today has no terms other than His unconditional surrender on the cross and our unconditional surrender to Him. This peace is available immediately, lasts forever and is bought by His own blood. There is nothing nor will there ever be any other peace like it on earth. God is opening a peace conference just for us this morning. When we are done with our running away from Him; He is waiting to give us a peace that makes of enemies friends and of angry rebels His own sons and daughters!

 

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