Peace is more valuable than we may understand. The older I get the more I no longer want to move under the power of anger, frustration, or fear. If I don’t feel peace. I don’t want to do it. If it doesn’t feel right to me, I don’t want to do. The absence of peace lets us know that something is not right.

Pastor Chad asked this questions: Where is the absence of peace in your life?

When I can’t sleep sometimes I ponder these questions and last night my train of thought went to that line in the sand that we all have. It’s the barrier in our souls that we won’t cross. It is often created by the things we have experienced and the things that we believe. My mind went all the way back to when I was 17 years old before I became a Christian. I was using drugs and my drug of choice was meth. There were many things I would do concerning meth, getting meth, and keeping it in my system but there was a line that I would not cross. I would not use it intravenously. I was offered it many times this way, but I would not cross that line. Then my mind roamed over to how if we are not careful we can abuse people by coercing them to cross their own lines in the sand. We do this when we make our own way a standard that other people ought to live by. We do this when we try to control what people will or will not do. We do this when we manipulate them into doing something instead of allowing God to do the work as we do what we have been called to as His children – peacemakers.

Oh how our world runs on trying to convince and push people into doing things they do not want to do. Have you ever done something against your own will? There is a quote that I read years and years ago that I have never forgotten by Dale Carnegie:

Those convinced against their will are of the same opinion still.

Dale Carnegie

What if the absence of peace comes from the fact that we are either trying to control others or they are trying to control us? What if we could learn to allow people the right to choose what they will and will not do without coercion? To love without convincing through strong arming people to do it our way? This gospel of peace is an invitation not a mandate.

Galatians 5:1 For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.

The gospel of peace is just that. It is peace. I am not saying do whatever you want but I am saying live according to the Spirit of God that lives within you. Let Him lead you in whatever you do and don’t do. May we learn to allow others the freedom in Christ to do or not to do. Sometimes we just spend way to much time worry about what other people should be doing that we lose our peace.

All is grace,

Starla