Peace Please
Proverbs 16:7 When people live to please the LORD, even their enemies will be at peace with them.
No one wants enemies in life, and yet, from time to time, we all have them. The question is, when they attack us, how can we bring peace into that relationship?
I had a really bad back recently, a grabbing pain between right my shoulder blades. So I took myself off to the chiropractor who promptly adjusted something in my lower back, which, pretty much immediately, stopped the pain in my upper back. Who would ever have thought that the pain up here was caused by something else, way down there? It’s completely counter-intuitive.
Pain, of course, comes in many different forms. Sometimes, we have enemies who cause us pain. People who come against us for no good reason, or so it seems, and it hurts, terribly. On the surface, it would seem to be all about our relationship with them. So, not surprisingly, we think that we have to fix something up at that level.
But more often than not, it’s caused by something else entirely. Something hidden. Something lower down. Something that we’re thinking or doing that’s not pleasing to God. Something that only He can see.
Proverbs 16:7 When people live to please the LORD, even their enemies will be at peace with them.
The flip side of that, is that our disobedience toward God, causes conflict with the people around us – a kind of spiritual cause and effect. I can’t tell you the number of times that God’s convicted me of that. And when I deal with that hidden issue lower down, that disobedience that only He and I can see, the pain on the surface miraculously goes away. My enemies give me peace. Who would ever have thought?
When we live to please God, when we obey Him, even our enemies will be at peace with us.
That’s God’s Word. Fresh … for you … today.
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