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January 31, 2020

Want to Be a Peacemaker? Expect Three Things.

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A peacemaker is a person who has peace and brings peace to others.

God is the great peacemaker. He is the God of Peace. He has peace in Himself, and He has made peace through Jesus Christ by the shedding of His blood on the cross (Colossians 1:20).

The blessing promised to peacemakers is that they will be called sons of God. And here are three observations for peacemakers.

Want to Be a Peacemaker?

1. Be prepared to give up your rights

Christ was in the form of God, and He gave up His right to an unbroken experience of heavenly joy. He gave up His right and came into the world, in order to make peace.

You cannot make peace by standing on your rights.  If God had stood upon His rights, I would be in hell and so would everyone else.

2. Move toward the trouble.

When the world was in rebellion against God, he moved toward the trouble in the incarnation. My natural instinct is always to back away from trouble, but peacemakers move toward the trouble. That’s never easy. For Jesus, it led to the cross.

3. Love before you are loved in return.

If God had waited for us to love Him before He loved us, there would never have been peace. There would have been an eternal standoff. God made the first move. We love Him because He first loved us!

These are the broad strategies that we can draw from the Prince of Peace, and if Christ is your Savior, He is also your example.

This is an excerpt from Pastor Colin’s sermon, “Cultivating Peace,” from his sermon series on the Beatitudes, Momentum, Volume 2.


Colin Smith

Founder & Teaching Pastor

Colin Smith is the Senior Pastor of The Orchard Evangelical Free Church in the northwest suburbs of Chicago. He has authored a number of books, including Heaven, How I Got Here and Heaven, So Near - So Far. Colin is the Founder and Teaching Pastor for Open the Bible. Follow him on Twitter.
Colin Smith is the Senior Pastor of The Orchard Evangelical Free Church in the northwest suburbs of Chicago. He has authored a number of books, including Heaven, How I Got Here and Heaven, So Near - So Far. Colin is the Founder and Teaching Pastor for Open the Bible. Follow him on Twitter.