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2008-03-18 issue:

Bringing forth God’s peace

Grace and Truth column

by Kenneth Thompson

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There is one essential need all people have in common in the cities and suburbs, the inner cities and the rural towns, on the reservations and the retreat centers, the refugee village and retirement villages: the need for God’s peace. Epidemics, natural disasters, financial concerns and family matters, church relations, job situations, government legislation, war escalation—all this and worse from sin’s curse, people need God’s peace now more than ever. But how do we bring forth the peace we profess to the stressed and storm-tossed soul who “sees the lightning flash, hears the thunder roll, feels dark waters dashing, trying to conquer their poor soul”? Simple. Bring the peace you live to where they live.



The peace we live is more than a statement against violence, aggression and prejudice. It is first a living peace arising from a genuine faith experience with the Risen Savior, Jesus Christ. Next it is personally embracing God’s precepts and principles to govern our life, faith and daily living. As a missional people, our message is unique because it understands God’s peace to be the experience of true heart-peace, blessed quietness, freedom from all fears, agitating passions and moral conflicts, having every good and necessary supply for life and community through Jesus Christ.

Sometimes our churches wrestle against the force of the refusal to believe in and yield to God’s peace. Behind all the problems in the world is a structure of reinforced beliefs that refuse God’s grace and truth and reject God’s counsel of peace. Current history is witness to the fact that the terrors of militarism, prejudice and economic injustice that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke against did not pass with the 1960s. They merely paused, modified their appearance and tactics, and began again. They are energized because people are enticed by and engaged in seeking profit, comfort, control and expediency. There has to be a movement that reaches people at their hearts and minds if we hope to make a difference.

People need to hear, see and believe the peace we profess is a genuine choice in response to the call to participate in, among and with the family of God. Just as Jesus presents God to us, we have an ambassadorial role to present Jesus to people where they live. If peace is only in the temple and not the marketplace, or reaches the mountaintops but not the valleys; if it sounds more like an institutional philosophy or an ideological curiosity than an experiential truth; if it is relegated to isolated, ethereal encounters full of sentiment but devoid of power to transform—we have failed to bring the message, we diminish the power of the Word, and we enable people to dismiss its relevance.

We bring the peace we live to where people live by faithfully communicating a mindset that is committed to living according to the precepts, principles, moral sensibilities and ethics of God’s kingdom as Jesus taught. As we believe and practice God’s word of faith, worship and well-being, we disarm the ungodly prejudices that measure a person’s value by their possessions, position, skin color, gender and ethnicity. As we resist civilization’s insistence on self-sustained and self-indulgent prosperity and gross consumption, we believe and proclaim deliverance, safety, healing, provision and soundness for a prosperous life through salvation in Jesus Christ.

By believing in Jesus Christ and his Word, we enter God’s peace to guide our faithful, patient lives and work. From that place of peace we can confidently, by God’s Spirit, creatively bring forth the peace of God we live in to share with our neighbors across the street and around the world.

Kenneth Thompson is pastor of Friendship Community Church, Bronx, N.Y.

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