A New Word to Describe Your Life: Peaceful
submitted: Nov 26th 2008 |
by: Guest |
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Word Count: 716 |
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A New Word to Describe Your Life: Peaceful
Helping women to live the gospel in their relationships
through the new Women's Study resource
By Tara Barthel
Do you desire peace but it is always just out of you reach? You are not alone.
I’ve had the joy of serving thousands of Christian women and to date, not one has chosen the word peaceful to describe their lives. That’s a telling statistic because Jesus said:
“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you …” John 14:27
“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the sons of God.” Matt. 5:9
So, if Jesus gives us his peace; and if the defining mark of a child of God is directly tied to being a peacemaker, then why is the peace of God so often absent from the lives of Christian women? And what can we do to regain it?
Two Traps
As we walk through the challenges of the Christian life, many of us get snagged by two traps:
- We exhaust ourselves trying to perform and be “good enough.”
- When we struggle and fail, we believe the lie that “We’re the only ones …”
Both traps drain God’s peace right out of our lives because they both lead us away from the gospel of Jesus Christ.
In the first case, our over-emphasis on the commands of Scripture (“You ought to …”; “You must …”; “You should …”) crushes us because we daily see how much we fail. We don’t love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. We barely love our family and friends well—not to mention the enemies who gossip about us and mistreat us. Our hearts are prone to love lots of things more than we love God: our health, wealth, children, food … even Christian ministry.
So how do we respond to our failures? Do we run to the church and get help? Not usually. Instead, we think that no one could ever understand. So we sit at our Bible studies and keep up the façade of “having it all together” rather than being honest and vulnerable with the people around us.
The result? No peace. Just the frantic expenditure of energy and effort (that never quite measures up) and a fake smile plastered over the shell of a lonely and stressed-out life.
There is a better way.
Only One Solution—The Gospel
The best way to get out of these two peace-stealing traps is not to try harder and work harder. Instead, the gospel calls us to repent of our unbelief and cling to all that Jesus has already done for us.
With our hearts fixed on Christ, we are then called to walk our pilgrimage in community. We can be honest with God (He already knows!) and one another (they struggle too!) because the gospel frees us from our temptation to try to be “good enough.” We can’t be good enough! That’s why Jesus had to live, die, and be resurrected on our behalf.
This is the truth that we preach to one another when we are struggling. We encourage each other with the same truths.
This is life in the body of Christ; and this is how peace begins to reign in our lives regardless of our circumstances.
My prayer is that the more we open our lives to one another, the more we can have conversations like this one. We can help one another to turn from a performance mentality and to rest in the finished work of Christ alone. Then through this glorious gospel, we can truly begin to experience the peace that Christ gives.
The gospel remedy for these two traps of performance and isolation is fleshed out even more in the new Women's Study video series. Visit www.peacemaker.net/women for more information on this study.
About the Author
Tara Barthel (www.TaraBarthel.com), a former director at Peacemaker Ministries and "recovering lawyer," currently serves her husband, Fred, and daughter Sophia Grace, as a homemaker while regularly mediating and speaking on biblical peacemaking. In between chasing Sophie and her Golden Retriever, Tara published her first book: Peacemaking Women—Biblical Hope for Resolving Conflict (Baker Book House Co., 2005).
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