"Peace Alive"

"Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: they shall prosper that love thee." (Psalms 122:6)

  Oddly enough, I heard a message yesterday, actually it was an answer to a question, the question being, that of God's meaning of extended life for those that honor their parents, as was His commandment, "Honor your mother and father." Paul expounds on this in Ephesians 6:2-3, saying, "Honor your father and mother; which is the first commandment with promise; that it may be well with thee, and thou mayest live long on the earth." The caller wanted to know what that meant and why God would encourage the desire to live long on the earth; after all, Jesus clearly said, "He that loveth his life shall lose it: and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal." (John 12:25) [Big sigh!] If there is one thing that I hate, it is the way the devil takes the things that are beautiful and turns them into the things that we hate! Eve's comment about not looking upon the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, for example; why did it become so disdained? If it were to be so, then why would God have placed it in the middle of the garden? I am sure that it was a beautiful tree that had beautiful fruit, and that it was a beautiful sight to behold; it was just something that should not have been eaten of, look but don't eat! I hope you are with me so far? This is a wonderful life! Don't think for a moment that Jesus did not love the time that He spent here, because this is the world that He created! If you take the verse Jesus said, "He that loveth his life shall lose it," in perfect context, He was referencing His soon to be death! What we need to be focused upon is the bigger picture, because if this is all we think that there is, what a waste that might be! Besides, do you really think Jesus wanted a bunch of followers that walk around hating everything? The message was about love! As was the principle of honoring fathers and mothers, because the legacy of life is about what you leave behind, as well as what you store up in heaven...

"This is the message you have heard from the beginning: We should love one another. We must not be like Cain, who belonged to the evil one and killed his brother. And why did he kill him? Because Cain had been doing what was evil, and his brother had been doing what was righteous. So don't be surprised, dear brothers and sisters, if the world hates you. If we love our Christian brothers and sisters, it proves that we have passed from death to life. But a person who has no love is still dead." (1 John 3:11-14) NLT