Strive for peace with everyone, and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord. Hebrews 12:14
“Strive, pursue after.” Perhaps the writer of Hebrews could not have written two more challenging objectives which we are to pursue.
Peace with everyone is a possibility because we have been rescued from the personal striving for meaning, worth and satisfaction with which we were possessed before our new birth in Jesus. All three, meaning, worth and satisfaction have all now been redefined in Jesus.
We should therefore find the abrasive nature of our relationships with others crucified with Jesus on the cross. Alas, the flesh that still marches to the drumbeat of its corruption within us, wants to reassert our “right” to all three.
Under many circumstances, we take the time to ponder the full extent of our new life in Jesus Christ, and we can combat the waves of temptation to return to our old way of thinking and life.
But, we are still susceptible to those temptations. And, when we let freneticism rob us of the urgent need to ponder all things, we can and will fall…..backwards into old, long rejected ways of responding to others.
The voices are strong. “I am better than him, look how far I have come!” “After all, I am right and he is wrong.” On and on the debate and excuse finding can rage.
The Spirit of God therefore says, strive after, pursue with urgent tenacity the expressions of your new life in Jesus and with others. Say yes to humility and No to ego demands.
Striving, pursuing with urgent tenacity is the freedom we now have in Jesus and the presence of the Holy Spirit. Indeed, without this urgent tenacity to live all things in conformity to our new birth, is to run the risk of never seeing God, “without which no one will see the Lord.”
We would have demonstrated that we never knew Him in the first place. For even the desire to strive, comes from Him filling our new birth with the urgency and power to pursue.
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