Our Work – Part I
Scripture Reading: Hebrews 12:14-21
Key Verse: Hebrews 12:14
Work at living in peace with everyone, and work at living a holy life, for those who are not holy will not see the Lord.
The New Testament is clear that no one can work hard enough to earn their salvation. The plan of salvation that Jesus paid for on the Cross is available only to those who put their faith in Jesus.
The Apostle Paul made this extremely clear to the Ephesian Christ-followers in Ephesians 2:8-9: “God saved you by His grace when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God. Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it.”
After we receive God’s gift of salvation, He calls us to be a Christ-like example to the people around us. God does not want anyone to miss out on eternal life with Him, so He asks us to be a part of helping others come to His salvation. We do this by working at our behavior so that the world can see what God can do with anyone who walks with Him through Jesus.
Our Key Verse for today tells us two ways to be good witnesses for a lost world to see.
The first way to be a good witness is to let the world see glimpses of the peace we have with God.
The author of Hebrews said, in today’s Key Verse: “work at living in peace with everyone.”
This is no easy task in our present society. It seems that if anyone voices an opinion not in line with another someone else’s, these two people are enemies. How do we get back to living with one another in peace, even with our disagreements?
I believe it must be God’s people that lead our society back to this way of living. We Christ-followers ought to be able to demonstrate that we can disagree with each other and with those outside our Faith, and still live with one another in peace. Disagreements do not need to make us enemies, there is a better way to live life!
We Christ-followers must do a better job at “staying in step with God’s Holy Spirit in us” so that we can live in peace with those around us.
Read Galatians 5:15-26 and you will see that Christ-followers choose how they treat others. We can treat everyone with our human tendencies which include quarreling, dissensions, division, envy, and other facets of our human nature. This is not the way to live in peace with others.
Or we can follow God’s Spirit that leads us. In tomorrow’s devotion, we look again at our Key Verse and the second way to be a good witness to others. That is, how we can follow God’s Spirit rather than our human nature when dealing with the people around us.
The message for today is to work at your relationships so they are pleasing to God. God asks His children to seek peace in all their relationships.
Father, remind me often to stay in step with your Spirit rather than seeking my own way. Help me to live at peace with those who may disagree with me. In Jesus’s Name I pray, amen.