Transcription
When you encounter persecution for the sake of righteousness, you're not encountering persecution because you're a troublemaker or you're just creating more conflict wherever you go in the name of religion, but you're actually are a peacemaker and you're encountering resistance by people that don't want peace. Like, we don't want the war to end. We want to win. We want to take this stuff.
As we see God moving ahead of us, as we're as we're pursuing after him, as Jesus is walking us through the process in the biatitudes and we're sort of up to the level of the pure in heart, the undivided passions, everything's directed. We're hungry and thirsty to make things right. We're motivated by sadness and compassion. We're empty. We're emptying ourselves of our own fear, guilt, and shame and things that hurt us to receive all that God has. And we're and we're living in mercy and extending mercy. And we can see God. Our hearts undivided. We can see God. Jesus says, "Blessed are the peacemakers." Blessed are the peacemakers. Because what we're involved in now brings peace.
So then we get to this level of blessed are the peacemakers, which is fascinating. So the pure in heart, we're undivided. We're moving. The result of what we're doing is always peace. Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called sons and daughters of God. That a peacemaker is a son and daughter of God. Not a person that generates conflict and brings conflict. Anyone can create conflict. Anyone can create war. Doesn't require any creative thinking. It doesn't require the Holy Spirit, the mind of Christ to just start a fight. But it takes everything in us to bring peace. It takes mercy. It takes all the things that Jesus is talking about in the biatitudes. To get to the level of what we're doing creates peace.
I don't know. I don't it you can't look at the life of Jesus and not understand that he's called the prince of peace. He's not the prince of war. He's the prince of peace. And what's troubling is how quickly we think peace is impossible and that we're just going to use our own devices to settle a problem. And Jesus doesn't fix problems. He heals people. And that brings peace. So when Jesus confronts the demoniac and the violence of the demoniac, the garrison demoniac, he doesn't restraining and chaining up the person, imprisoning the person is not his solution. It's it's to bring to bring peace to that person, to bring peace to the situation. And interestingly, in that scenario, the people don't like it because we just we don't know how to heal people. We do know how to incarcerate people. We don't know how to heal people. We do know how to fight people, but we don't know how to bring peace um to people that are, you know, we perceive as our enemy.
So that level of blessed are the peacemakers. Now God will identify himself with us. These are the sons and daughters of God. These ones who bring peace. Blessed are the peacemakers. Um, which to me that's the greatest blessing to go into a conflict situation and and watch the spirit of God move in the different people to bring healing, to bring reconciliation, restoration, to to bring peace. That's the the greatest thing to me.
When in in the human brain when we're moving through the levels of a thought that starts in the amygdala, the reptile brain, and moves up through the the um midbrain into the into the upper level of the brain, the prefrontal cortex. It's a move away from violence. That that thought movement is a move away from violence. The reptilian brain moves in conflict, fear, guilt, shame, self-protection, self-promotion. That's what it does. It's the survival brain. And it will use conflict or avoidance to resolve a situation. But the more that thought is taken captive, as Paul says in Corinthians, and is allowed to go forward up into the prefrontal cortex, we come up with solutions that are nonviolent. The prefrontal cortex is nonviolent. That's why when you see Jesus moving through people and events, he's nonviolent. He's a peacemaker. He confronts violence all the time. He's not a pacifist or an escapist. He just he brings peace to situations even if it requires he lay down his life to bring the peace to end the death to take away the fear of death.
So that's that's it's like the evolution of a thought and a human is to move to these higher levels of thinking. And this is what the biatitudes are saying. We've got to get empty of all of our sort of reptilian responses to everything and it a I mean it affects everything in our world. These quick reptilian responses to problems is use violence, use force, use power, use control. And so we're not in a we don't we aren't innovative. We're not created. We just go back to the same old thing over and over again. And so watching Jesus move and then him challenging us in the sermon on the mount to move from the reptilian from the from the animalistic way we deal with things up into this very high level of human thinking which is peaceful and and moves for peace and allows for a mystery.
Blessed are the peacemakers for they really are the sons and daughters of God. And then and then at the very highest level, blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake, for theirs is the kingdom. It's like a full circle. Start down here. Get empty all the way up to the level of no matter what someone does to you, you're beyond going back to the petty reptilian fight, flight, or freeze. You're beyond that. You're above the fear of men. You're outside the worries of the world. You're in a place where you're operating from no conflict here. And so when you run into conflict out here, you don't bring conflict, you bring peace. And then when conflict comes back towards you, you're able to to um rejoice in it. It's it's like watching the young disciples go through all these stages to the point of when martyrdom is part of the imitation, they go to it with joy. It's not a fight to avoid. We've got to avoid persecution. We have to be in charge so we're never persecuted. No, it's it's when the persecution comes and Jesus says it will because the world hates the peacemakers. The world hates Jesus and what he stands for. And so when you get to that level, you will face persecution, but I have overcome the world, he says.
So this very high level of when you encounter persecution for the sake of righteousness, not you're not encountering persecution because you're a troublemaker or you're just creating more conflict wherever you go in the name of religion, but you actually are a peacemaker and you're encountering resistance by people that don't want peace. Like we don't want the war to end. We want to win. we want to take this stuff. We want control of everything. When you run into those, you run into it with joy. And you're willing to even lay down your life from that.
Many times through our walk with the Lord and in the places in the world we live, we've watched people invited invited into suffering by God. That's the important thing. It's that God's inviting us into suffering. We're not creating it. We're not making it happen. He's inviting us into it. and we walk into it at his invitation. So, if you're going to if you're going to die for Jesus or be persecuted for Christ, do it because he's inviting you into it. Don't do it just because you're obnoxious or, you know, um abrasive with people. Let it be his invitation. And in that invitation, we know that the power of death and the sting of death is gone.
So, we start at we start at just get empty of all of this stuff that we've been taught and and that's been drilled into us that produces fear, guilt, and shame in us and anger and get empty of that and and be sad for what God made you to be sad and compassionate about because he'll comfort you there. and then d help use the Lord to help you direct all those passions in the direction of what you're sad about in your life. And and whether you're going to write a book about it or you're going to or you're going to like transform the criminal justice system or you're going to transform education, what whatever way you're going to go, let's aim those passions and all your skill and everything and study towards that because then you can inherit the earth. Like that's what you do. and and you're hungry and thirsty to make it right. Not to make a name for yourself, not to get famous, but to make things right. And you're hungry for it every day. And God is filling you every day. Like, let's go. Here's the next step. Way to go. Let's keep going no matter what. And you're extending mercy the whole time and living in mercy the whole time. And God's giving you his mercy and you're extending your mercy out into the world. And you're so your heart is so undivided that you can see God moving even in the impossible. Even in situations where it's like it's just me and the whole system like how are we ever going to have an impact? You will. The ripple effect's real. Watch. You'll see God just stay undivided. Stay on track. And as you go, leave in your wake peace.
And then you then you'll be identified with God as a son and daughter of God because this person comes into these situations and they bring peace. Peace. Peace is the result of what they have. Peace in my heart. Peace out here. And then in all of that when the persecution comes, you're above it. you're you can go through it with joy because you're doing it for the persecution. It's because you're acting and moving towards making things right as God would have them be, as they ought to be. And you're beyond persecution. You're above it. And so that we could see in history with people being sacrificed in the coliseum to lions and and they're singing with joy as that happens. So they're embracing it with joy because they're no longer afraid of death. This this is the life. Jesus says, "I am the resurrection and the life." E in me. Even though you die, yet will you live. And if you live and believe, you'll never even die. You're beyond death. And this is the goal. Imagine that's how we're living each day.
And then we come into the creative process in this beautiful fullness of who we are as described in the biatitudes. And then we go to the Lord and we say, "What question do you want me to ask?" And he gives us the question and we ask the question and we begin to search for the answer. And we're not afraid of the long plateau period. And then we're and then we know there's times when we're just like, "Lord, we just surrender to you. We've we don't know what to do next. We need revelation. We need inspiration. We need an epiphany of sorts." And it comes through the spirit, through wisdom, through the word. And then we and then we go to do it. and we write it down and we create new ways to think about criminal justice and new ways to think about education and new ways to think about governance and new ways to think about parenting and and and we live the kingdom life now as if we're in heaven. This is the goal.