Bjcorbin's Blog

Repeatedly throughout the New Testament (e.g. 1 Cor. 7:15, 2 Cor. 13:11, 1 Thes. 5:13, 1 Tim. 2:2) the scripture urges us to “live in peace” with one another, with perhaps the strongest of these admonishments coming from the writer of Hebrews (12:14), who says that we are to make “every effort” to live in peace with “everyone”. This is a daunting challenge to forfeit our natural tendency to contentiously defend our position on every issue, and to instead yield to the Spirit of God.  If He is not speaking, we ought to do the same.  When we choose to express ourselves outside of His leading, we cannot fool ourselves into believing that we’re doing anything more than speaking out of our own limited understanding.  In those instances it would do us well to be mindful of what Jesus said about idle (or empty) words (Matt 12:36).