Posted on 05/15/2022 11:54:18 PM PDT by Pilgrim's Progress
“When a man's ways please the LORD, he maketh even his enemies to be at peace with him” (Proverbs 16:7).
When a man’s ways—the way he lives—his spiritual life, the spiritual life, his family life, his personal life with God, his church life, his work life; just because a man goes to church that doesn’t mean that down on the job you are living like a Christian. This verse is talking about the ways of a man, all the ways he lives, and in every area of his life. A Christian can get along with anybody and anybody can get along with him.
The Devil likes to attack a Christian through all the areas of his life. If he gets into church and that is going right, he attacks their family altar. When they get that repaired, it seems like he and his wife are on the outs. That gets straightened out, and then the kids are rebelling. That finally gets straightened out and then some problem arises between him and one of the members of the church. You can’t have everything working like it ought all the time, but we work at it constantly.
God doesn’t look on the outer appearance, God looks on the heart. As long as you recognize that there is something wrong and you are working on it, God accepts it for what you are trying. You won’t always get it right, but God knows when it’s real—or a show. Even Paul admitted that he had not attained, but he strove on: “Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect: but I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus. Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3:12-14).
After thirty years of Christian ministry, and after writing thirteen epistles in the Bible he hadn’t attained, I don’t suppose that you and I will do any better—but don’t ever quit trying! Therein lies the victory, don’t quit trying.
Here is David, the king of Israel and man after God’s own heart, and he blew it with Bathsheba. Well, David had something that most Christians don’t have—the guts to go on. It took humility to admit it and guts to go on, but he did it. That is why David was a man after God’s own heart.
The reason that Paul was at peace with his enemies is that he didn’t get mad at Festus, he didn’t get mad at Agrippa, he didn’t get mad at the jailer in Philippi. If he had got mad at the jailer, he would never have been able to led him to Christ.
“When a man's ways please the LORD, he maketh even his enemies to be at peace with him,” we can even lead our enemies to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ, and then they won’t be our enemies any more.
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