Pursue peace with all men, and the sanctification without which no one will see the Lord. Hebrews 12:14.
Today your LORD (יהוה) God (אלהים) says:
I am your peace. Love is peace so love pursues peace. You will find My Word to you is to seek and pursue peace if you want to live a long satisfying life filled with good days and fruitful years.
Come, you children, listen to me; I will teach you the fear of the LORD. Who is the man who desires life and loves length of days that he may see good? Keep your tongue from evil and your lips from speaking deceit. Depart from evil and do good; seek peace and pursue it. Psalm 34:11-14.
Strife and anger do not please Me. They are letting your flesh reign, and if the flesh reigns over you, sin and death reign over you, for the mind set on the flesh is death. But the mind set on the Spirit is life and PEACE.
Who among you is wise and understanding? Let him show by his good behavior his deeds in the gentleness of wisdom. But if you have bitter jealousy and strife in your heart, do not be arrogant and so lie against the truth. This wisdom is not that which comes down from above, but is earthly, natural, demonic. For where jealousy and strife exist, there is disorder and every evil thing. But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, reasonable, full of mercy and good fruits, unwavering, without hypocrisy. And the seed whose fruit is righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace. James 3:13-18.
Peace also has to do with being established in righteousness.
Lovingkindness and truth have met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other. Truth springs from the earth, and righteousness looks down from heaven. Psalm 85:10-11.
But the bottom line is you must pursue peace to walk in holiness and truth. To be holy as I am holy you must walk in peace.
Pursue peace with all men, and the sanctification without which no one will see the Lord. Hebrews 12:14.
This is serious if you want to be able to have a relationship with Me, if you want to see Me in your daily life and have a free flow of grace, My divine life into you. For how can two walk together unless they agree? And I am a God of peace. Yahweh Shalom.
“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. Blessed are those who have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Matthew 5:8-10.
What am I talking about? Falling short of grace, frustrating grace, and receiving My grace in vain. Strife and anger are ugly things but the sinner holds them tight.
I tell you to actively pursue peace with people, not just sit back and hope it will happen. Any relationship takes work to avoid conflict and strife. Here I am not talking about people who are persecuting you for your witnessing to Me, I am talking about those who are with you every day and they do things or say things that offend or irritate you and just keep doing them.
Pursue peace with all men, and the sanctification without which no one will see the Lord. See to it that no one comes short of the grace of God; that no root of bitterness springing up causes trouble, and by it many be defiled. Hebrews 12:14-15.
A root of bitterness springing up. What is that? Do you remember the weeds sowed by the enemy’s hand in the field of good wheat in the parable My Son told about that? Bitter roots are not just disputes of major proportion with one who is hostile to you. They can start as innocently as strife between spouses over small things or with your children, family members, your co-workers or supervisors, your clients or customers, your neighbors, your friends, or even with your fellow church members. It can begin as a critical remark about your appearance or about the quality of your work, which then you answer defensively by pointing back at the one who made the remark in a derogatory way regarding something about them that you find fault with, or that you feel caused the situation of which they are accusing you of causing. If you keep thinking about this and how you are going to come back at their remarks with your own cutting remarks, if you put your attention on how much you dislike them, your will create a bitter root in your heart. You then share it with your fellow co-workers or with other members of your family and complain about the one who is offending you. They then agree with you about the person’s bad character or whatever and spread it to others and now you have put a bitter root into many people’s hearts.
There are two things here that I am looking for in your heart—peace and holiness. And I am directing you to pursue both just as avidly as hunter seeks his prey. If you do not seek and pursue peace with others, if you permit offense into your heart and keep it there and share it with others it will defile you and them. It will grow the weeds in the field of wheat. It means you have fallen short of My grace. You may not understand this, since grace is a gift taken by faith that I lavish on you for now and eternity who are in Christ Jesus your Lord, but I do tell you that you can receive My grace in vain, that you can frustrate grace, and that you can reject grace.
What is grace? Grace is an empowering touch of My divine life into you that transforms you. You are saved by grace and then you are empowered by grace to live godly lives—to live a life of divine virtue. It is sharing My divine nature with you by making you a partaker of My divine nature through My precious and magnificent promises. Grace can give you skills to do amazing things, like I did with Bezalel and Oholiab in artistic creations. Grace gives you solutions to problems. But grace also gives you the power to live godly lives free from sin.
For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men, instructing us to deny ungodliness and worldly desires and to live sensibly, righteously and godly in the present age, looking for the blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Christ Jesus, who gave Himself for us to redeem us from every lawless deed, and to purify for Himself a people for His own possession, zealous for good deeds. Titus 2:11-14.
I have made Jesus to be wisdom for you, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption. 1 Corinthians 1:30. And grace and truth come through Him. Of His fullness you have all received, grace on top of grace.
When you are in a situation where you are offended and are ready to go into argument mode, conflict, strife, anger and the like, it is time for you to come with confidence to My throne of grace with your great High Priest of your confession, Jesus Christ, and receive mercy and find GRACE to help just when you need it. I have given you the grace, My own divine life in you, to forgive, to overlook offense, to answer in a way that gives grace to the one to whom you are responding. And if you will receive that grace, if you will reach out and actively take it, you will not fall short of grace but will be able to overlook that offense and answer in a way that gives grace, an empowerment to the other person to also respond to you in an edifying manner.
Let no corrupt word proceed from your mouth, but only such a word as is good for edification according to the need of the moment, so that it will give grace to those who hear. Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also has forgiven you. Ephesians 4:29-32.
Do not be argumentative, especially over things that really are not important, like who said they would take out the trash or clean up the kitchen, or different people’s duties at work. Do not take offense at your clients or customers if they seem bossy or abusive. You are blessed to have clients and customers, treat even the difficult ones with respect and do not talk about them to your co-workers in a derogatory way. Let someone know if they are out of line but speak the truth in love for the other and for Me. Love Me with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength and love your neighbor as you do yourself. You do not offend yourself no matter how hard you get after yourself.
Treat others the way you would have them treat you. In fact, treat them better.
Pursuing peace and sanctification is fulfilling My commandment to love Me and your neighbor. It is a way of declaring that I am your treasure. It is a way of growing in grace. And the more you respond to grace the more grace it will release on you. Grace upon grace—like the ocean waves, there is always another one. I tell you of the first followers of the Way after the day of Pentecost was fulfilled that “great grace” was upon them all and there was not a needy one among them.
I have set you apart and called you to be holy as I am holy. You are not to be like the unbelievers who have no eternal hope and no accountability, so they suppose, for their actions. But you have a magnificent future ahead that no one can take from you. Do not receive My grace in vain, you want your full reward.
I give you the grace not to sin, not to enter conflict with your family, friends, co-workers, and church members. But you have to respond by grabbing that grace just when you need it and then yielding to it and holding your tongue from giving that person a “piece of your mind.” Keep your mind and mouth in tact.
And you may be wondering what this has to do with sanctification. It has a lot to do with it. A sanctified heart is a pure heart, a cleansed heart, a heart filled with My holy Spirit. It is the pure in heart who see Me and it is the sanctification that makes you able to see Me.
How do you sanctify your heart? I tell you to pursue sanctification so you know you can. And it is them same answer that works for all that has to do with life and godliness—it is My Word that cleanses you, it is My Word that sanctifies you, and it is My Word that heals and delivers you.
“I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit, He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit, He prunes it so that it may bear more fruit. You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you.” John 15:1-3.
And again you see that it is My Word that cleanses and sanctifies you:
Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her, so that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that He might present to Himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that she would be holy and blameless. Ephesians 5:25-27.
And the third witness that the only way to sanctify yourself is the Word—not fasting, not bodily penance—for though these have some merit and but they are outward fleshy works which will give a temporal response that is not permanent whereas the work of My Word in you for renewal of your mind and transformation to holiness of life are inside spiritual works that are forever.
I have given them Your Word; and the world has hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. I do not ask You to take them out of the world, but to keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. Sanctify them in the truth; Your word is truth. As You sent Me into the world, I also have sent them into the world. For their sakes I sanctify Myself, that they themselves also may be sanctified in truth. John 17:14-19.
Grace and truth come to you in Jesus and Jesus is My Word made flesh tabernacling among you. So grace and truth come by My Word. The more Word you get in you, the more the strife, the offense, the evil, the impure, the anger, the hatred, the lies, the bitter roots, will be flushed out.
When you are filled with bitter roots I cannot get through to you, they clog your faith pipes that would receive My mercies, grace, and precious promises. They seal the door of your heart shut to Me and no matter how much I long to reveal My treasures to you, I cannot because you have shut Me out with bitter roots.
I tell you that when you are pleasing Me that I even make your enemies be at peace with you. How do you please Me? You know already! You seek and pursue peace with all men, as far as it concerns you (you cannot control their response but you can help them by speaking in an edifying manner which give grace to the one hearing you), and you sanctify Me in your heart. You live a sanctified life, which is one that is quick to hear, slow to speak, and very slow to anger. And I have already given you the grace to do that. Just come with confidence to My throne of GRACE and find it all there to help in time of need.
Therefore let us draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. Hebrews 4:16.
I love you. I have given you everything you need for life and godliness. Pursue peace and sanctification without which you cannot see Me. And just know I have already declared you holy when I put My Holy Spirit in you when you believed in Jesus and received Him as Lord. Take it and apply it every moment of the day and night. Watch watch your thoughts and watch your words.