Seek And PURSUE Peace
While working on a post recently, I came across a few verses instructing us to seek and PURSUE peace, and it’s been on my mind quite a bit since then. Most of us already understand that Christians are called to be “peacemakers”, based on Matthew 5:9, which says Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God. And James 3:18 says Peacemakers who sow in peace raise a harvest of righteousness. But being blessed or rewarded for doing something is VERY different than having the Lord COMMAND us to do it, and that’s what I’ve been pondering, along with how it applies to marriage restoration.. The challenge is understanding how this principle works with some of the other important principles of marriage restoration, such as REALLY letting our husbands go when they want to leave, while still standing for our marriages in obedience to the Lord. And there IS a BIG difference between pursuing peace and pursuing our husbands and the restoration of our marriages, which is where the letting go while we’re standing comes in. This concept is illustrated in 1 Corinthians 7:15 (NLT), which says (But if the husband or wife who isn’t a Christian insists on leaving, let them go. In such cases the Christian husband or wife is not required to stay with them, for God wants his children to live in peace.) And the reason that is SO important is seen in the next verse which says You wives must remember that your husbands might be converted because of you. And you husbands must remember that your wives might be converted because of you. And this applies equally to saved husbands who leave, because their relationships with the Lord obviously need to be restored too, so that’s just conversion of another kind.
One of the most difficult things to understand as we stand for the restoration of our marriages is that we MUST be standing in obedience to Christ, and not for the sake of the outcome we desire, which I know is a difficult concept to grasp and understand. But the difference is where our focus is. Is our focus on being obedient and pleasing the Lord, or is it on getting our husbands back? When our focus is on getting our husbands back, then everything we see or hear that indicates that it’s not happening throws us into a tailspin. But if we’re standing for our marriages in obedience to the word of God, then it doesn’t matter what we see or hear, because we KNOW that the Lord has it covered and that HE CAN handle it. ALL we have to do is focus on obedience to His word and leave EVERYTHING else up to him. We don’t have to know the when, where and how of it all, and we don’t have to worry about what our husbands are or ar not doing, only what we’re doing. We just have to know that when we’re obedient and trust Him, God will bless and protect us AND give us the desire of our hearts..
Most of us have to admit that in the early days, weeks and months after the onset of our marital problems, letting our husbands go and pursuing peace was the LAST thing on our minds! In fact, most of the FAM Fellowship members express a great deal of regret concerning their behavior after their husbands first left, which is something I can certainly relate to personally. Unfortunately, we don’t get to go back and apply what we’ve learned now to those times, but we can learn from our mistakes and focus on applying what the Lord teaches us to our lives today, and one of the most important principles we need to apply is seeking and pursuing peace. If our husbands want to leave, we can not “pursue” them or restoration, but the Lord does command us to seek and pursue peace. So let’s see what pursue means, because it is a very active word, as seen from the following definitions:
transitive verb
1. to follow in an effort to reach or catch; chase.
2. to strive to accomplish or obtain.
3. to spend time doing; work at; practice, as a field of study or a hobby.
intransitive verb
1. to follow someone or something in an effort to reach or catch; chase.
So we have to figure out how to pursue peace without pursuing our husbands and the restoration of our marriages, and that’s where things get a little sticky. It’s obvious that pursuing peace does not include trying to make our husbands pay for leaving us, either in terms of taking them to the cleaners financially, trying to force them to honor their responsibilities and commitments, or making them feel guilty for what they’ve done or are not doing. And that’s a pretty tall order for most of us, and does require a LOT of faith in the Lord and a huge helping of His grace!. It means being a lot more humble than we’ve probably ever been before and it means making a conscious decision NOT to let our natural defense mechanisms kick in and cause us to put up walls and harden our hearts. This is a very important time to ask ourselves if we REALLY love our husbands as much as we think we do, and then read 1 Corinthians 13:4-7, which says Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. I haven’t met one woman yet who could honestly read those verses and say that she’s demonstrated that kind of unconditional love toward her husband. Yet that is what the Lord calls us to do as their wives and it is what we have to focus on. Keeping that in mind will help us as we make a determination to seek and PURSUE peace as the Lord also commands us to do, in accordance with the following passages:
Psalm 34:14
Turn from evil and do good; seek peace and pursue it.
1 Peter 3
10 For, “Whoever would love life and see good days must keep his tongue from evil and his lips from deceitful speech.
11 He must turn from evil and do good; he must seek peace and pursue it.
12 For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and his ears are attentive to their prayer, but the face of the Lord is against those who do evil.”
2 Timothy 2
22 Flee the evil desires of youth, and pursue righteousness, faith, love and peace, along with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart.
23 Don’t have anything to do with foolish and stupid arguments, because you know they produce quarrels.
24 And the Lord’s servant must not quarrel; instead, he must be kind to everyone, able to teach, not resentful.
25 Those who oppose him he must gently instruct, in the hope that God will grant them repentance leading them to a knowledge of the truth,
26 and that they will come to their senses and escape from the trap of the devil, who has taken them captive to do his will.
That last verse is SO important, because it reminds us that our husbands are not our enemies. The devil is our enemy, and he’s out to kill, steal and destroy us, our husbands our marriages, and any hope our children have for a future with happiness. While the specifics of seeking and pursuing peace vary in each situation, a lot of the basics are described in the above passages of scripture, and if we pray for the Lord’s guidance, He will show us how we can pursue peace in our relationships with our husbands, which is especially important when children are involved. And reading all of Psalm 34 and 1 Peter 3,> will probably help too.