Tag: inner man

The Peacemakers

The Beatitudes Series Part 7

Blessed are the peacemakers, For they shall be called sons of God

By Amy Saleam

Peace – is it more than just merely the absence of physical chaos?

To really answer this question, we need to think of where our peace comes from. In John 14:27, the Lord says “peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you.” When we think about cause and effect, we realise that for something to happen, there would be some sort of trigger or stimulus for it. In this beatitude we are called to be peacemakers, so it is very important as Christians to know where our peace comes from, truly acknowledge it and allow it to manifest into our actions, so that we may really live our lives as reflections of Christ.

When you switch on the news or even when you’re aimlessly scrolling through social media, you read and watch reckless behaviour, unforgiveness in the name of justice, humiliation of others, leaders of countries making derogatory comments about other nations and the list goes on. To a person who has not known Christ, this may seem like just another day in this “normal,” yet so broken world.

The difference for us is that having Christ as the centre of our lives means having His peace dwell within us. This peace can alleviate the anxiety and fear of what we see on the news and social media and gives us an opportunity to challenge these broken “norms.”  The truth is, however, we very so often take this lightly. Christ has given us something so precious, a peace that can be found nowhere else but in Him. With this peaces comes the responsibility to make our actions a reflection of He who dwells within us. For some, our actions of love and forgiveness can, at times, be the first taste of Christ for others. This is something we should consider when we are dealing with others in difficult situations. Are we going to respond in a way which reflects the corruption that is around us, or are we going to react in a way that will emit Christ? Understanding that by offering the grace and peace that the Lord has given us to others, we are in extension giving them an opportunity to know what it is like to have Christ.

So to answer the question, is peace more than just the absence of physical chaos? Yes. This is because in order for there to be a physical kind of peace, it is something that starts from the purity of our hearts and the treasure of the Lord’s peace in our lives. In Psalm 120:7 we read, “I am for peace, but when they speak they are for war.” St John Chrysostom comments on this and says:

This is virtue, this is above man’s understanding, this makes us near God…but if we are fighting and buffeting, we become far off from God: for enmities are produced by conflict, and from enmity springs remembrance of evil.

Identity – Who am I, who are you?

As we read through the beatitudes, we realise that each one is painting a montage of who Christ is, as He teaches us the virtues we are to exhibit. Living out each of these virtues is followed by a blessing. What is so special about the seventh beatitude is that It does not tell us what we will obtain, but rather it tells us about who we are.

When you first meet someone, your conversations will go something like this. You’ll start off with your name, your ethnic background, what your 9-5 is, perhaps you’ll even mention a hobby or two. These are all little bits and pieces of your character that are sown together. These are the conversation starters that can help connect us with other people. I’d like you to think of the part of you that you value the most. The piece of your identity that you cannot live without, that if it was taken from you overnight, you really cannot fathom what you will do.

What I love the most about this beatitude is that it reminds us that through the Lord, we can obtain the most valuable piece of our identity. Something that cannot be physically touched or seen, but something prized that cannot be taken from you. A title that your heart will be satisfied in, even if what you thought was the most important part of your life was not there anymore. How truly beautiful is it to know that you are the son or daughter of God.

So how can we live out Christ’s peace? I was listening to a sermon by Fr Benjamin Abouelkheir which was a part of a series called ‘Parting with Partiality’ He tells us that partiality is when we allow our own thoughts and emotions influence how we deal with and perceive other people, instead of using fact. Fr Benjamin points out Galatians 3:25-27 where we are told that we are all Sons of God through faith in Christ and that there is  “neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” This really had me thinking. Perhaps the first steps to create peace with others is to remove our own judgment and partiality, and to see others through the eyes of God. Removing this partiality will allow us to deal with others and situations not based on just their name, status, occupation or connections, but to be able to lift the bias and show them Christ through our actions.

How important is it that we become peacemakers?

“There is nothing better than peace in Christ, for it brings victory over all the evil spirits on earth and in the air. When peace dwells in a man’s heart it enables him to contemplate the grace of the Holy Spirit from within….all our desires, all our efforts, and all our actions should make us say constantly with the Church: “O Lord, give us peace!” When a man lives in peace, God reveals mysteries to him..”

St Seraphim of Sarov

The Lord has promised that by being a pillar of peace to others, your identity will be nothing less than being known as His child. Let us grasp onto the peace He fills us with and love others enough to share it with them and be the peacemakers that this world is yearning for.

Closet Pharisee

By: Michael

Original post by Becoming Fully Alive blog site

As I opened my bible today to receive life, my soul was awakened. Jesus told me off.

There was something deeply wrong in me that He wanted to open my eyes to. Something that hurts Him and saddens Him. Something that needs to change, now.

“Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples: “The teachers of the law and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat. So you must be careful to do everything they tell you. But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach. They tie up heavy, cumbersome loads and put them on other people’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them.

“Everything they do is done for people to see: They make their phylacteries wide and the tassels on their garments long; they love the place of honour at banquets and the most important seats in the synagogues; they love to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces and to be called ‘Rabbi’ by others.

“But you are not to be called ‘Rabbi,’ for you have one Teacher, and you are all brothers.And do not call anyone on earth ‘father,’ for you have one Father, and he is in heaven. Nor are you to be called instructors, for you have one Instructor, the Messiah. The greatest among you will be your servant. For those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”

Matthew 23:1-12

Hearing these words come from my Creator’s lips shook me. I knew He wanted to tell me something important. I re-read these verses and stopped to concentrate at each part to see what it was that the Holy Spirit wanted to awaken me to. Then I realised.

..I’m a Closet Pharisee..

I’m that Pharisee that Jesus Himself rebukes in this passage. I’m that hypocrite. Whenever I read the gospels I never like to find myself in the Pharisees – I’m always the blind man/ Samaritan woman/ one of the apostles/ the boy with the five loaves & 2 fish/ Jesus. But relating to the Pharisees? Associating myself with them? Erm no thanks. As I did my quiet time today though, I couldn’t escape that reality; there were no other characters in the chapter for me to hide behind and meditate on; no characters to cling onto but the Pharisees. I wanted the chapter to finish as quick as possible so I can move onto chapter 24 and not have to reflect on whether I’m a Pharisee or not. The Holy Spirit stopped me though. I felt something telling me to keep meditating on this passage.

In verse 3 Jesus bluntly says that the Pharisees didn’t practice what they preached. He tells to the crowd to obey them and do what they say but not what they do for they were hypocrites. That petrified me. What if Jesus says these words about me? What if I’m the real hypocrite? What if Jesus instructs others to obey what I say but not what I do because I don’t practice what I preach?… It’s so easy for me to say the right things, so easy to put on an act, so easy to create a spiritual persona that seems to be entering through the narrow gate. How foolish. How void. How fake. I think it offends God even more when I do that knowing full well that He sees and knows all things.
“Everything they do is done for men to see” Jesus says in verse 5. I highlighted that verse. If you easily fall into the sin people pleasing like me, this verse will resonate with you too. Everything they do is for men to see. Everything. Everything. What a scary thought; I could be living such a fake life that absolutely every action is performed with the motive of gaining people’s approval and attention – even my walk with Jesus. Disgusting. It really is. Idolising other human beings and putting them at a higher pedestal that God Himself, that I’m willing to fake my relationship with Jesus for a minute of their admiration and applause.

To the proud-hearted like myself, Jesus very clearly explained how to notice if you’re one of these Pharisees. Verse 6 says “they love the place of honour” followed by verse 7 saying “they love to be greeted and have men call them ‘Rabbi’”. Oh boy do I love the place of honour. Oh how my heart lusts for the moment when I’ll be greeted by others and have them praise me. As I read these verses trying my hardest to not relate to them the Holy Spirit reminded me of all the times I’d stood as a deacon/ in tasbeha so desperate, so eager to move up a bench. To have my voice heard. Acknowledgement. Applause. Glory. I was reminded of the times friends had complimented me on a gift that the Lord had so graciously bestowed upon me and how I twisted their godly encouragement into self-praise, eagerly feeding my pride. I was reminded of the times my heart leaped with joy because I was acknowledged by someone more popular than me. Though I feel ashamed writing these words, I thank Jesus with all my heart for opening my eyes to the rise of the old man within me. The old man, who in my case, is a big self-righteous Pharisee too.

If I skip to verses 25 and 27 I hear Jesus saying:

“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence… Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean.” What more can He say? How clearer can He get? Woe to you O my soul for you are full of hypocrisy. How easy it is for you to appear righteous and holy before men when from the deepest part of your soul, you worship Satan. How you run after him, sprint towards him, lusting for every drop of greed and self-indulgence that he supplies you with. I look at myself, look at the real me, and I question how I have the audacity to call myself a ‘servant’ in the church, how I can dare to dream of being a ‘leader’ when I continue to live as a Pharisee – clean as can be from the outside yet disturbingly filthy on the inside.

How often has your Creator longed to hold you in His bosom O my soul? How often has He whispered gently, spoken tenderly, screamed lovingly to you wanting you to wake up from your deep sleep?

I feel that verse 12 summarises everything the Lord awakened me to today; For those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted. If like me, you really struggle with pride, and humility is this foreign concept to you that you know a couple of nice quotes on, change needs to happen now. We can’t live lives of Pharisees. We can’t continue to insult our Saviour because of our self obsession. And before we fall into the lie that we can humble ourselves, we need to repent, laying before the King of Kings and ask Him to grant us humility.

Abba Poemen said “as the breath which comes out of his nostrils, so does a man need humility and the fear of God.”

St. Peter of Damascus said “At the Last Judgment the righteous will be recognized only by their humility and their considering themselves worthless, and not by good deeds, even if they have done them. This is the true attitude.”

Wake up, O my soul.

Original blog found at- http://becomingfullyalive.com/closet-pharisee/

No Prophet is Accepted in His Own Country

No Prophet is Accepted in His Own Country

by Michael Sidhom

Recently, I’ve indulged myself in a pleasure all too familiar to all of us: re-watching a movie. Yet travelling through that familiar tale, the highs and the lows are not as deep as they were that first time. And as the protagonist’s betrayal approaches, I can wonder and hope if it might this time somehow be different… But always, I find only disappointment. The film is still the same. Static. Lifeless.

The human person, however, is a far greater mystery.

“Both the inward thought and the heart of man are deep,” writes the Psalmist (Psalm 64:6). Man is no static movie, but an undefinable and indefatigable mystery. Human personhood, like all mysteries of the Church, only get worse when we try to define and limit it. But instead, we experience it. The word ‘person’ derives from the Latin persona, meaning a ‘mask’ and so it is inextricably tied up with relationship. We know, of course, that “it is not good that man should be alone” (Gen 2:18). Following Metropolitan Kallistos Ware, we ought to cast aside the sceptical modern axiom, “I think therefore I am,” and replace it with an ancient faithful one: “I love therefore I am.” For man is intimately related to his fellows. But he is also intimately related to God.

“God is a mystery beyond all understanding,” writes St Gregory of Nyssa. Man, in God’s image, is made to be a partaker of that mystery. But what is it that man is partaking of? What is it that man is an image of? It is the God Who is Trinity. It is a God who is both one, just as man is uniquely one, but also three, in communion as man ought to be. And love is the duct tape that binds them together, the music that encourages the perichoreticdance, the blurring of the three-ness into oneness.

This perfect God is also the perfect Man. And this perfect Man dwelt among us and came to His own but His own did not receive Him. It was the God-man, the final prophet, who was not accepted in His own country. The Jews muttered amongst themselves, “Is this not Joseph’s son?” (Luke 4:22), which is to say, do we not know this Man? Is He not simply just like us? “You will surely say this proverb to Me, ‘Physician, heal yourself!’” (Luke 4:23), which again is to say, you call yourself a doctor but yet you still get sick. You are no different to us. You are just as wretched as we are. Thinking they knew the Man, they put a mask, a persona, on Him, and couldn’t see through it. They said, we have seen this film and won’t see anything new here. And so Jesus “went His way” (Luke 4:30).

What was their crime? Was it not limiting this great mystery, this unfathomable depth and unpredictable capacity, of human personhood? And what is their punishment? They fail then to experience, to enter into, the fullness of the life of Christ. Most tragically of all, it is a crime we commit every day. For insofar as we claim to understand anyone, or think we have ‘figured them out’, we shackle them with their own reputation. We strangle them with our estimation of them. We quench the fires of their mysterious personhood when we say, “Is this not Joseph’s son?” They become that static movie to us with no hope, no power, but instead knowledge of a betrayal.

But yet ancient wisdom once again offers an escape. St Isaac the Syrian writes:

When you meet your neighbour, force yourself to pay them more honour than may be their due. Warm your heart fervently with a holy love for them. Attribute to their person all sorts of virtues, even if they may not apply to them. And when they are absent, speak good and noble things of them. Address them in respectful terms. In this sort of way, not only will you impel them to desire these virtues (since they will be ashamed of their undeserved reputation with which you credit them) and sow in them the seed of good deeds, but you will also find that, by habituating yourself in this way, you will establish in yourself gentle and humble manners, and you will be freed from many tiresome struggles. This should be your attitude towards all people.”

The depth of man opens into eternity and reaches towards God. St Isaac encourages us to look into that depth and find communion, and find God. In this way we need not tire ourselves so much with political philosophy and how best to structure society. But let us tire ourselves instead with the work of God, with loving each and every man as the perfect man has loved us. In this way, when we are weary and heavy-laden at the end of our days, we may come to Him and He will give us rest.