Person of Peace

What does it look like to be a person of peace? Psalm 34:14 says, “Turn away from evil and do good. Search for peace, and work to maintain it.” Every day I get closer to the start of General Assembly. This means that every day there is the opportunity for greater anxiety. There is so much to do to get ready to host 300 people from 80 nations. However, I believe I have a great opportunity to be a person of peace instead of a person of worry.

My natural tendency is to become anxious when the pressure builds. Yet I see all the times the Bible talks about peace. Jesus came to bring peace. We are to be people of peace. This is not often what characterizes my life. So I am asking God for something different in this season. I want to be a person of peace, not just internally, but someone who brings peace to others who are anxious.

Philippians 4:6-9 talks about how to live as a person of peace. Paul writes, “Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus. And now, dear brothers and sisters, one final thing. Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise. Keep putting into practice all you learned and received from me—everything you heard from me and saw me doing. Then the God of peace will be with you.” Praying can turn my worry to peace. When I choose to tell God what I need and praise Him for His answers, my heart and mind will be guarded by peace. I need to root my thoughts in the things that reflect God and His character. The God of peace will be with me in this. These are the things I am praying for as I approach General Assembly.

Jesus says in Matthew 5:9, “God blesses those who work for peace, for they will be called the children of God.” I am God’s child. This means I need to be working for peace, not only in my own life, but to have peace spill out of my life to bless others. Would you join me in praying that my life would be characterized by peace?

The Every

I have been thinking about the “Every” recently. The vision statement of Youth for Christ is, “As part of the body of Christ, to see that every young person in every people group in every nation has the opportunity to make an informed decision to be a follower of Jesus Christ and become a part of a local church.”

I found this vision compelling when I began working with Youth for Christ over ten years ago. I thought about every young person in the LA Basin. It seemed like an impossible, but engaging vision when I considered all the young people outside the reach of the church in Southern California.

Now I am thinking about this vision as I consider the almost 2 billion young people living in Asia Pacific. The ministry, up to this point, has been focused on national students. In India, the national staff is ministering to many Indian student populations. In Singapore, the Singaporean staff is looking to reach every Singaporean student. In Australia, the Australian staff enters the world of every Australian young person. These are monumental tasks in each nation.

Yet with our world growing smaller all the time, there are more and more students growing up outside their passport country. There is the Filipino student who is growing up in Hong Kong. In Japan, there are young people from the UAE. There are British students growing up in Thailand. The world is cross-pollinated and these Third Culture Kids have unique needs. At the core, however, their needs remain the same as every other young person. They are part of the “every” who we are called to give the opportunity to become a follower of Jesus. It will take an international team of people entering their world alongside the local churches to reach these “every.” “So everywhere we go, we tell everyone about Christ. We warn them and teach them with all the wisdom God has given us, for we want to present them to God, perfect in their relationship to Christ” (Colossians 1:28). This is a vision that compels me to depend on Jesus as I join the work in Asia Pacific.