Center and Circumference

Galatians 2:20

“I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for Me.”

Paul stated that the key to the Christian life is very clear in that Jesus is now our center and our circumference. When I committed my life to Jesus and was immersed, I was “in Christ,” but when I appropriate His life, then it is “Christ in me.” To be fully filled with Jesus is to examine the relationship between being filled with Jesus as the center of my life OR being filled with Jesus as the circumference of my life. For example:

Imagine you are standing on a warm beach and you can hear the ocean waves crashing. If I were to take a bottle water container and fill it with ocean water. It would be centered around the ocean water and I could say that I have the ocean in my hand. This is what it is like when we make Christ the center of our lives.

What would happen … beyond pollution… if I took the bottle and threw it into the ocean? It would fill up, but it would also be complete engulfed by the by the ocean. The bottle would have the ocean at the center of it, but it would also be swept away by the currents of the ocean. The ocean is no longer the center, but is also the circumference. The bottle no longer owns the ocean, but the ocean owns the bottle. The ocean takes the bottle and guides it through it’s currents.

I want to be driven by the currents of the Holy Spirit and have Jesus as the circumference of my life as well. 

You know I love ya, Don

Peace is in the new friendships that last an eternity.

Reconciliation is a big church word that means to “make friendly again.”

In some languages, however, reconciliation is often spoken of in idiomatic terms, for example, ‘to cause to become friends again,’ ‘to cause to snap fingers again’ (a symbol of friendly interpersonal relations in many parts of Africa), ‘to cause to be one again,’ or ‘to take away the separation.’ A particularly crucial element in terms for reconciliation is the assigning of responsibility for original guilt in causing the estrangement.

John 15:13-17 states;  

“Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.  You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you. This is my command: Love each other.”

General McArthur said, "A truce just says you don't shoot for awhile. Peace comes when the truth is known, the issue is settled, and the parties embrace each other."
 

Peacemakers don't just try to stop conflict. They're doing something far more meaningful, something healing and restoring. They try to bring about reconciliation and relationship, even if it means going through the conflict.

The cross was the greatest act of violence and conflict possible. In fact, much of Jesus ministry involved conflict and confrontation. He wasn't afraid of it because he was committed in love to working through that if need be to bring reconciliation.

Peacemakers don't try to stop conflict, but they work for reconciliation. God knew that we are not able to bring friendship and a renewed relationship with our creator. Jesus stepped into history and made a change on our behalf.

Paul says in Romans that we are not only friends, but we can boast in our relationship with God. … “but we also boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.”We celebrate and boast in Jesus because Jesus is also in us. I know I can face tomorrow because Jesus lives and is working in every piece of my life.

We boast in that we have Jesus as a friend on our behalf. He is interceding for us everyday and supporting believers through the guidance of Holy Spirit.

God bless you... You know I love ya, Don