Jeremiah 29:7

And seek the peace of the city where I have caused you to be carried away captive, and pray to the LORD for it; for in its peace you will have peace, NKJV.

Peace, peace, peace, where are you?

Today the entire world’s attention is drawn to need to have everlasting peace for this or that region, peace among communities, tribes, clans, families, and amongst neighbors and even more important the self. Peace is the word in everybody’s mouths; young and old alike, ordinary and great, in the Church, in government, in politics, everywhere you go. Where is this peace, why is it so elusive?

Politicians, all sorts of activists, diplomats, poets, preachers, writers and other statesmen have made careers out of seeking and speaking about peace, while bringing warring parties to the table to negotiate. It is for this purpose that even the United Nations was formed after the Second World War.

Regional and continental unions have been and are being formed across the world; for the purpose of bringing trade, commerce, development, cooperation and peace initiatives among the nations. Many international non governmental organizations, regional, continental peace committees, initiatives and other human rights watchdog organizations have been formed across the world for this very purpose.

Even with all these efforts peace is still a mirage, international and regional peace is not yet realized, now I ask what is wrong; Why can’t people of the same tongue stay together in peace; why can’t people of even the same  household agree and stop killing each other?

We are living in this twenty first century, when mankind has achieved  many technological breakthroughs, man has long gone to the moon, explored the mars and other planets, great discoveries have been achieved in every front of science and yet man has not put a finger on the cure to this crucial, elusive element in the existence of mankind.

Instead every solution a man comes up with is a threat to the very peace he seeks to achieve. Many kinds of military equipment are developed and manufactured for this reason; men are trained and turned into killing machines so as to maintain a status quo. State after state, country after country spend vast amounts of hard earned money in development and procurement of war machines and defense systems in the name of maintaining peace, but does this or they achieve it?

The answer is no; why? Because their perceived adversary, upon learning of their enemy’s development, they too develop a more sophisticated defensive and offensive system to remain safe and so the race keeps going on round and round year after year. In this while the world burns region after region, country after country with no peace in sight. Countries are sucked into wars in an effort to bring peace among its allies, creating more misery and suffering, physical and psychological suffering to the very people they thought they were rescuing or defending.

Whenever a disease or virus, threatens the existence of mankind, every effort and knowledge, latent or potent is put into play to create a medicine to cure the disease outbreak. Scientists gather from every corner of the earth to find a lasting solution to such problems. People gather when regional peace and political balances are threatened to charter a way forward but every time that happens, another chaos breaks even before the first one is solved.

People everywhere have developed political ideologies or systems that guarantee their peace, communists in the twentieth century thought they had found peace in uniting people into masses through collective ownership of all state resources and all sorts’ things but peace was elusive to them.

Communism was a corrupt, oppressive, tyrannical, enslaving political ideology that defied God’s presence among the people, they thought there was peace in that system, but at long last they realized that peace was also elusive to them as to every one else and the same collapsed and died its natural death.

Capitalists on the other hand thought that allowing individual ownership property was a solution to peace, but they too found out that there is no peace in the ownership of material things. Instead unimaginable greed resulted from that. In that effort people went into great lengths and breadths to acquire wealth, including destabilizing other regions to get markets for their war machines.

Each of the political divide, ideology and systems has continuously failed to give its people a lasting peace they so desperately seek. The thought that peace is based on material things is in itself ridiculous and so they failed miserably and continue to do so.

Countries are concerned when their neighbors are at war whether civil war or conflict with other countries. Why is this so? It’s because the people will flee into the neighboring countries as refugees and create a humanitarian crisis. Therefore to prevent this from happening, governments go to extra mile to reconcile all the people involved or even support some of the warring factions.

This is done in the name seeking regional peace in conjunction with United Nations. Such efforts are quite noble and laudable but they unfortunately don’t produce the desired results because they are all humanistic methods and henceforth temporary and downright futile.

God in His eternal wisdom gave us the true formula of attaining real peace. He knows that we can’t chose where to be born or by whom or with whom; He knows that we can’t chose our neighbors either. God spoke to the children of Israel as they were going into captivity that wherever they are taken, whichever city or village they should not see their captors as captors but they should remember that it was God who was responsible for allowing them be taken captive because of their own disobedience to God’s commandments.

In the same token, God knew and knows where we would be born, live, school, employed and live. So He is commanding us, as He commanded Israelites then to pray for peace in the cities, institutions, families, work places and residential areas that we find ourselves living in no matter how temporarily it may be.

In a family setting He is telling us pray for peace of our family members, He telling us to stop seeing our sisters in law; Mothers in law; daughters in law; brothers in law and fathers in law as terrorists and stumbling blocks in our marriages instead pray for them, for in their peace our own peace attained too.

This is to say that as long the people around us not at peace we can’t have peace. We are wherever we are because God allowed it to be so, we are not there by chance but because God has allowed it to happen; He actually caused us to be wherever we are; this is a very important point to remember.

Let us not be fault finders in others at every opportunity we get for have our faults too. When we capitalize in seeing faults of others instead of appreciating them we miss the point; God intended that everywhere we go we should add value to that environment we occupy. Every day every hour every born again person should make this a point of concern, praying for the peace of the people you live with.

No prosperity can be achieved in turmoil and chaos but only when peace is reigning around us. Even at work place, as Christians we should not participate in riots or activities that undermine the stability of organizations we work for, because as God says when such organizations are financially stable so are we. Everywhere we go the answer to our own peace is always in our hands so to speak. Pray to the Lord for their peace of those He causes you to dwell amongst and you will have your peace.

God has given us the most elusive ingredient of our livelihood that is not achievable to the world today in a very simple way, yet the world can’t grasp it but we can. As Jesus told His disciples that the secret of the parables he taught them was not open knowledge to the world but only to them, even so today the solution to the peace is revealed to us in such simplistic terms that defy human wisdom of our age and time.

Psalm 28:1-3 Do not take me away with the wicked and with the workers of iniquity, who speak peace to their neighbors, But evil is in their hearts, NKJV.

The people of this world today will speak and continue to speak about peace but they find it elusive because they don’t and can’t grasp and neither do they mean it. David understood this concept during his time and so should we in order to live as successfully as he did despite all the adversity he faced from Saul and other enemies including those of his own household.

He knew very well that genuine peace among his neighbors meant peace to himself and so he prayed to God to be distanced from people who paid lip service to peace while they devised evil in the hearts. Does this bring paint a picture in your mind about our age and time we live in? Where politicians preach peace on televisions and print media to the world and yet continue to support warlords in war torn countries?

Just as David prayed to God for deliverance from such company so should we in earnest. We are living in a world so filled with political doublespeak that we can’t separate the genuine from fake any more. We live in a world and time so filled with intrigue than any other time in the history of mankind. Where people will smile and speak well of you when they know that they’ve laid a snare for you in the around the corner that will incapacitate you permanently. That is the kind of people God revealed to David in his time for us to learn from today.

Romans 12:18
If it is possible, as much as depends on you, live peaceably with all men. NKJV.

Living peacefully with all men entails you to pray for and wish peace for others who live around you. These scriptures and many more can not be wished away brethren and neither can you afford to ignore them. You are appointed Christ’s ambassadors to this hurting world where peace is so elusive that the people are confused about what to do, they are desperate and worn out from hearing mere words from political leaders.

As you all will agree with me, that peace of this world is so important to God as to us that it cannot be entrusted to politicians, military tacticians, scientists, philosophers, analysts, debaters and contenders of this age but to a very insignificant people who might not be noticeable even to their own families or communities.

The world speaks out for this or that minority groups in its midst but the genuine Christian community is least acknowledged minority group in this age and time; most of the times ignored if not mistreated maligned and persecuted to say the least. Yet these are the people God is entrusting with world’s number elusive commodity, PEACE.

You are small, you are not mighty or famous and yet God in His unsearchable wisdom gives you such a monumental responsibility, praying for the peace of all the peoples and places where He has caused to be taken away, wherever you reside always remember that God is very much aware of your locale and environment. He has appointed you to be the custodian of the peace around you.

This is not a task to take lightly brethren, it is not a matter to be wished away for God has mandated you to do it whether you are acknowledged or not, it is a thankless job so to speak. If God acknowledges and appreciates your work, why bother with mortals?

It is imperative that you don’t miss your step, move forward and fulfill your calling, whether this Word is Spiritual according to you or not is not important. What is important is that it the Word of God to you to execute.

As we go forth to heed this most important call of our lives, we should never at any point leave anything to chance. Don’t say or think that even if you don’t pray others will, no it’s you who is appointed to do it, it is your individual responsibility whether others do it or not is not your problem just do it no more passing the buck, the buck stops with you and me.

Brethren we are living in evil end times, that the Bible speaks about and the therefore to be very sensitive to our calling at all times, we can’t afford to ignore even an iota of the scripture. The world depends on us as we depend on this important Word of God.

Prayer:

May our Lord Jesus Christ continuously guide you as you go about fulfilling your individual and collective responsibilities that He so wisely apportions you on daily basis without deviation or need for any excuses. Remember not by power nor by might but by the Spirit of the living God that you’ll excel in all your endeavors for the Kingdom, Amen.

This devotional was written by Bishop Joseph Koburu Mukiira of Maximum Victory and Joy Worship Centre Nairobi – Kenya and brought to you courtesy of Journey 2 Joy International Ministries Inc. USA.

©All rights reserved by Bishop Joseph Mukiira