Have You Got Your Shoes On?

My friend Anne’s daughter-in-law thought the suburb in which Anne lived seemed to have a “bubble of peace” over it. There was a feeling of peace when you drove into the neighborhood. The daughter-in-law wasn’t a Christian at that time.

Yet she recognized that even though the larger metropolitan area exhibited typical crime and chaotic events, Anne’s neighborhood felt safe and at peace. Other visitors confirmed the same feeling when they came to Anne’s street.

My friend knew what the source of that peace was. It was the Holy Spirit inside her and her husband that permeated beyond their home and created an atmosphere for the Spirit to flourish around them. It truly was a place of peace.

The Holy Spirit is resident in every Christian and wants to overflow to the space and people around you.

As a woman of God, you should ask yourself,

“Do I bring peace wherever I go?”

We understand Paul’s exhortation to the Ephesians in chapter six, verse fifteen,

“And your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace.”

The nightly news reflects a world where peace seems non-existent. Yet we are to walk in shoes that prepare for the gospel of peace. Note, that we are not preparing for any old “peace.”

The Gospel is involved. We need to bring true peace and not false peace. Let’s look at some ways women are often involved with bringing “false peace” to situations.

One way we manufacture false peace is by manipulation. Our femininity can be used wrongly to make a sugar and honey deal that placates the situation without providing true peace. We might make light of a deadline we have missed to our boss, manipulating the attention to other areas we have done correctly. Yet, we need to face the truth that the deadline still wasn’t met.

As women, we need to be sure our motives and methods are true to what God has outlined.

Another way we can substitute false peace for true peace is through shading the truth. Women can camouflage facts and events in our favor to bring about a result we desire. But know this, a little white lie is still a lie. We need to examine our words to be sure they totally represent God’s truth.

We also can produce false peace by doing an act that may “pay” for peace. We may have shown anger toward our spouse and then physically seduce him to make him forget about the issue. There may be a temporary truce, but peace has not been achieved until we communicate and bring God’s words to bear on our issues.

Jesus told the crowd (Matthew 5:9),

“Blessed are the peacemakers…” We receive favor when we bring true peace. But the second part of Jesus’ statement is important to us, “…for they will be called the children of God.” We might believe the verse should say that “we will be called the friends of men.”

But that’s not what it says here.

Most women have the emotional gifting to create beautiful experiences and complementary relationship situations. However, these horizontal uses of peace are not the emphasis of the verse.

Peace can also come when we choose to stand our ground, to righteously be angry against sin, to confront evil, or to place what we want behind the desires of our God. This brings a vertical peace between God and us.

Jesus was the ultimate purveyor of the Gospel. He wore His shoes with a strong mission. He never picked between whether to bring love or confrontation, compassion or exhortation. These are all congruent in His world. Jesus’ peace came from a vertical Source that loved the unlovely and dangled truth before the religious elite.

Jesus has left us His kind of peace (John 14:27). He tells us that he doesn’t give us the peace like the world tries to give us (false peace). He wanted us to be sure of the distinction between the two. Women need to be discerning of the difference.

When women of God tap into the vertical Source of peace, we will find that we are capable of extraordinary acts. This true peace spills over to our horizontal relationships and the situations in our immediate world.

Then we will be truly seen as the children of God… first by our Heavenly Father, and then by those around us who sense our “bubble” but perhaps don’t know why it exists. God wants to use our uniqueness as women to pull God’s true peace forward.

Put on those shoes, sister, and let peace abound!