Unity Seed – Know Your Calling: The Bond of Peace

Key Verse

As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.
Ephesians 4:1-3 (NIV)

Short Reflection

We have meditated on how we can live a life worthy of the calling we receive from the Lord, understanding more of humility, gentleness, patience, love and what are the efforts we can make to maintain unity. What a good learning! Today we want you to stop and think about another effort, which we cannot do alone. We all need the help possible from the Spirit of God: the bond of peace.

What is this bond of peace which we are called to live? There is a passage where Paul helps us understand peace and how to strengthen it in our lives. Let’s look at 2 Timothy 2:22-24 (New Living Translation)

• What can we avoid? Run away from what stimulates our youthful lusts (what movies we watch, what music we listen to, what we read).
• What can we do? Live righteously, be faithful, love, seek peace, enjoy friendships that also love God and have the characteristic of a pure heart.

There is something that Paul asks us a lot:
• Do not get into foolish discussions,
• Do not quarrel,
• Be kind,
• Teach with words and actions,
• And here is an issue that gives us the stamp of maturity: a servant of God is patient with difficult people. We cannot change others, but we can allow God to help us to control our emotions, reactions and attitudes.

We definitely need the life of God in us to live the bond of peace! Only God helps us to see others as He sees them, to have compassion, to understand them, to overlook their offenses and how harsh they can be in their dealings with us and with others.

Let’s pray!
“God, I need your life, your love, your peace in me, to flee from passions, to love as you ask me to love, to not be fighting, to treat difficult people with grace. Help me, that in what depends on me, I can seek peace with others”. Amen

Lord, let this reader and I be “All for One”, and may we seek the bond of peace with those who may be different from us.

This is the fifth in the “Know your Calling” series of blog posts and is submitted by Hector and Margarita Rivas from our Guatemalan partner, Potter’s House.