Shat  terd

Men 

The hidden half of domestic violence

How to have eternal life

Peace on Earth?

Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men. Luke 2:14

For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his
shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, The mighty God, The
everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.

We all know these often quoted verses but what about this Prince of Peace? What about
this Peace on Earth, good will toward men? All one needs to do is look around us to see
there has hardly been a single day if ever of peace on earth. There are wars in every
corner of the world. Kids are killing kids in our schools. Every where we look they
seems to be everything else but peace.
We can also so the domestic front, Good will toward men? If we did have these things,
peace on earth, there would not be a need for this club. Men are being abused every day
as are women. The marriage vows say "til death do you part" and many are speeding
things up along that line. Men kill their wife, Wives kill husbands. There could be much
debate on this issue but that is not the purpose of this post. It does not matter that more
men are being battered today if you happen to be a woman that is battered, It does not
matter that women are if you are a man being battered. What does matter is that we have
had the idea that The Prince of Peace came to give us peace but we look around and see
everything but peace. This brings up a question, Did Jesus FAIL? Did the Prince of
Peace not bring us peace? 
The answer is yes ahhh and no! 
No He did not bring peace to earth yet! In fact He did not come to bring peace to earth
at this time. 
Suppose ye that I am come to give peace on earth? I tell you, Nay; but rather division:
Luke 12:51

If this is the case, why is Jesus called the Prince of Peace? What about this "peace on
earth?" 
Now to the 2nd part of the statement:

Yes Jesus DID come to bring peace, but He came to bring it to the most difficult place on
Earth to find peace---The Human Heart! We are told:
The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? 
Jeremiah 17:9 
Is there any wonder that it is hard to find peace in turmoil as described in that verse?
Yet the Prince of Peace wants to give peace to the human heart. How can we find this
peace? 
The first place to start would be to be sure we actually belong to Him. This promise is
given to Christians. This is the only way to be a Christian.

1: We need to realize we have sinned. Romans 3:23 For all have sinned and come short of
the Glory of God This means we have failed to met the goal of being perfect in order to
enter heaven. Few of us would question this.
2: The penalty for the sin that we are guilty of is death. Romans 6:23 tells us The wages of
sin is death. (Death is separation. When our body dies, our soul is separated from our
body. Eternal death is when we die without doing what is being explained here and then
our spirit is separated from God for eternity. 
Since the only price we can pay for our own sin is to be separated from God forever, it
stands to reason that there is no way we can pay for our sin ourselves. We thus come to
the 2nd part of Romans 6:23: but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ the
Lord.
3: 2nd Corinthians 5:21 informs us: For he hath made him, who knew no sin, to be sin for
us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him. Jesus Christ, God's only Son
became sin for us so that we can be freed from the penalty of sin. What then do we need
to do?
4: For GOD so loved the world that HE gave His only begotten Son that whosoever (read
YOUR name here) believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. Please note
the ONLY condition given is that we believe in Jesus Christ for full payment for our sin. 

Now if we only learn these facts, even though we may understand that they are true and
believe them. that is only knowing ABOUT GOD. How do we KNOW HIM then? It is
APPLYING that payment to our account. This would be like having a check to pay a bill
and putting the check on a desk. The bill does not get paid because the check was never
APPLIED to your account. Once we know and believe the facts pointed out above, the
next step is to TALK to God much as you and I would and admit that we have fallen short
of what He wants. We recognize that we deserve to be separated from a Holy God. We
then tell Him that we know that He has provided a payment for all our sin and this
payment was Jesus Christ when He died on a cross. It is at this time we ask God to
APPLY THIS PAYMENT TO OUR ACCOUNT. We ask God to credit as PAYMENT
IN FULL for all our sin the price Jesus paid for us. It is this step that gives us eternal life.
If we do all but this step, we know about God. When we do this step, we will KNOW
God and we will have eternal life. 

We will be able to have peace within our heart when we have accepted Christ as above. 

Often, however, after we have trusted Christ, we still have turmoil in our heart. We often
try to keep things from Him that we know does not please Him. This will take the peace
that He wants us to have away. 

If you are in this group, you know you have trusted Christ and belong to Him but you do
not have peace now, then the next step would be the prayer as out lined below. 

Often we do not have peace because of hurts in our life. Others may have abused us and
we may have problems forgiving them since their actions have caused a lot of hurts in our
life which run deep. It may help to see these hurt as a jar that is full of our hurts and pain.
We take the lid off the jar and pour all these hurts out to God in prayer. At these painful
times in my life I am even literally cried out "DADDY I NEED YOU"! We are told we
can call God "Abby Father" which means "DADDY". I am sure God is honored when we
have this closeness with Him He wants this close relationship with us. Anyway POUR out
all these hurts, the anger, the bitterness every bit of garbage that is in our hearts. Pour all
these hurts out until we are emotionally drained. If God reveals any to you (as He did me
when I realized I WAS bitter at my parents) let them out too. Sin can not stand being
exposed to light. We must expose every last bit we think of (God KNOWS all about it
anyway so we are not fooling Him!) 

As we are emotionally drained, we then have an empty jar---- a jar empty of all the
bitterness and hurts of our past. We then MEDITATE and ask God to give us new
meaning to the old hurts. Often it helps to sing praise music or/or to have it softly in the
background. It is also a good idea to do this in our secret place as I have found it
impossible to do this without a flood of tears but that too cleanses the soul. 
As God gives us new meaning to these old hurts, we need to PRAISE HIM for the new
meaning. 

This helps us to LET GO of these past hurts. PRAY for those that have hurt us if they are
still alive. If not, forgive them for the hurts they have caused us anyway. We need to
actually forgive all those who have offended us. This meant for me to forgive the man that
raped me and I can honestly say that if he walked into this room tonight and needed to
know how to be saved, I would GLADLY tell him how to meet the MASTER!

Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in
thee. Isaiah 26:3 

Let us all focus on JESUS, When we do, we will find peace in the most difficult place to
find it -- our heart!
Ken 

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JUNE is Domestic Violence Against Men Awareness Month