Category: Character

Live in Peace & Balance

Let us use love and compassion. Peace begins with a smile. Smile five times a day at someone you don't really want to smile at at all. Do it for peace. - Mother Teresa

On the Second Sunday of Advent, we celebrate Peace and the promise of peace on Earth (check out my post on “Happy are the Peacemakers”).

Since I have not recently read a book about “Peace,” I found a chapter entitled “Live in Peace & Balance” in Steven Shallenberger’s Becoming Your Best: The 12 Principles of Highly Successful Leaders.

Shallenberger claims that there are ways to find peace and balance in the midst of chaos and the daily rush of life. You can find peace and balance each and every day. You don’t have to wait until all your challenges and stresses have passed. Peace is always yours to claim.

Thirty percent of employees feel that they are completely burned out or stressed by their jobs, and nearly 40 percent feel that they’ve used up all their energy at the end of each workday. Consider how that affects employee production and turnover!

As a leader, you’ll be more successful if you help employees learn how to manage stress and increase their balance. If you can do that, you’ll likely reduce employee turnover and increase productivity.

Fortunately, there are some things that highly successful leaders can do to find greater peace and balance in their work and personal lives.

Click here to learn Shallenberger’s recipe to live in peace & balance.

Happy are the Peacemakers

Every Christian, according to Jesus Christ, is meant to be a peacemaker both in the community and in the church.  Thus, the sequence from purity of heart in Matthew 5, verse 8 to peacemaking in verse 9 is natural.

There are 400 references to peace in the Bible.  God calls Himself the “God of Peace,” and note how He set things up in the beginning:

  • Peace between God and His people. Intimacy, love, trust.
  • His people at peace with one another. Cooperation, respect, unity.
  • His people in a state of inner peace and rest. No worry.  No anxiety.  No anger or resentment or rebellion.

Unfortunately, two things keep peace from the world:  the opposition of Satan and the disobedience of men.

We are to restore this world to the peace that was forfeited by sin.

Continue reading for perspectives on the seventh beatitude from John MacArthur, Jennifer Kennedy Dean, and John Stott.

Click here to continue.