God calls us to be peacemakers, and when we strive to do what He calls us to do, He will reward our faithfulness and bless our efforts. Blessed are the peacemakers.

Sadly, in this fallen world in which we live, conflict is a normal part of everyday life. This is true not only among unbelievers but also among Christians. As it says in Job, when two sinful people are put together, you will inevitably see conflict. As long as we are in this world cursed by sin, conflict will arise. This is not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when, how long, and how bad. Like many other aspects of the Christian life that require pursuit and perseverance in activity, working through our conflicts biblically is not a passive endeavor. We need to look no further than the words of Jesus in Matthew 5:9 when He says, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.” It is worth noting that He said peacemakers, not peace lovers, peace supporters, or peacekeepers. Peacekeeping and peacemaking are very different concepts. One comes from the world, the other comes from God’s Word. Sadly, the two are often confused for each other and people think they’re honoring God as they try to keep the peace when in reality they’re actually dishonoring Him since He has instructed us to make peace, not keep the peace. We don’t want to dishonor God and His Word, so we need to make sure we have clarity on these terms and definitions.
Let’s start with the world’s peacekeeping strategies. The first way the world recommends keeping the peace is by letting time heal. We’ve all heard the saying, “Time heals all wounds,” but time is actually incapable of doing any such thing. Time in its own right doesn’t heal or change anything. The only thing time does is pass. Even if time could heal, healing is not the ultimate objective for the Christian. What is needed, rather, is confession, forgiveness, and repentance.
The next worldly conflict-resolution strategy we need to avoid is trying to bury the conflict. It’s a common strategy in which we busy ourselves with life in hopes the other person will eventually forget whatever the conflict was about. Trying to forget about what happened, willing ourselves to forget what the other person said, and trying to keep ourselves so busy that we no longer have time to think about it only works for so long. This approach only adds to the pile of unresolved grievances, hurts, and complaints. As time goes on, this can lead to anger, bitterness, and even hatred.
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True biblical meditation is not about emptying our minds or each of our thoughts. Instead, biblical meditation is about filling our minds with God’s thoughts as we seek to draw nearer and nearer to Him and then we process those thoughts. We reflect and ruminate upon those thoughts. We chew on those thoughts the way a cow chews the cud as we go about our day. Biblical meditation is not about contemplating the concept of infinity, chants, mantras, or our eyes rolling back in our heads. No, biblical meditation involves thinking deeply about biblical truth. It’s doing what Paul instructed us to do in Philippians 4:8 when he said, “Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things.”
Blessed is the person who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, nor stand in the path of sinners, nor sit in the seat of scoffers!But his delight is in the Law of the Lord, And on His Law he meditates day and night.He will be like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither; And in whatever he does, he prospers.— Psalm 1:1-3 (NASB)
We live in a frenzied and fast-paced world that is increasingly demanding and digitized. A world where we are constantly being bombarded with marketing and messaging. The reality is we are constantly scrolling, skimming, surfing, and searching through a bottomless sea of data and information. And if we’re being honest, we all live incredibly distracted lives. The result is that for most of us, we’ve lost the ability to think deeply and critically about much of anything.
Like a rock protruding from the ocean, which was once jagged and sharp, we eventually become worn down and washed out by the waves of the times. And then the door swings wide open to Satan, attempting to lure us into falling for the lies of this world. What do we do to combat all of this? Well, we’ll do a five or ten-minute devotional reading of Scripture. We’ll send up a few brief “flare prayers,” and then we’re off and running. Now, as a pastor, I’m all for Bible reading. I’m all for prayer. I’m not at all trying to malign or undermine those important spiritual disciplines. But do you see the imbalance? Do you see the problem? How is it possible to face the onslaught of information we face every day? How is it possible to fight the spiritual battles we each face with such an imbalance between biblical content and worldly influence? What I hope to show you here is that biblical meditation is an essential spiritual discipline for a thriving Christian life. It’s a discipline that layers on top of our reading of God’s Word. It’s a discipline that builds upon the sermons we listen to on Sunday mornings. It’s a discipline that drives biblical truth deep into our hearts and cements those truths into our minds. It’s a discipline that enables us to fight and win the spiritual battles that we inevitably face every day.
The go-to text on biblical meditation is Psalm 1 and in the first three verses of that Psalm, it says, “How blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, nor stand in the path of sinners, nor sit in the seat of scoffers. But his delight is in the Law of the Lord, and in His law he meditates day and night.”
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He will rescue some LGBTQ people from the domain of darkness (Colossians 1:13) and qualify them “to share in the inheritance of the saints in Light” (Colossians 1:12). When that happens, and when those who once proudly draped themselves in a rainbow flag are now clothed in the righteousness of Christ, will you be ready to minister to them? To teach, train, and disciple them? To spur them on in their newfound faith? To walk alongside them?

For the past two decades—a relative blip on history’s radar—a new month of celebration has been forcibly entered into our digital calendars, splashed across our screens, and slipped into our common consciousness. That month is the month of June, which LGBTQ advocates have called “Pride Month.”
Now, as the clock prepares to strike midnight each May 31, an angsty mix of emotions sweeps through churches, homes, classrooms, boardrooms, businesses, and government agencies as decisions have to be made about which side of the fence to sit on, how much virtue signaling to engage in, how not to be accused of saying too much (or too little), and how many colors of the rainbow flag should be flown.
In the midst of all the hand-wringing over concerns about being canceled, and the politicking involved in what has become a hot-button issue in our day, a very simple question is often overlooked: what does God think of all of this? What is the Lord of Heaven’s take on the whole idea of “Pride Month”?
This article presents ten truths about God’s perspective on the LGBTQ movement as a whole, and His assessment of our culture’s wholesale devotion of an entire month each year to worship at the altar of “Pride.”
First, God has given us clear directions and prohibitions on a variety of subjects, and related to a variety of sins, in His Word—the Bible.
God has made no mistakes in anything He’s said in His Word. He wasn’t half-in and half-out when He gave us His Word. He didn’t stutter when He gave us His Word. He hasn’t moved on from what He has said in His Word.
On the contrary, God has spoken clearly, directly, and timelessly in His Word. And this means that each of the behaviors, practices, tendencies, predispositions, attractions, and feelings that any of us have—no matter how societally accepted they are or have become—must be held up to the penetrating light of God’s Word.
What God says, goes. What we want, what we feel, what we crave, and what we desire, ultimately doesn’t matter. What matters is what God says, what He has said, and how He wants us to live. “O send out Your light and Your truth, let them lead me.” (Psalm 43:3)
Second, God has clearly outlined His design for marriage, sex, and procreation in the Scriptures.
His design is laid out with simplicity and clarity in Genesis 2:24, which says: “a man shall leave his father and his mother, and be joined to his wife; and they shall become one flesh.”
That is, a man, a biological male (the only kind of man there is), and a woman, a biological female (the only kind of woman there is), are to be joined together in marriage. They then will grow their family through the addition of children, playing their part in fulfilling God’s mandate to populate the earth (Genesis 1:28), and then their kids will go on to start their own families and do the same.
These God-honoring (not to mention species-preserving) cycles of procreation may not be in keeping with what is being taught on college campuses or through the mainstream media these days, but going back to the first truth mentioned above, ultimately it makes no difference what professor so-and-so or a talking head or Elon Musk thinks. It’s God’s perspective—and His alone—that matters.
Third, God has clearly condemned as sinful any corruptions of His design for sex and gender and marriage.
And contrary to the arguments of those who would like to argue that God was grumpily anti-gay in the Old Testament, but that by Jesus’ day, He had evolved into a more friendly, more LGBTQ-affirming “god,” consider the divinely-inspired words of the Apostle Paul, who wrote the following in the New Testament:
Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God.1 Corinthians 6:9-10
Fourth, “there is no partiality with God” (Romans 2:11).
Or as it says in the King James Version, “God is no respecter of persons.”
So, while the sin of homosexuality is, in fact, enumerated as a sin in 1 Corinthians 6:9-10, it isnot the only sin listed there. It is not the unforgivable or unpardonable sin.
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