Being a peacemaker is the opposite of being a gossip, a backbiter, a trouble maker, or a bully. If your desire is to go around causing trouble, then you will hurt a lot of people. But, if your desire is to create win/win situations for all those you associate with, then you can see how people are going to want to be around you. It’s true that gossips, backbiters, trouble makers, or bullies may want to be around you too, but, that would be a pretty miserable group. Jesus offers you a much better group of friends.

Problems like guilt very often come from a lack of peace; You need peace so you can be a peacemaker. Jesus is letting you know that, as long as your struggles with your emotions, finances, relationships, physical needs, and spiritual issues exist, they keep you from being able to be at peace with yourself and those around you. The pain from all these areas will keep you upset. Your heart and your mind will be in turmoil; and, your words and deeds will be reactions that will hurt you and others.

Jesus, will use you being poor in spirit so you will be open to God’s truths, you mourning about doing wrong things or mourning about neglecting to do right things, you yielding to meekness so God and His Bible are your final authority, you having a deep hunger and thirst for righteousness so you desire to treat yourself, others, and God correctly, you being merciful so you can see things from other people’s perspective, and you being pure in heart so your motives will include the best interests of others, to make you ready to be a peacemaker.

Because you are allowing God to help you be poor in spirit, it is making you teachable enough to learn the difference between right and wrong, good and bad, fair and unfair, and righteousness or evil. You being trained in these truths is a big step into being a peacemaker; when you know what a win/win situation looks like, it makes it possible for you to understand how to create a peacemaking plan.

God has helped you cry, feel bad about, and mourn over those things you have done in your past that hurt you and others. When you do something that is wrong, bad, or evil to someone, the Holy Spirit speaks to your conscience and helps you mourn, repent to Jesus, ask Him for His forgiveness, and then yield to His power to cease repeating that behavior again. Then Jesus empowers you to go make it right with the person you hurt. That is a part of you being a peacemaker.

You being guided by the animalistic desires of your body kept you from getting along with those around you. Your world training was powerless to help you be guided into treating yourself and others the right way. But, as you continue to be guided by the authority of God and the Bible through meekness, you have the truth about how life really works.

Meekness helps you start trusting your heavenly Father’s way of seeing things. In other words it helps you agree with Him as to what is sin and what is righteous. It is helping you realize that thoughts, feelings, words, and deeds can have right or wrong aspects to them. Through it your relationship with God is improving as you learn to believe what He is saying to you. Peacemaking can only happen when God’s truths are applied to all relationships.

As you grow in your ability to see the difference between good and bad, you allow God to begin giving you a greater and greater hunger and thirst for the good things of righteousness. And, you also yield to a greater and greater hatred and resistance to bad things. This hungering and thirsting for righteousness doesn’t just help you want good for yourself, it motivates you to want peace to cause good to flow in the lives of others. This hungering and thirsting becomes a desire for others to have peace. It helps you be a peacemaker with a love for others.

As long as you and the people around you want justice, revenge, equity, and fairness, grace and mercy can’t heal relationships. You CANNOT be merciful UNLESS the person you are forgiving, being gracious to, or being merciful to DOESN’T deserve it. That person has to be guilty, at fault, wrong, and a person who carried out a harmful, illegal, or immoral act. God’s type of peacemaking requires mercy. If you and the people around you want to be forgiven of all the wrong, bad, and evil things you have done, then mercy is mandatory.

Jer 17:9 (NIV) The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it? Until God has healed your deceitful heart, all your “peacemaking” efforts are going to be contaminated by ulterior, selfish, self-centered, self-serving motives. No matter how hard you try to be fair, selfless, and compassionate, your heart will deceive you. But, once you start yielding to God’s power-attitude of pure in heart, your peacemaking efforts will be based on win/win solutions.