Since you are growing in your skills and abilities to see what is fair and what is unfair, you will be able to help others get along. When people feel they are right, you can start helping them become poor enough in their spirit to allow you to teach them fair treatment. Their desire to solve their disagreements will open their heart to your teaching.

Peacemaking requires that you point out people’s mistakes but not their fault. Fault, responsibility, and blame have to do with who caused the problem. In every situation, there are faults, failures, misunderstandings, and wrongs. In self-esteem and self-confidence, the person is only as good as their behavior. When you start trying to bring peace to a situation, both parties are trying to protect their esteem and confidence. They are both trying to shift the blame and responsibility on the other person or group.

In God-esteem and God-confidence you will be teaching them that THEY are wonderful people but THEIR deed was something that needs to be worked on. If they ACCIDENTLY hurt someone, they can feel really bad about it without feeling guilty. It wasn’t a FAULT on anyone’s part; no one did it on purpose; it was an accident. If they will ask God to forgive them of ALL their sins, failures, misdeeds, faults, and bad behavior, then He gives them a perfect record with Him. He makes them a perfect person without sins, failures, misdeeds, faults, and bad behavior.

Mourning can take place when they really feel bad about how much they hurt someone else. But, God has removed all, fault, guilt, responsibility, and punishment. Once you show them how to mourn, repent, ask Jesus for His forgiveness, accept His perfect record, and allow themselves of believe they are free of ALL sins, failures, misdeeds, faults, and bad behavior, THEY can relax. It could have been their responsibility, fault, or failure prior to turning it all over to Jesus. But, now it doesn’t have anything to do with any of those things.

Even though people who are fighting don’t want to feel bad about what they did to each other, you can help them learn how to “mourn” by starting to see they have done something that hurt the other person. Usually there have been two wrongs, when two people start arguing and fighting. You can show both of them how to “mourn” by feeling bad about THEIR part of the misunderstanding. You may not be able to get them to accept a relationship with Jesus and become meek at this point; but, you can help them with the beginning stages of meekness.

This Bible passage can help you present the reason for people having conflicts to become meek: Isaah 55:8-9 (NIV) “For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways,” declares the LORD. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts.” Meekness or making God the final authority in a person’s life is difficult if they are busy believing in themselves. Self-esteem and confidence require that a person believe in their value and their abilities. They believe they are valuable and capable because they think so (self-esteem), or, because someone told them so (people-esteem), or, because of some accomplishment (performance-esteem).

God-esteem comes from a person believing in God’s acceptance of them. John 3:16 (NIV) For God so loved the world THAT He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life. This verse explains that a person can get God-esteem and confidence, if they believe in Jesus. They get A LOT more than that; but, it is one of the blessings from being born again.

Here is the greatest peacemaker accomplishment you can involve yourself in: Rom 4:25 (NIV) He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification. Rom 5:1 (NIV) Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. When you help someone be born again, you bring peace into their life with God. If you and Jesus can accomplish this, meekness will be able to flow into their life.

The people you deal with who are needing peacemaking help are already full. They can’t get hungry or thirsty because they have already filled themselves with world training. But, if they get into a bad enough argument, conflict situation, or distructive relationship, they MAY be ready to let some of their world “food” go. It becomes a goal of helping them see that Jesus’ ways are the best ways for living life. Hunger and thirsting for righteousness has to be developed in them. They have to be helped to SEE that their procedures aren’t working. And, they have to SEE that there IS a better way.

Mat 7:12 (NIV) So in EVERYTHING, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets. As you are finding out what the people want done to them, you are to help them see the brilliance of this system. You aren’t just trying to bring peace with people, you are trying to bring peace with God. The definition of righteousness is, only doing good things to yourself, other people, and God’s plan. If those involved in this peacemaking process ONLY want GOOD to come out of this negotiation, then righteousness is their goal. It isn’t until THIS is their goal that peace can be accomplished.

Mat 6:14-15 (NIV) For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins. God expects you to treat others the way He treated you. Whatever gift, blessing, breakthrough, or things you do not deserve, He wants you to be that kind of person with others. Eph 2:4-5 (NIV) But because of His great love for us, God, Who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions--it is by grace you have been saved.

Mat 5:7 (NIV) Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy. Jesus gave this spiritual illustration for how God looks at what He has done for us and what He expects us to do for others: Mat 18:23-27 (NIV) “Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. As he began the settlement, a man who owed him ten thousand talents was brought to him. Since he was not able to pay, the master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he had be sold to repay the debt. The servant fell on his knees before him. “Be patient with me,” he begged, “and I will pay back everything.” The servant’s master took pity on him, canceled the debt and let him go.

Mat 18:28-30 (NIV) But when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii. He grabbed him and began to choke him. ‘Pay back what you owe me!’ he demanded. His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, “Be patient with me, and I will pay you back.” But he refused. Instead, he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt.

Mat 18:31-34 (NIV) When the other servants saw what had happened, they were greatly distressed and went and told their master everything that had happened. Then the master called the servant in. “You wicked servant,” he said, “I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?” In anger his master turned him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed.

Then this is what Jesus said about this illustration: Mat 18:35 (NIV) “This is how My heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother from your heart.”

Jer 17:9 (NIV) The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it? Your heart is VERY skilled at fooling you into believing you have pure motives. You can even go into pride because you feel so pure in your reasons for doing what you are doing. But, when the Holy Spirit reveals what your real motive is, it can be a shock to you. The process of going from a deceitful heart to a pure heart takes a supernatural work of God. At that point, you will no longer be fooled by your heart’s motives. Your heart will be honest with you, those around you, and with God. Peacemaking has to be done with pure motives.

It isn’t just a problem with your heart being deceitful, those you are trying to bring peace to also have deceitful hearts. For you to get at the truth so you and Jesus can bring them peace, you will have to be guided to the right questions, probes, evaluations, and tests. What you are hearing said, what you are being led to believe, and what you are being required to base your decisions on, aren’t the real facts of the matter. To bring people to a pure in heart condition is to cause the real motives to be brought to the surface. When Solomon threatened to cut the baby in half, the fake mother was willing to do it, the real mother wasn’t (1 Kings 3:16-28).

All of God’s truths, concepts, and principles make complete sense, once someone explains them properly. You can help two people, who are arguing, to move into a peaceful relationship by USING the principle of Luke 6:31 (NIV) Do to others as you would have them do to you. You may be dealing with people who are VERY weak in their spiritual understanding and growth and it all must make sense to them. They may be far from being a Christian and wanting anything from Jesus. BUT, the only way for them to start heading in that direction is for you to show them how Christianity will improve their life.

The way to gradually lead people who are in strife into a relationship with Jesus is to teach the Biblical principles that keep making their life and relationships better. You might say something like: “How would you feel if someone treated you that way?” That is you USING the “do to others as you would have them do to you” principle. This helps start someone into spiritual training about establishing peace with someone. You are opening their eyes to see things from other people’s perspective. You are helping them start to respond to love.

As you continue to study how to be set free from your difficulties with spirituality, you are learning many Biblical principles. As you keep learning and applying these principles to your and other people’s lives, God will teach you how to reword, translate, and explain them to those who are untrained. You will help them apply Biblical principles that show them how to get along with each other and you. The more their life keeps getting improved and their relationships get better, they will become interested in learning these special Biblical principles.

You are not only learning how to be set free from the issues with spirituality, you are getting peacemaker training. Those principles that set you free from your struggles with spirituality are the same principles for all issues of life. As you help people have better and better relationships with each other, you can turn these studies into training materials that help them move into the great things of God.