Enjoying life through our actions

For “He who would love life

And see good days,

Let him refrain his tongue from evil,

And his lips from speaking deceit.

Let him turn away from evil and do good;

Let him seek peace and pursue it.

For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous,

And His ears are open to their prayers;

But the face of the Lord is against those who do evil.” – 1 Peter 3.10-12

Keeping my mouth shut and controlling my tongue are important. It can make all the difference in the world.

But words are not enough – my life needs to match up with the words. My actions need to give substance to my speech.

And here are a few key things to live a life that I can love and to see good days.

Turn from evil

Do good

Seek peace and chase it down

The first two go hand in hand and so do the second two

We have a choice every day, probably many choices every day, to do good or do evil. It may not always seem like a big deal and the choice may sometimes seem minor, but we do have the choice to big good or evil.

This doesn’t seem like we should even have to talk about it. But we do because most of us I think do choose wrongly on occasion.

But I have found that whenever I choose evil over good I regret it. I may enjoy it for a moment, but I am always sorry later. It makes life miserable.

A lot of our problems would be solved by just avoiding evil and doing good.

And then we have ‘seek peace and pursue it.’ In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus told us ‘blessed are the peacemakers.’ In other places we read ‘as much as possible live at peace with all men.’ Hebrews tells us to ‘follow peace, with holiness.’

Now it is obvious that we can’t always have peace. We live in a broken world and violence is a part of it. But our desire should always be to seek out a peaceful solution. Christians should always be the peacemakers and reluctant to resort to violence.

I fear we live in a day when we have forgotten the importance of seeking peace. We may not always be able to find it, but are we peace makers and peace pursuers. I like that past part. It lets us know that we can't just kinda, sorta seek peace. We ought to pursue it, chase it, and track it down. 

When people think of us do they thing of peace, or violence?

Turn from evil

Do good

Seek peace