Are You At Peace?
In your lives there are three kinds of relationships that you will have. We have an internal relationship with ourselves, we have an external relationship with others, then finally and most important we have an eternal relationship with God.
All three of these relationships need to be in balance with each other. If you are not right with yourself or do not feel good about yourself inside (Internal). It will effect your relationships with others around you (External). One example of this just happened to me. We were at a small group meeting, I felt very strongly about a subject that we were talking about, and I may have become over zealous in expressing my opinions. When I came home, I was not right inside, so until I felt right inside, it effected the relationship with the others in our small group.
The most important relationship is your eternal relationship with GOD. This aspect will affect all your other relationships. If you are not right with GOD, you are not right internally and externally.
A good example of this is Omesimus. Omesimus was not at peace internally. He stole money from his master, then he ran as far away as he could go. Internally he must have been a mess. Then he found Paul, and Paul helped him find Christ. Once Omesimus made his eternal relationship right, he felt at peace with himself, and then made things right with his other relationship to Philemon, his wife, and I would guess the home church.
If you find that you are not at peace with yourself and others around you, may you make peace with your eternal relationship with GOD. May you know that once that relationship is secure, all others will fall into place.
The LORD bless you and keep you; the LORD make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; the LORD lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.
Philemon 1-3
Paul, a prisoner for Christ Jesus, and Timothy our brother,To Philemon our beloved fellow worker and Apphia our sister and Archippus our fellow soldier, and the church in your house:Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
The story is pretty simple. Philemon owned Omesimus who was a slave that scholars believed stole money from Philemon (v18). Omesimus then wanted to get as far away from Philemon as he could, so he ran away to Rome, where he met up with Paul in prison.
From there Omesimus became very useful to Paul, as well as a new believer in Christ. But Paul legally could not keep Omesimus. So Paul wrote a letter to Philemon asking him to take Omesimus back, not as a slave anymore, but as a brother in Christ. This was a tense moment as Philemon has every right to have Omesimus executed for what he has done.
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