This episode of Living the Selah Life focuses on the seventh Beatitude in Matthew 5:9, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.” It is more than a call to remain calm. It is a call to step into the work of reconciliation in a divided world.

Kim draws a clear line between peacekeeping and peacemaking. Keeping peace avoids conflict. Making peace requires courage, wisdom, and intentional action. It means having hard conversations and seeking real healing rather than settling for surface harmony. This calling reflects the heart of God Himself.

Building on the earlier Beatitudes, Kim explains that peacemaking flows from a pure heart. When motives are sincere and not driven by pride or the need to win, reconciliation becomes possible. Real peace addresses what is beneath the surface and works toward restoration.

Listeners are invited to reflect on their own relationships and consider where God may be calling them to pursue peace. The promise that peacemakers will be called sons of God serves as both identity and encouragement to live this out with humility and bold faith.

The content shared on Living the Selah Life is for spiritual encouragement, personal reflection, and informational purposes only.

It is not intended to diagnose, treat or replace medical, psychological or professional advice of any kind.

Please consult a licensed healthcare provider or qualified professional for any physical, mental or emotional health concerns.

The views expressed are those of the host, Kimberly Lochinor, and are based on personal experience and Biblical insight, not clinical or professional training.

Welcome back to Living the Selah Life, a podcast that invites you to slow down to breathe and reconnect with the presence of God.

I am your host, Kim, and this space is for anyone longing to become more familiar with his presence.

Each episode is an intentional pause, a moment to reflect, realign and remember that God meets us when we create space for Him.

So take a breath.

You are right on time.

Let's live the Selah Life together.

Hello there my friends, and welcome back to Living the Selah Life.

In our last episode, we explored the sixth Beatitude.

Blessed are the pure in heart.

We discovered that purity of heart means having an undivided devotion to God and that those with pure hearts will see Him.

That's what he said.

Today we arrive at the seventh beatitude from Matthew chapter five.

9 Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.

This is a powerful calling to active reconciliation in a world that is filled with conflict and division.

We will discover what it truly means to be a peacemaker and why this calling is so blessed, and the beautiful promise of being called children of God.

We will call this week's main teaching Understanding the Peacemaker.

As we said earlier, Matthew chapter 5, verses 9 says, Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.

The Beatitudes build one on another, each one preparing us for the next.

When we are poor in spirit, we understand our deep need for peace with God.

When we mourn, we grieve over the brokenness in the world and in our relationships.

Meekness surrenders the need to always be right.

And when we hunger and thirst for righteousness, the Lord Himself makes sure that we are filled and a pure heart looks to God and others with right inward motives.

All of this prepares us to become peacemakers.

Jesus's promises here is remarkable.

Peacemakers shall be called sons of God.

This means they bear the family resemblance.

They reflect their Father's character because God is the ultimate peacemaker, having reconciled humanity to Himself through Jesus.

When we make peace, we show that we belong to his family.

We carry on the family business of reconciliation.

To understand this calling, we need to look at the Specific word Jesus used.

You know, I like to do that.

The Greek term is, and I will spell it so you can go look it up.

It's E I R E N O P O I O, s, pronounced erano poios.

It's a compound word combining irene, which means peace, and poil means, which means to make or do so.

A peacemaker is literally a peace doer or peacemaker, someone who intentionally creates peace where there is conflict.

And this word is rare in Greek literature.

Jesus may have coined it or deliberately used an uncommon term to emphasize the active nature of peacemaking.

He's not talking about people who simply avoid conflict or people who naturally get along with everyone.

He is talking about people who work to bring peace.

Where there is division, the word emphasizes action.

Peacemakers don't just wish for peace or pray for peace from a distance.

They make peace.

Peace doers, they take initiative.

They build bridges.

They pursue reconciliation.

They work to heal things that are broken and resolve conflicts.

And this requires courage, wisdom, and a willingness to step into some pretty uncomfortable situations.

What is a peacemaker versus a peacekeeper?

Because there is a difference.

Peacekeepers avoid conflict.

They can keep quiet sometimes when they should speak up or just ignore problems, hoping they will go away.

Peacekeepers want everyone to get along, whether it's superficial or not, even if that means sweeping real issues under the rug.

Those are peacekeepers.

That's not what Jesus called us.

He said peacemakers.

Peacemaking, on the other hand, again is active.

It's doing peacemakers address conflict.

They have difficult conversations.

They confront issues that need to be confronting.

And they don't avoid problems.

They work to solve them.

Peacemaking often creates temporary discomfort to produce lasting peace.

Peacemakers value genuine reconciliation, even when pursuing it is uncomfortable, and most times it is.

They want things to be healed at more than just a superficial level, not just patched over with a smile.

Jesus was a peacemaker, not a peacekeeper.

He confronted things.

He challenged religious leaders.

He spoke truth.

That created conflict.

But his goal was always genuine reconciliation.

And that is the difference.

His goal was genuine reconciliation, even when the truth caused unrest and a lack of peace in some people, that was not his goal.

His goal was reconciliation, bringing people back into a right relationship with God and with one another.

He created real peace by addressing what was wrong.

The Order of the Beatitudes reveals spiritual progression.

Peacemaking follows purity of heart because you need pure motives to make peace.

Well, if your heart is divided or if your motives are mixed, if you're seeking personal advantage, your attempts at peacemaking will fail.

They will become manipulative.

Peacemaking requires you to care more about reconciliation than about being right.

If your heart is pure, you can let go of needing vindication and you can admit fault if there's any.

You can extend grace.

You can pursue peace without demanding that everyone acknowledge who was right and who was wrong.

Peacemaking also requires you to see others with compassion.

When your heart is pure, you can look past people's failures and instead focus on their need for reconciliation.

And this is so huge.

It is so hard to reach people when the only thing you can see is their sin, when the only ministry that you can tell them is if you don't this, you're going to go to hell.

It is so hard to reach them when that is the case, because one, that's not the gospel and two reconciliation.

You can approach them with grace.

You want restoration without purity of heart.

Attempts at peacemaking, again, like I said, become manipulative.

You are trying to get your way while appearing noble.

And you are seeking personal advantage while claiming to pursue peace.

Pure hearted peacemaking seeks genuine reconciliation for everyone's benefit.

God is the ultimate peacemaker.

As I'm sure you already know, humanity's sin created division between us and God.

And we were his enemies, separated from him by rebellion.

God could have left us in that separated state and he could have given us what we deserved, which is, well, you know, we deserved.

But he did not do that.

He.

He took the initiative to reconcile us to Himself.

Romans 5:10 says, for if when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more having been reconciled, we shall be saved by his life.

While we were still enemies, God reconciled us to Himself.

He didn't wait for us to get it together.

He didn't demand that we prove ourselves worthy.

2 Corinthians, chapter 5, verses 18 and 19 explain this even further.

Now all things are of God, who has reconciled us to himself through Jesus Christ and has given us the ministry of reconciliation, that is that God was in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them, and has committed to us the word of reconciliation.

Love that God made peace by sending Jesus.

Jesus bridged the gap between God and us.

He removed the barrier that sin created.

In Colossians, chapter 1, verses 20 says, God made peace through the blood of his cross.

This is the heart of the gospel.

God is a peacemaker.

While we were still sinners, still enemies, still in rebellion, he made peace by sending Jesus.

And this is the model that we follow.

We don't wait for people to deserve peace because we would never do it.

We pursue it because God pursued it with us.

Jesus promises something, though.

He promises that peacemakers shall be called sons of God.

This promise reveals that peacemaking is a family characteristic.

When you make peace, you are acting like you your father.

In the ancient world, sons were expected to follow their father's trade and display their father's character.

So if your father was a carpenter, you became a carpenter.

If your father was known for wisdom, you were expected to be wise.

Sons carried on the family business and upheld the family reputation.

God's business one of many.

He is a multifaceted entrepreneur, but one of his businesses, and the biggest one that served us the most first is making peace.

His character includes pursuing reconciliation.

Notice I said pursuing.

When his children make peace, they are carrying on the family business.

They are displaying his character.

They are showing that they belong to him.

Being called sons of God means being recognized as belonging to God's family.

People see your peacemaking and recognize that there's something different about you.

This promise also means God acknowledges you as his child.

It's one of many, but it's one of them.

Your peacemaking pleases him because it reflects his own heart.

He recognizes his work in you.

He sees his character being displayed through you.

And that is a beautiful thing.

Some people might think that peacemaking means avoiding truth or compromising convictions.

And that's sometimes something that I hear when it comes to the fruit of the Spirit.

And you hear merciful and you hear meek, and you hear poor and spirit and all these things, and nothing could be further from the truth.

You may believe that a peacemaker overlooks error or ignores error and tolerate anything to avoid conflict.

And this is a misunderstanding.

Real peace cannot be built on lies.

Ephesians chapter 4, verses 15 instructs us the truth in love.

Truth and love work together in peacemaking.

You don't sacrifice truth for false peace.

You speak truth in a way that serves reconciliation.

Jesus demonstrated this balance.

As you know, he spoke some hard truths, he confronted some hard stuff.

And in his day he would look like a heretic.

But his goal was always redemptive.

He spoke truth to bring people to repentance and restoration, not to condemn and to destroy.

The key is motive.

And what happens when peace just is not possible.

And that sometimes can be the case.

It says, if it is possible, as much as depends on you, live peaceably with all men.

The phrase if it is possible recognizes that sometimes peace is not possible.

The phrase as much as depends on you clarifies your responsibility.

You do your part, you remain willing to be reconciled, but you cannot control the other person's response.

Peacemaking does not mean you are responsible for the outcome.

You are responsible for your response.

Peacemaking also does not mean tolerating, abuse or enabling in any kind of way.

You can work for peace while maintaining healthy boundaries.

And you can also remain willing to be reconciled while protecting yourself from harm.

You can extend grace without allowing destructive behavior to continue.

And sometimes the most loving thing you can do is allow natural consequences.

In some situations, peace might require distance until genuine repentance and reconciliation can occur.

Or you might have to entrust the situation to God and wait for him to work.

But even in these situations, peacemakers remain willing to reconcile when the other person is ready.

And what's the cost of peacemaking?

As you know, some of these things, if not all of these things, they are costly at first.

I will say at first because once you begin to make it a lifestyle, it just becomes your lifestyle.

And the low hanging fruit is not as costly.

But some things can be costly.

It requires time, energy and emotional investment.

Jesus paid the ultimate cost for peacemaking.

His peacemaking led to his death.

Those who preferred division, who benefited from keeping people separated from God, killed him for his work of reconciliation, and peacemakers should expect opposition from those who profit from division.

But the cost is worth it.

Reconciled relationships are worth the sacrifice, unity is worth the effort, and peace is worth the price.

And ultimately, being called sons of God, being recognized as displaying the Father's character, is worth any cost.

We live in such a divided world.

Nations are in conflict, political parties are hostile, races are divided, economic classes distrust each other, and ideological camps demonize each other.

Churches are splitting up, families fracture, social media amplifies division into this broken world.

Jesus sends guess what?

Peacemakers he calls his own followers to be people who build bridges, who pursue reconciliation, and who work to heal division.

Peacemakers refuse the world's values.

They seek common ground with those who disagree, and they show grace to those on the other side.

They work to understand before demanding to be understood.

This doesn't mean peacemakers compromise convictions.

It means they we us engage with those that we disagree with in ways, hear me that keep doors open rather than slamming them shut.

Peacemakers engage people with opposite views or opinions in ways that keep doors open rather than slamming them shut.

Christian peacemaking is desperately needed in our divided culture.

Christ like peacemaking, when believers build bridges and pursue reconciliation and are able to maintain unity despite differences, we demonstrate the Power of the Gospel.

Our reconciliation with God should produce commitment to reconciliation with others.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the sons of God.

Amen.

We will move on to this week's pause prompts.

And remember, pause prompts are just questions so that you can take inventory of where you are so that you can know where you're going or where you need to be or where you need to be going.

They're never meant to condemn.

Remember that Pause prompt number one.

What broken relationships in your life need attention?

Where have you been avoiding reconciliation rather than pursuing it?

Are you a peacekeeper who avoids conflict or peacemaker who addresses it?

Where do you need to take initiative toward someone else?

Is there someone you need to go to?

Someone you need to ask forgiveness from?

Someone you may need to extend a little extra grace toward?

What is peacemaking costing you and are you willing to pay the price?

How are you contributing to division in your world?

Not even the world.

Your world.

Where could you build bridges?

Remember that being a peacemaker is the Holy Spirit producing God's heart for reconciliation in us, giving us courage to address conflict and wisdom to pursue genuine peace.

We will move on into our Selah moment and prayer.

Begin by sitting comfortably and taking several slow, deep breaths.

Breaths.

Picture Jesus on the cross making peace between God and humanity.

He paid the price for reconciliation.

This is the heart of the Father, pursuing peace at great cost.

Bring to mind relationships that are broken or fractured.

There are any people that you are avoiding conflicts you are not addressing.

Reconciliation you are not pursuing.

Acknowledge your resistance to the hard work of peacemaking.

Ask God to show you your part in these broken relationships.

Where have you contributed to division?

Or if you have failed to pursue reconciliation.

What do you need to confess or change?

Ask the Holy Spirit to give you courage to address conflict and wisdom to pursue peace well, ask him to show you when to speak, what to say and how to approach those who need to be reconciled.

Let us pray.

Father, in the name of Jesus, thank you for being the ultimate peacemaker.

Thank you that while we were still your enemies, you reconciled us to yourself through Jesus.

Thank you that you took the initiative to make peace when we deserve something else.

Thank you for the costly reconciliation you accomplished through the cross.

Holy Spirit, produce peacemaking in us.

Give us your heart for reconciliation.

Help us grieve over broken things the way you grieve.

Move us to action rather than allowing us to avoid conflict or maintain false peace.

Forgive us for being peacekeepers sometimes rather than peacemakers.

Forgive us for avoiding difficult conversations, for ignoring problems hoping they will go away for maintaining surface harmony while deep issues remain unaddressed.

Forgive us for valuing comfort above genuine reconciliation.

Show us any relationships that need attention.

Give us courage to address it.

We do not want the discomfort that comes with confronting issues.

Give us supernatural courage to do what is hard for the sake of reconciliation.

Give us wisdom for peacemaking.

Show us when to speak and when to be silent.

Teach us how how to speak truth in love and help us know when to confront and when not to.

Give us discernment for each situation.

Produce the humility peacemaking requires.

Make us like Jesus, willing to pay the cost of peacemaking and our marriages.

Make us peacemakers.

Help us address issues rather than letting anything negative build up in our families.

Use us to heal fractured relationships in our churches.

Make us instruments of unity in our communities.

Use us to build bridges.

Help us to combine truth and love.

Help us know our responsibilities and its limits.

Show us what depends on us, our efforts, our attitudes, our willingness, our actions.

And help us to do our part faithfully.

Also help us release what we cannot control when we have done our part.

Give us grace to release the situation to you.

Thank you for the promise that peacemakers will be called sons of God.

Thank you that when we make peace, we are displaying your character.

Make us people who build bridges, Lord.

Make us people who pursue reconciliation.

Make us people who value peace enough to do the hard work required to achieve it.

Make us peacemakers like our Father.

It is in Jesus name that we pray who made peace through his blood on the cross.

And it is so.

Let's lean into your Ceylon moment, Sam.

That is it for today, my friends.

Thank you for listening to Living the Selah Life.

If this moment stirred something in your spirit, please share it with someone who needs to be reminded to pause and listen.

You can connect with me on Instagram, a Facebook group, not a Facebook page.

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Until next time.

Remember that God is speaking.

He wants to guide you and direct you and give you his wisdom for your life.

Create space to listen.

Ask him to make you a peacemaker who reflects his heart for reconciliation.

May you go from this place rested, carrying the awareness that his presence is always near.

May you be rooted in the unshakable word of God, the logos that ground you and the rhema that guide you.

May you keep rising into the life he designed for you, into purpose, into peace, into the fullness of his calling.

May your life become a living Selah.

An intentional pause that reveals his presence in Jesus name.

And it is so Selah.