Episode 10 – The BE-Attitudes: Living Your Best Life Part 8: How To Be A Powerful Peacemaker

Kimberly Faith: Welcome to the Truth in Love podcast with your host, Kimberly Faith, and my dad, John Mac. We seek to present God’s timeless truth through the lens of his remarkable love. Welcome back to the truth in love podcast, podcast number 10, and this is part 8 of the Beatitude series, living your best life. And this section is how to be a powerful peacemaker. And, you know, we asked the question at the end of the last podcast, do you know how to become a powerful peacemaker?

In the last beatitude, we discovered that  our heart is purified through the influence of God’s presence. And we will see him more and more everywhere we look. Additionally, as his word and his presence acts like Windex on the window of our soul, the more that others can see Jesus within us. And conversely, the more that we see God, the greater he makes us into these powerful peacemakers. So welcoming back my dad, John McLarty.

John McLarty: It’s great to be here.

Kimberly Faith: And, we’ve got 2 more of these, today’s and then the next week.

John McLarty: I love these podcasts.

Kimberly Faith: Oh my gosh. This beatitude series has just been amazing. So let’s just get right into it. Matthew 5:9 says, blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called sons of God. You know, Jesus has taught us so many things thus far about our attitudes for living that give us the abundant life.

But it’s interesting that Jesus, as part of this abundant life, isn’t describing someone who gets more peace, but rather someone who brings about peace. Peace is a universal quest. No one wants to live in anxiety. And, you know, I think it’s really crazy how we as born again believers have the power to be peacemakers that are even greater than the “peacemaking” that’s done by the strongest military organizations in the world. Because military action is peace by force.

What are your thoughts, dad?

John McLarty: We have the message that brings peace to people’s souls. 

Kimberly Faith: Yes. 

John McLarty: First, we receive peace in our souls by reconciling with God through Jesus, and we can bring that message of peace and see others who are in turmoil find peace. It’s such a blessing to see others in tremendous turmoil in life achieve that peace. We all need peace.

Kimberly Faith: When people ask me, how is it you have such peace? You know, all the stuff that’s going on right now with, you know, just in our country, in the world, if you look at the Middle East, if you look at the turmoil, the division in our own country, how is it that you have such peace? And the only thing I can tell him is, do you know the Prince of Peace?

You know, Isaiah 9:6. Right? Jesus is the Prince of Peace. That’s where our peace has to begin. And then when we have it, we can give it.

John McLarty: I was looking at the verse that everybody should know, the Christmas story verse, when Jesus was coming to earth and the angels, here in Luke 2:13, suddenly there was with the angels, a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, glory to God in the highest, and on earth, peace, goodwill toward men. We all know that verse, but how profound is that?

Kimberly Faith:  It is. 

John McLarty: Jesus, the Prince of Peace, brings peace, the message of peace.

Kimberly Faith: And the angels were saying that about a baby. And not a, you know, a pilot flying a warthog.

John McLarty: Right.

Kimberly Faith: Not an army unit, not a great military force. The most innocent, vulnerable thing upon the earth is a newborn baby, really. And the angels are saying, peace has come to Earth. You know? This is the way God does his thing. He uses the weak to confound the mighty. God became incarnate as an infant and changed the whole course of eternity for humanity. That should give us great hope.

John McLarty: And it reminds me, we have to go back to the time we found that peace in our life as Christians.

Kimberly Faith: Right. 

John McLarty: And I think that’s very key. We live in this world turned upside down occasionally and full of wars and rumors of wars, and then just our own personal life.

Kimberly Faith: Right.

John McLarty: So we’re continually needing peace, but that foundation of peace we have is when we accepted Jesus as our savior.

Kimberly Faith: Exactly. You know Jesus, the title Prince of Peace, is so well deserved for Christ because, first of all, his life of sacrifice, selflessness, complete conformity to the law of love produced the gospel. I mean, he gave birth to the gospel. Right? You think that’s the wrong way to say that?

John McLarty: The gospel means good news, that’s Jesus

Kimberly Faith: Is the good news.

John McLarty: He was the good news and is the good news. Yes.

Kimberly Faith: And then the gospel, which he basically lived out the gospel for us, reconciles us to the peace of God. And, you know, in the last beatitude, we talked about one of the former ones, we talked about hungering and thirsting after righteousness, and we read from Isaiah 32:16 that says the work of righteousness will be peace. You know, we and the effect of righteousness, quietness, and assurance forever.

John McLarty: Right.

Kimberly Faith: We cannot spread peace, righteousness I mean, quietness, assurance if we don’t have it ourselves. You cannot give away what you do not possess. And, you know, as a person who was a born again Christian for many years but had not learned to live in peace. I can tell you that a lot of the people who come to my office are just like I was and had the same struggle. It’s a universal struggle for us to own our salvation to the point that we are living out this life of peace, but so much so, that people go, how can you be peaceful?  Right? 

John McLarty: Right. 

Kimberly Faith: And then we point them back to, first of all, you have to be reconciled to Christ. Through the gift of salvation, you have to accept Jesus Christ as your lord and savior and knowing it’s all him and not you.

And secondly, that you need to pursue righteousness. In other words, pursue his presence in all the ways that Jesus has been laying out in these beatitudes. When you develop these attitudes of complete dependence on God, which is to be poor in spirit, complete mourning and hatred of sin, which destroys everything good and causes all the horrors that we experience that causes anxiety. We can’t snuggle up to the thing that destroys our peace, You know? And that was a, you know, that was such a great realization that the Lord showed me.

I looked at all the, you know, as we grow, we’re supposed to have less and less of the obvious sins. Right? We may get saved and be addicted to, let’s say, alcohol, but it becomes very clear that you being an alcoholic and being a born again Christian, those paths don’t converge. You know, one or the other’s going to go. Right?

John McLarty: Right.

Kimberly Faith: And so even though as I grow in my walk with God, because I certainly haven’t arrived, I’ll never have arrived until I get rid of this flesh that wants to sin all the time. But even the things that become, like, or we think of them that this is an okay sin. This is a white lie. Oh, I can cheat on my taxes. Oh, well, it won’t really matter if I, you know, if I don’t pay all my tithe because nobody’s looking, nobody knows my income, or I don’t have to pray without ceasing because who really cares?

Does it really matter? You know what I’m saying? The sins of omission. The holy spirit works in us and convicts us. So we don’t have that peace to the fullest extent we could.

We’re not taking advantage of that if we’re engaging in even the small sins, which there really aren’t any small sins because they’re all violations of God’s love, right, of what Jesus did for us on the cross. And so I just think that, you know, to understand that sin, whether it’s the obvious blatant sin, sins of commission, or sins of omission, sin will always destroy your peace. 

It will always bring you anxiety. The gospel and the presence of God restore it. When we make up our mind that that’s how we’re going to live, we develop this beatitude. All the ones you just talked about, then we become peacemakers.

John McLarty: It’s really interesting. I have to think back. I was saved when I was in my twenties, so I’m well beyond that now. 

Kimberly Faith: What? I couldn’t tell.

John McLarty: I’ve been saved over 49 years. So this idea is so wonderful because you have, again, two sides to the coin. The peace we received when we became Christians

Kimberly Faith: Right.

John McLarty: And then the peace you’re describing, and we’ll, you know, dig deeper as Christians living the Christian life. But I have to think back when I think of really having a lack of peace, I have to think back in my twenties and when my whole life lacked peace. Now as a Christian, it’s just something that may happen that robs me of my peace.

Kimberly Faith:  Right. 

John McLarty: Whether it’s

Kimberly Faith: A health issue

Kimberly Faith:  Financial crisis. 

John McLarty: Your car blows up. 

Kimberly Faith: Right. 

John McLarty: But I have to think about when my life was characterized by that search, that anxiety, and then I found Jesus. I have to think back many years to think about and relate to people that are living today in continual searching. It’s not just something’s happened in their life. They’re just not at peace. 

Kimberly Faith: Right. 

John McLarty: They’re unhappy. They’re feeling that anxiety of a lost person. They don’t have God in their life.

Kimberly Faith: Right. And, you know, this podcast, one of the things that, when the Lord laid on my heart to this podcast 3 years ago and so grateful that we got to start this year, one of the big goals that God laid on my heart was to reach people where they are. Well, everybody has anxiety. And the Bible talks about that, how every person who has not been reconciled to God has a baseline anxiety. That’s a common denominator, and my prayer for this podcast is that people will listen to it whether a person is not born again yet or whether a person is a Christian already born again, but is still feeling this high level of anxiety and will find that this is helpful to drawing closer to God, who’s the only one who will alleviate the anxiety.

And matter of fact, when we talk about the last beatitude, it even becomes a more miraculous, powerful, message that Jesus is giving us about how we can walk through this life and maintain this steady sense of peace. It’s remarkable that you have to kind of look all the way back decades ago to remember what it was like to have the heightened level of anxiety that people have before they’re born again.

John McLarty: And back in our first podcast when I shared my testimony, it was that, when I was saved, in my mind, it wasn’t so much escaping hell or obtaining heaven, even though that is a real issue. And some people’s salvation is really that, you know, God meets us where we are.

Kimberly Faith: Right.

John McLarty: My salvation was truly finding peace with God, reconciling.

Kimberly Faith: And you did.

John McLarty: Jesus and I became friends. We restored our relationship. So I’d like to just read that we’ve been using the word reconciled. So what does that mean? Reconciled is make peace.

Kimberly Faith: Okay.

John McLarty: When 2 people are at odds with each other, say they’ve had a fight, when they make peace, it’s called they reconcile. They come back together.

Kimberly Faith: Why don’t you read the scripture using that word, make peace? Those words.

John McLarty: Yeah. And it’s 2nd Corinthians, chapter 5 verse 18 through 20. And it says, and all things are of god who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ. And then as we’re talking about, and has given to us the ministry of reconciliation to wit, that God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself, so bringing peace to the world and individuals, not imputing their trespasses unto them and have committed unto us the word of reconciliation. Now then we are ambassadors for Christ as  though God did beseech you by us: we pray you in Christ’s stead, be ye reconciled to God. So when that happened to me, when I was reconciled with God,  I made peace with God. 

Kimberly Faith: Right. 

John McLarty: We were friends. We had been enemies 

Kimberly Faith: Right.

John McLarty:Enemies because of my sin. We literally became friends through reconciliation.

Kimberly Faith: Right. 

John McLarty: We were reconciled, and then that gave me peace. All this searching I was doing 

Kimberly Faith: Right.

John McLarty: For peace, for a resolution to my anxiety.

Kimberly Faith: Right.

John McLarty: Was resolved when I accepted Jesus as my savior.

Kimberly Faith: You mentioned the word enemies. You know? If you think about how much people pander to great, maybe great powerful people that they know. So they don’t want it because they don’t want to become enemies with that person. I mean, I practice law in front of several judges.

I don’t want to become their enemies because they may not listen to my case. Right? They may not give me the benefit of the doubt if they don’t trust my word, if I’m you know, their nemesis. Right? Well, this is God, He is the creator of everything, everything good.

He created us. And, you know, think about how arrogant it is for us to live as if we’re okay with being enemies of the one who sustains the very breath in our lungs. It’s arrogant to the point of being ludicrous.

John McLarty: And it’s so interesting because that’s when I became saved and the holy spirit revealed to me, not only my sin, but by revealing my sin unto me, he revealed that he was real. And then that hit me as actually one of my greatest sins is that I had ignored him all my life. And I went, Oh My! God is real. I’ve basically lived my life up until my mid twenties as if he doesn’t exist.

Kimberly Faith: That’d be like me walking into a courtroom and failing to, rise when the judge enters or

John McLarty: Right.

Kimberly Faith: Ignore the judge as he’s talking to me. You know? I mean, how far would I get in my case as an advocate? I would be nowhere. I would be kicked out of the courtroom.

And when we recognize that our need for God and this goes back to the first beatitude where to be poor into spirit is to realize that we are nothing without God. And that draws us into not only accepting salvation by grace through faith and not of works, but also to our utter dependence in living every day in casting all of our cares on God. You know? It just amazes me how Jesus who walked on this earth, didn’t own a house, didn’t own a donkey. I’d  say a car, but I guess it’d be a donkey.

Didn’t own a chariot, didn’t have a bank account. You know? He was a convicted criminal. And he told us to cast all of our cares on him. He told us to seek his kingdom first, and everything else will be added to us.

We have it so backwards. We spend all of our life pandering to people, pandering to our basic needs, pandering to our own vanity, and we fail to understand why we don’t have peace.

John McLarty: Right. I see an outline here. First, we have to have peace with God. 

Kimberly Faith: Right. 

John McLarty: Then we need to maintain that peace even though we can’t lose our salvation. It’s secure.

Kimberly Faith: Right.

John McLarty: But we can get all wrapped around the axle of the world. 

Kimberly Faith: Right. 

John McLarty: And I love this verse, and it’s a very common verse, but in Matthew 28, Jesus says, come to me all you that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Well, to me, that’s peace.

Kimberly Faith: That is peace.

John McLarty: That’s resting in him, trusting in him. So we live this life of peace, but then we have that we’re peacemakers, and I love this beatitude.

Kimberly Faith: Yes.

John McLarty: We’re peacemakers. That means what we have, we want to share that with others.

Kimberly Faith: Right. It’s like having the cure to cancer and keeping it to yourself.

John McLarty: Exactly.

Kimberly Faith: You know?  I want to go back to what you said about rest. You know, the Lord laid on my heart to study Hebrews chapter 4, which is a remarkable passage, and there’s a whole devotional series on it about finding rest. But, you know,  I didn’t realize this until I studied Hebrews chapter 4. We are commanded to enter into rest.

I never thought about, you know, you think, oh, I’ve got to be doing, doing, doing for God. Well, we should be, but that doesn’t mean that mentally and emotionally and intellectually that we can’t be at rest. You know, the best runners are the ones that run without this frenetic, frantic pace. They have a very calm rest and strength about them. If we are not entering into the rest of God through making peace with God constantly in our own lives, meaning we keep the relationship clean of sin. Right? That’s why pursuing righteousness brings rest. It’s kind of like it’s kind of like this. If you and I, you know, are going to be not just father and daughter, but good friends, but every time I see you, I drive down here and and instead of giving you a hug, I just punch you in the face.

You know? That’s going to cause a problem in a relationship.

John McLarty: Just a lack of reconciliation.

Kimberly Faith: Yes. For sure. Or, you know, whatever. Or  I came into the house, and I just threw things everywhere. I tracked in dog poop. Whatever. Violated your house rules. Right?

John McLarty: Didn’t give Lynn and I a hug.

Kimberly Faith: That’s right. And I think we expect God somehow to just accept us as we are with, you know, however we want to act, wreaking havoc, in the relationship, and somehow that’s got to be okay with him because, oh, well, that’s just the way I am. No. We don’t find God’s peace by not conforming to God’s house rules.

John McLarty: Right.

Kimberly Faith: We all have rules. You know? 

John McLarty: The Path of Peace.

Kimberly Faith: Exactly. And somehow we seem to think it’s okay, you know, that people should obey our rules. Like, you don’t want me punching you in the face. Right? Or you don’t want me to track, you know, dirt on the floor.

And, yeah, I would. I’m somehow expecting you to be okay with me breaking your rules, but I’m not okay with God expecting me to keep his rules in order to have that close relationship. We have got to understand that if we want God’s peace, it has to be his way.

John McLarty: And then if we have this jumbled relationship with God on and on and off, on and off

Kimberly Faith: Right.

John McLarty: And we don’t have that peace, we don’t have that joy, so we’re stressed. We’re frantic. We’re not trusting in him.

Kimberly Faith: Right.

John McLarty: That doesn’t put us in a position to be peacemakers towards others.

Kimberly Faith: That’s right.

John McLarty: They see that and they go, why would I want that?

Kimberly Faith: Exactly. And, you know, that’s one of the things you just said is probably the one of the most critical impediments to our peacekeeping mission. You know, we are sent on a mission

John McLarty:  Exactly. 

Kimberly Faith: To save souls. You know, if my neighbor does not know Jesus Christ as her lord and savior, what’s going to happen if she dies?  Did I do everything I know to do in my peacekeeping mission to bring her into the knowledge of the gospel.

John McLarty: That should be our heart at all times.

Kimberly Faith: Absolutely. And the only way that becomes our heart and our mission and our passion is that if we have it ourselves because it is. I always use this example because it’s to me, it’s easy to understand. If my personal trainer, when I had a personal trainer, if my personal trainer weighed £400 and, you know, was flabby, I would not have paid him, you know, $150 a week or whatever I was paying him to be my personal trainer because he would have no credibility. Well, if we’re telling people Jesus is the Prince of Peace and I’m miserable, but you know what? You got to believe me anyway.

And my anxiety is through the roof and I have all these problems and, you know, and God can’t handle, then that’s why I have to worry. Well, we are not credible, and that is on us. We are failing in our peacekeeping mission. And more importantly, we’re failing to grab every opportunity to bring people into the eternal cure for sin, for you know, like, if you think about this, I mean, this is such an easy example. We’ve used this before, but if we had the cure for cancer, what kind of horrible people will we be if we kept it to ourself?

John McLarty: Exactly. 

Kimberly Faith: You know?

John McLarty: A great perspective is that we’re so blessed to have the message that brings peace.

Kimberly Faith: Right.

John McLarty: We obtained it. We need to live it. We need to experience it, not grieve the holy spirit, live a life, the abundant life, the joyful life.

Kimberly Faith: Right.

John McLarty: Trusting in God. But we have that message that people are searching for. 

Kimberly Faith: Right. 

John McLarty: And I just think how we need to remind ourselves how key it is that we have this message, and it’s  from the word of God. 

Kimberly Faith: Right.

John McLarty: But it’s the path of salvation, which is by trusting fully in Jesus, by grace, through faith, not of works.

Kimberly Faith: Right.

John McLarty: And we see people that either don’t even believe in God at all, but then there’s a lot of people that are searching for this truth

Kimberly Faith: Right.

John McLarty: That they would think is in a religious way, but it’s, you know, it’s not. Jesus said I am the way. I’m the truth. I’m the life.

Kimberly Faith: Right. It’s not by doing a bunch of rituals.

John McLarty:  And, yes, they’re doing other things.

Kimberly Faith: Right.

John McLarty: And it’s not giving them peace. 

Kimberly Faith: In fact, it’s giving them more anxiety. 

John McLarty: It gives them more anxiety because they don’t find peace.

Kimberly Faith: They never know if they’re good enough.

John McLarty:  Right.

Kimberly Faith: But the problem is they never know they’re good, if they’re good enough, because they’re not. None of us are. The Bible says all have sinned. All have violated that relationship with God and are condemned already. And Jesus said, but I am the way, the truth, and the life, and no man comes to the father but by me.

That means, hey. I did it all, so you didn’t have to, because you can’t. You know?

John McLarty: You can obtain it in that moment of salvation, and it’s done.

Kimberly Faith: Exactly.

John McLarty: The peace, the eternal peace of our soul. 

Kimberly Faith: Right.

John McLarty: Just for living in peace. But that anxiety of the soul goes away in that salvation experience, which is so important, and we have that message. We have it. The message of the Bible.

Kimberly Faith: We have it. And, you know, I kind of go back to, you know, as Christians, the measure of how well we are doing as a peacemaker is always based on what we talked about as having a pure heart. You know? When we have a pure heart and we see God, that means that we’re divesting ourselves of everything that we know is sin. Because sin causes the conflict.

Right? And you can’t be a peacemaker if you’re causing conflict. The two are just like oil and water. Right? So whether we’re the one causing the conflict or we’re the one injured by conflict, we can still have steady peace when our source of peace isn’t our circumstances, but it’s our relationship with God.

And when that vertical relationship with God is clean, when our pipes are clean, I heard Lon Solomon say that one time. You got to keep the pipes clean. You know? Roto Rooter those pipes out once in a while. Keep that relationship with God flowing, then all these attitudes that Jesus is talking about develop in us, strengthen us, and we become powerful peacemakers when people look at us and they see.

That’s why Jesus said, blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called what? The sons of God. When people look at us and go, wow. There’s something about you that I want. And I well, I’m a daughter of God. You know?

John McLarty:  Right.

Kimberly Faith:  And, well, who are you talking about? Well, I know the Prince of Peace. He’s my daddy. He’s my brother. You know, however you want to look at it, the trinity. Right? And it’s kind of like they say a picture is worth a 1000 words. A picture of people looking into your soul.

We talked about God Windexing off the soul in the last podcast. When people look into our soul and look into our eyes, which are, you know, Shakespeare said, are the windows of the soul, and they see what they want, I don’t have to convince people, like, beg them to understand the gospel. This is really simple because what you’re seeing is what you can have. You don’t have to earn it because you can’t. You can be greatly relieved by that.

John McLarty: Right.  

Kimberly Faith: One transaction with Jesus Christ, one meeting with him, surrendering your entire life to him for salvation, and knowing that you don’t have any other option but through him, which should be a great relief because that is your hope. You can have the peace of God too. Sure. You’re going to have trouble, which is what we’re going to talk about in the next podcast.

And God’s already secured your peace. He has secured the territory of your heart and you have peace. You possess it. That the verse that you read in Corinthians, Jesus reconciled. He did the work of reconciliation, so we don’t have to. That’s such a blessing.

John McLarty: He did the work, but then we can have the ministry of reconciliation toward others.

Kimberly Faith: Right.

John McLarty: You know, another aspect I just thought of is peacemakers. We’ve been talking about our peace, bringing that peace to others by sharing the message of the gospel. But then I just thought of our brothers and sisters in Christ that sometimes don’t have peace.

Kimberly Faith: Right.

John McLarty: And maybe they’re listening to this podcast, and there’s trouble in their life. They’re Christians.

Kimberly Faith: Right.

John McLarty: They’re born again believers. So we have that ministry to them. 

Kimberly Faith: Right. 

John McLarty: If we have peace as a Christian. Right? And they’re in turmoil.

And, your ministry does that a lot. Ministers to other Christians that are growing and need to learn, you know, just simple trust and spending more time in the word. It’s a warrior that’s wounded. 

Kimberly Faith: Yeah.

John McLarty: And it’s part of the ministry of reconciliation to help that wounded warrior get back up.

Kimberly Faith: Right. Well, you and mom have done that a lot for me as well as our, you know, our church. Just, a community of people that recognizes the common struggle. You know? 

John McLarty:  And that gives us peace. To be a part of that community.

Kimberly Faith: It does. And that’s why, you know, we talk about in the bible concepts the importance of the church. And, you know, I had a conversation with a young man in my office last week about how he was very disenchanted with his church because they’ve been departing from God’s word and a lot of other things. And I said, well, look, the holy spirit needs to draw you to the church that teaches the truth.

But you can’t go into a church community expecting to find perfection. What you need to do is approach the holy spirit  to put you in a church and then you need to be there to perfect the body. You need to be there to make the difference. You need to be not looking to be fed, but rather to be completing the body, which is the mentality of a lot of people. I’ve gone to all these different churches and none of them are for me. Well, that’s not what the Bible says about how you do in a church. It’s the spirit. 

John McLarty: Right. 

Kimberly Faith: The spirit guides us into a church and every church is imperfect, and we are part of the problem. So if we’re peacemakers, we become part of the solution.

John McLarty: The solution. Perfect.

Kimberly Faith: Yeah. So, well, I want to kind of wrap this up. Isaiah 26:3 says, thou will keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on thee because he trusts thee. It’s not that hard to maintain our peace. It’s a decision.

It’s a decision we make every morning when we wake up. You know, in the morning, when I wake up before I get out of bed, the best practice that I have is to start thanking God, to start praying and thanking God. Thank you for allowing me to wake up so I can glorify you today. I want to  give you 100% of my time, 100% of my resources, 100% of my law practice. I want to  give you 100% of my problems.

I want to  give it all to you, Lord, because that’s where I’m going to find my peace. That’s where I’m going to be a peacemaker.

John McLarty: And that’s so simple and so basic, yet we can ignore it. 

Kimberly Faith: Yes. 

John McLarty: We can get into the business of life. 

Kimberly Faith: Yes. 

John McLarty: But that close relationship with Jesus is what gives us our peace. Abiding in the vine.

Kimberly Faith:  Right. 

John McLarty: Then  we’re fruitful, and we have that peace of just knowing him more intimately

Kimberly Faith: Right.

John McLarty: Serving him, and then that gives us peace.

Kimberly Faith:  Right. And, you know, that kind of brings us to the last beatitude, which we’re going to talk about next week. But, you know, in this last beatitude, Jesus talks about pain and suffering. And he talks about how we are blessed through pain and suffering. And it’s interesting that this is the last beatitude for us to develop because he’s given us this great foundation to build on. But he also is very cognizant that we work, we live, and we exist in a world full of pain and suffering.

And, indeed, he, you know, there’s no one who has suffered more than he suffered. And he said these things before he went to the cross. And it’s just so exciting to me. This last beatitude is so exciting to me because there is such hope. Not only through the things we’ve already learned, but there’s such hope that developing these attitudes for life can give us a way forward, not just a trudgery through life. A trudgery. Is that a word? Trudgery. 

John McLarty:  Trudging through life.

Kimberly Faith: Trudging and trudgery, like, that’s Kim speak. Not just a, you know, a very sad, hard, despondent life, but life can be a special operations mission. It can be a great adventure. You know? And it’s all about our attitude.

John McLarty: One of the great lights Christians can show is victory

Kimberly Faith:  Yes. 

John McLarty: Through troubles.

Kimberly Faith: Right. Right. So we’re going to talk about the last beatitude next week, and I guess I’m going to leave everybody with this question. How do you view trouble, and is the way you view trouble healthy? And we’re going to wrap up, and, thank you so much for joining me today, dad.

John McLarty: It’s always great to be here, Kim.

Kimberly Faith: And, we’ll look forward to everyone joining us next week for the last in the series of the beatitudes, living your best life. You have been listening to the truth in love podcast with your host, Kimberly Faith, and my dad, John Mac. To discover more answers to the big questions in life, visit us at gofaithstrong.com. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. You rescued me.