Healing the Wounds of Trauma

our own lives. Only Christ can never be taken from us. 1 Peter 1.3–6 says: Let us give thanks to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! Because of his great mercy he gave us new life by raising Jesus Christ fromdeath.This fills us with a living hope, and so we look forward to possessing the rich blessings that God keeps for his people. He keeps themfor you in heaven, where they cannot decay or spoil or fade away. They are for you, who through faith are kept safe by God’s power for the salvation which is ready to be revealed at the end of time. We must voluntarily give up the cultural prejudices with which we grew up. Old ways of judging others must go; they are worldly and cause divisions. 2 Corinthians 5.16–18 says: No longer, then, do we judge anyone by human standards. Even if at one time we judged Christ according to human standards, we no longer do so. Anyone who is joined to Christ is a new being; the old is gone, the new has come. All this is done by God, who through Christ changed us from enemies into his friends and gave us the task of making others his friends also. Our only desire must be to know Christ, and to help others know him (Ga 2.20; Phil 1.21; 3.7–9). Christ has redeemed us from all of the evil in our past (1 P 1.17–19). We must give up any rights we think we might have as members of our group. God has no favorites; all people are accepted equally by him (Acts 10.34; Ro 2.9–11). We now belong to a new nation with other believers where everyone is equal (1 P 2.9; Eph 2.18–22; Rev 5.9–10). Christ provided the model for us to follow when he gave up his rights as God to save us (Phil 2.5–11). Everything we give up for Christ will be rewarded one hundred times (Mt 19.29; Lk 9.23), but the process is not easy.

C. God tells us not to take revenge, but to show love. Romans 12.19–21 says:

Never take revenge, my friends, but instead let God’s anger do it. For the scripture says, ‘I will take revenge, I will pay back, says the

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How Can We Live as Christians in the Midst of Conflict?