Romans 14:19-23 (NIV)

Romans 14:19-23 (NIV)
19 Let us therefore make every effort to do what leads to peace and to mutual edification.
20 Do not destroy the work of God for the sake of food. All food is clean, but it is wrong for a man to eat anything that causes someone else to stumble.
21 It is better not to eat meat or drink wine or to do anything else that will cause your brother to fall.
22 So whatever you believe about these things keep between yourself and God. Blessed is the man who does not condemn himself by what he approves.
23 But the man who has doubts is condemned if he eats, because his eating is not from faith; and everything that does not come from faith is sin.

What have you done lately to keep the peace? In verse 19 Paul calls us to a life of peace and mutual edification. It sounds so easy and yet is so hard. It is hard sometimes to keep the peace in the home, let alone with hundreds of people. I like how Paul says, "Let us therefore make every effort to do what leads to...". We can only make the effort and leave the results with God. I must do what I can and then leave it. I think we will read too much into these verses if we do not keep our eyes on Christ. We are not called to be door mats. Truth in love must be spoken and lived out. Verse 21 is, again, on the theme of causing your brother to fall. What does this mean to cause a brother to fall? I would say that it means for you to cause someone to go against their conscience. What you do in front of them causes them to do that thing and it is not what they believe to be good for them. Verses 22 and 23 get into the whole issue of conscience. When you read chapter one of Romans you see that there are people who have no conscience and now we are talking about people who seem to have a very sensitive conscience. The point is that we all have a conscience and we are to listen to it and we are to listen to God. A fun question to raise is one of conscience changing. Can a person change their conscience? If you discover that God approves a certain behavior that you once thought was wrong, then can you at least not be offended if someone does that in front of you? Can you eventually enjoy meat? Have a great day and do what you can to create peace.

First keep the peace within yourself, then you can also bring peace to others.

Thomas à Kempis (c. 1380–1471)