Daily Affirmations - Day 1- The Way of Peace: Guide For Our Feet

This week's Theme: The Way of Peace

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Day 1: Guide for our feet

The Ugli Orange exercise is a negotiation activity used in conflict management training. The exercise sets up an urgent and desperate need for an extremely limited supply of the fictitious Ugli Orange by two competing groups. Each group is given all the details to support its own case, as well as a few relevant facts about the Ugli Orange.

Each group is also given information about the other group's interest in securing the limited supply. However, the groups are not given details about the specific needs of their competitor. A history of conflict, competition, and distrust between the groups adds tension to the scenario.

The Ugli Orange activity often sparks a host of interesting approaches and responses to conflict. Each side becomes convinced of its own merit, and the competition can become fierce and downright "ugli!" In the end, though, a subtle detail allows for successful conflict resolution— if it comes to light.

In real life conflict scenarios, neat, convenient details don't often emerge to bring a happy ending. We often desire to defend our "position" to the bitter end— controlled by pride, selfishness, and other worse tendencies. The apostle James describes the human motivations that result in conflict:

What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? You desire but do not have, so you kill. You covet but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures (James 4:1-3).

With these innate drivers, it is no wonder that conflict is so pervasive! And yet, the desire for peace is one of the greatest longings of our heart and world.

We tend to think mainly in terms of a macro or larger peace for the entire world, but peace actually begins for each of us with the end of enmity with God (James 4:4). And that is the good news of Christmas— Christ came from heaven to guide our feet into the way of peace (Luke 1:78-79 - NKJV)— individually and collectively, personally, and globally.

Jesus came, with a mission to die for our forgiveness and to rescue us from the innate sinful desires that battle within us— desires that both cause and result in enmity with God. Because He came, and lived, and died a sacrificial death, we can have forgiveness and peace with God. The Amplified Bible Translation explains it this way from Paul's letter to the Romans (5:1):

Therefore, since we are justified (acquitted, declared righteous, and given a right standing with God) through faith, let us [grasp the fact that we] have [the peace of reconciliation to hold and to enjoy] peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ (the Messiah, the Anointed One).

Yes, Jesus, Prince of Peace will establish the universal peace that no one else can or will ever attain— when He establishes His kingdom— when the government shall be upon His shoulders— a government and peace that shall have no end (Isaiah 9:6,7). And He invites us to be part of that kingdom by following Him now, personally and individually into the way of peace, and away from enmity with God.

We long for peace. And Jesus the Dayspring from on high longs to be the guide for our feet into the way of peace.