Stepping Stones To ShalomSample

How to Make Peace with Your Enemies

How do you make peace with your enemies? 

Whether our enemies are nations fighting a global war, our finances, or a co-worker, we all have enemies in some form. We can either try to physically eliminate the threat or try to befriend and appease our adversaries. 

Solomon offered a radical approach in Proverbs to dealing with our enemies, one worthy of consideration. Solomon wrote: “When the Lord takes pleasure in anyone’s way, he causes their enemies to make peace with them” (Proverbs 16:7). 

You want things to be right between you and your enemy? Get right with God!

Take the Jews from the book of Esther, for example. At the beginning of the story, we learn that King Xerxes had hosted a huge feast. According to Jewish tradition, this was a tragedy from a Jewish standpoint because King Xerxes had used the vessels he plundered from the Holy Temple in Jerusalem and invited the Jews so that they might abandon their traditions and become like any other Persian. 

By using their holy vessels, King Xerxes was trying to convey the message that he was now their high priest and his palace was now their Temple. Tradition teaches that Mordechai told the Jews not to go to the feast. But they went anyway. They were ok with assimilating into the new lifestyle and new country.

But the attempts of the Jews to leave behind the Bible, their God, and their traditions only brought about the works of Haman, who plotted to eliminate the entire Jewish race. It has been said that when the Jews forget who they are, God sends an enemy to remind them. The plan to assimilate backfired.

Yet, once the Jews did some sincere soul-searching and repentance, everything turned around. Even King Xerxes, who was no friend to the Jews at first, came to their assistance, virtually saving the Jews from annihilation and punishing their greatest enemy.

While it might seem that the most logical way to make peace with our enemies is by pleasing them and trying to win them over to our favor, Solomon teaches us the powerful lesson that it’s not necessarily the way to go. Instead, we need to please God and win over His favor. 

We must never sacrifice our values to make someone else like us. We must never remain silent when we should speak out against evil for fear of what others might think of us. Instead, we must hold steadfastly to who we are and what we stand for as Christians and Jews. 

We must be the light to the nations that God calls us to be. And we must not be afraid to shine that light of truth and morality on darkness and evil. When we fear God more than we fear people, we will bring shalom to all areas of our lives.

Stepping Stone 10: Step up your service to God. While it might seem counterintuitive to focus on improving ourselves when our goal is to improve our relationship with our enemies, this teaching from Proverbs assures us that this is an effective strategy. God’s ways may be beyond our comprehension, but this verse tells us quite clearly that God responds to our actions. We need to act in ways that please God, and in response, He will take care of our enemies.