Peace

<p>Good morning, Five Minute Families! Christians around the world just celebrated Easter. What a roller coaster of a week Jesus had leading up to His crucifixion and resurrection. That week began with the Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem. The quickest synopsis we can give is that Jesus brings peace between God and man. Since entering a town on a horse indicated you wanted war with the people, but entering on a donkey indicated you wanted peace, the donkey sent that message as Jesus’s purpose. </p><p>Let’s talk about peace or war in the family unit. A friend shared that after a recent argument with her husband, she felt convicted by the Holy Spirit to apologize; even though she really didn’t see what she had done wrong. She obeyed the prompting anyway. After she approached her husband and apologized, he immediately responded that she had done nothing wrong, the fault was his and that while he appreciated her heart in the matter, as soon as she apologized, he was convicted of her actual innocence in the argument. </p><p>Please note, she was not trying to manipulate her husband into accepting his guilt. She was obeying the Lord. She felt that if the Lord was telling her to say ‘I’m sorry’ that He would also reveal what part she had handled poorly. God had a different plan for her obedience. Her obedience brought reconciliation and peace back into their home. How do you approach your family members - with a peace mindset or a war mindset?</p><p>Let me give you another quick example. As I have mentioned before, one of our son and I butted heads often in his teen years. After so many miscommunications, disrespectful moments, and teen defiance, I began to enter every situation with him with a war mindset. That certainly seemed his mindset, and unfortunately, I met that mindset step for step. It was a recipe for further conflict and hurt. When I stopped taking his behavior personally, trusting God to work in his life while I obeyed the Lord in my parenting, the war began to die away. He still saw me as the enemy for a tim