Peacemaking: A Call to Justice and Reconciliation

The floyd moment in our history has impacted me personally in deep ways because I saw a measure of and felt and experienced a measure of trauma with every loss of life over the last seven years right since mike brown the loss of any black life and the loss of any life in general is is crushing. [00:02:23]

I felt the pain of I felt like of hundreds of years of of injustice embodied in that nine minutes when I saw the video personally I felt like I could feel that I was crying the tears of every ancestor of mine who had ever been wronged and unheard or hurt at the pain of the knee so to speak of the american justice system. [00:03:17]

The response for me even knowing jesus and and having a history of being able to at some level surrender my emotional state to god and find peace it took a while for me to get to that place yes so it was only natural to see the what the the cultural response was which was absolute outrage and and rage always requires a place of expression. [00:05:05]

I knew that when floyd happened I had a responsibility within the measure that that or the grace that I've been given a steward for us to as an organization civil righteousness to begin to not only help other cities that were experiencing the ferguson effect for the first time as those cities were reaching out to us but also helicopters were flying over the city of ferguson. [00:08:22]

We begin to engage on the street in the work of um peacemaking and knowing that there's there's the the peacemaking moments not to silence people's voices but to take a stand a righteous stand when it moves from a cathartic peaceful protest moment into an anarchistic destructive rage expression moment um that may or may not in most time and most of the time it's not even connected to the pain of black people. [00:09:03]

Rage is actually a spirit and so I've seen a pattern in cities of cities that have experienced these flash point moments that were followed by protests that were followed by riots that were followed by riots almost in I don't know if you can track it statistically and not find one of those cities where the homicide rate has not increased exponentially on the other side on the other side certainly true our homicide rate right now is literally the highest it's ever been after historic lows. [00:15:00]

I think god allows for a moment of unrighteous indignation meaning that well maybe not no I'll I'll correct that when I say that I mean he says be angry but do not sin so that would be righteousness right in your anger do not in your anger do not sin but I I here's the concession he says also do don't let the sun go down on your wrath don't let it interesting. [00:17:20]

There is a there there are satan himself is wanting you to hold on to your anger so that he can he has a legal right to access your life and to feed you with lies and to seed to seed iniquity at the heart level that then can can become can be watered as you surround yourself in with with echo chambers that articulate that seed that's in your heart as you watch the news as you read the the the tweets and the posts and the articles that are articulating the anger that you feel. [00:18:40]

How emotional wounds often become portals for demonic possession you know or whatever you want to call it demonization is more biblical language and he called it a devil trauma because he said there's the original trauma and again we were not talking about race at all we're talking about in this case sexual assault there's the original trauma of whatever it is death tragedy assault followed by a secondary trauma where a demonic being attaches to that pain whether it's anger whether it's hurt whether it's shame attaches to it and begins to take that as in ephesians language a foothold. [00:22:18]

I believe whole people groups can can can battle specific uh entities and forces as it relates to to corporate trauma then we can go to localized and regional traumas wow from trauma from historical events traumatic events that opened up spiritual if the spiritual trauma portal can open at a human level it can also open at a geographic level yes and so and that's all over scripture that there are whatever you want to call them principalities powers elohim in hebrew demonic beings that have power and authority over geographic places. [00:23:37]

The lord is basically saying I'm going to build a group of people who understand my authority the key of authority that I hold and the victory that I hold over the over the over hell over hades like I am victor over the dark powers of this age and I will I will raise up a people who understand who I am and then operate in the ability to open and shut spiritual doors of wickedness or or righteousness they can shut doors of wickedness and open doors of righteousness. [00:33:08]

We should be the most vocal for justice we should be the most vocal as well we can't do that at the expense of checking moral righteousness at the door or biblical righteousness and right thinking right alignment right motive purity holiness we can't check that at the door and compromise it for the sake of accomplishing some paper thin form of justice some temporal justice true transformation true justice work led by the believer should in its immaturity be a manifestation of the righteousness of christ in the physical space. [01:16:22]