Sermon Series: Pursuing Peace
Message 1 of 4: Cultivating a Heart of Peace
Scripture: Matthew 5:43-48
These are the notes from a message offered 9/16/18, at Trinity United Methodist Church, Sarasota Florida. I’ll be posting this series on Fridays in the coming weeks. I pray they empower and inspire you to be a peacemaker.
Read Matthew 5:43-48, from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. God desires to perfect us in love.
Video: Tiffany Jenkins, A lady got mad at me at the drive through, my response
What stands out to you in this video?
- She’s honest about her feelings (punch her in the throat)
- She broke the cycle of conflict with an act of generosity and kindness. She used made a choice about how to respond.
- She looked below the surface to imagine what might really be going on empathy
- “Those people who are hardest to love need love the most”
- She saw the person as a person
- She believes changing our words and actions can change the world
Tiffany Jenkins has a heart of peace.
Bishop Ken Carter Quote: A heart at peace is not about just being nice to another person. It is the refusal to exaggerate our differences, and the refusal to go to war with another person. A heart of peace seeks to break the cycle that escalates our conflicts through working at the relational level and sees the other as a person created in the image of God.
Way of Being Diagram from The Anatomy of Peace: Resolving the Heart of Conflict
What we see is the behavior. What a person is doing and saying. This is only the tip of the iceberg.
Below the surface is where that behavior is born- our thoughts, feelings, wounds, beliefs, and sin color how we see the situation and how we see others.
The angry woman in the drive-through had a heart of war. We see her behavior- the frustration, anger, impatience, overreacting. We don’t know why she has a heart of war- what’s going on below the surface, but we can see the result.
- She didn’t see Tiffany or her child as people. They’ve become an obstacle to be overcome, a problem to be fixed.
- The angry woman felt her needs mattered more than the needs of those around her, including Tiffany
A Heart of War can lead to all kinds of destruction and injustice. If you are no longer a human being to me, I can take advantage of you, hurt you, oppress you, enslave you.
There’s another option- a heart of peace.
- Seeing people as people, not as objects or obstacles or problem to be fixed
- You are real to me, as real as I am to myself. I see you.
- Your cares and concerns matter just as much as my own. I value you.
This idea, seeing and valuing people, is rooted in Genesis 1:26-27.
Then God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.” So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.
You are made in the image of God. You and every person you meet. God’s intention for you is goodness and wholeness, freedom and blessing. God has the same intention for every person you meet.
Thank You for extending me your heart of peace, your generosity of spirit towards me and my family following the death of my grandmother. We were wrapped in a warm blanket of cards, prayers, words of consolation and help.
Ten family members gathered around the table following my grandmother’s graveside service. Yes, we remembered her, but there was also laughter and a spirit of hope, of looking to the future.
We hadn’t all been together for 7 years. I was hoping and praying for peace. It isn’t always that way when a family gets together, when we go to work, go to school, go to the condo board meeting, or even in a drive-through. Now the political season is in high gear with its ugliness and accusations.
Yet, as followers of Jesus Christ, we’re called to foster peace in the midst of evil, controversy, and conflict.
How do we do it? Psalm 34:14 says, “Depart from evil, and do good; seek peace, and pursue it.”
- Pray for the power of the Holy Spirit. We can’t do it in our own strength. This is about hearts of stone becoming hearts of flesh and that is a work of God.
- Ezekiel 36:26 A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you, and I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.
- Depart from evil. Ask God to reveal the ways you contribute to conflict and leave them behind. Pray for healing, forgiveness, and strength to live a new life in Christ.
- Do good. Seek Peace. Pursue it. Intentionally learn new ways of being and behaving.
Cultivating Peace
- See people as people made in the image of God
- Look below the surface for what’s really going on
- Break the cycle of escalation. The war stops with me. Choose carefully how to respond.
- Help the situation, do good
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I’m excited to now offer mp3’s of my Sunday messages. A huge thank you to Mark and my brothers and sisters at Trinity United Methodist Church, Sarasota for all their help in making this possible. If you’re ever in Sarasota, please drop by for worship Sundays at 9:00 am or 10:30 am, or join us live on our Facebook page at 9:00 am Sundays or drop by during the week for a chat or small group. You and those you love are always welcome.
sermon © 2018 Lisa Ann Moss Degrenia
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