Make Me an Instrument of Peace

We're called to be people that walk alongside one another. In a world full of pain we say to one another, you are not alone and you are loved.  God, make me an instrument of your peace.

This week on the podcast, I am sharing excerpts from sermons I gave a few years ago during my time serving as a Pastor.  

Guided by the wisdom from scripture, let's explore what it means to live with authenticity and self-awareness.

• Notice our everyday lives. 
• Discover how ordinary moments-like sleeping, eating, and working, can be offerings to God. 
• Reflect on living lives marked by peace, love, and the quiet impact we can make as we strive to be real and genuine.
• Share the good news this week. 

May God bless you and keep you, may his face shine on you and give you his peace. God, make me an instrument of your peace.  

Where there is hatred, let me sow love.

Where there is injury, pardon.

Where there is doubt, faith.

Where there is despair, hope.

Where there is darkness, light. 

Where there is sadness, joy.

Oh, divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console, to be understood as to understand, to be loved as to love.

For it is in giving that we receive. It is in pardoning that we are pardoned. It is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

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Transcript

0:00

Hey friends, for the next few days, I'm gonna be sharing some of the messages I once preached as a pastor and some thoughts I've had with my friend Whitney Vance, about the power of power thoughts, whether they come from scripture or from thought leaders like Gabby Bernstein. So I hope you like this week of new content. Welcome to the Live A Vibrant Life podcast. I'm life coach Kelly Titz, and each week I'll be here to encourage and equip you with the tools you need to grow in self-awareness and invest your best energy in your dreams and your purpose. I believe self-awareness changes everything. Let's get started. Hey friends. In the book of Romans chapter 12, it says, take your everyday, ordinary life. You're sleeping and you're eating, you're walking around and you're working. Take that life and place it before God as an offering. It sounds great, doesn't it? It's a little hard to do because in reality, most of our life is a bunch of habits that we don't even think about anymore. You get up in the morning and you get dressed the same way. You drive to work the same way. You eat similar foods. You don't really think through the fact that every single breath that we're breathing is a gift and a potential offering to God. Now, you know, this is true if you live anywhere near a place like I do. My house is surrounded by trees, and 80% of the time I do not notice them, but for a couple weeks in October. They are incredible. You can't help but notice them. As I walk through my life, I use normal words like sun and rain and clouds to describe what's going on outside my house. But have you ever left your home on a spring morning where it hadn't rained for a while, so the ground was very heavy and very stuck, and then the rain came and you came outside. Have you ever noticed that before? Because it wasn't just seeing and hearing the rain, what was different? There was a smell, wasn't there? And that word is petrichor. It's a word we don't use very often, but it explains what's happening. Australian scientists came up with this word. They discovered in the ground, chemicals and bacteria were connecting with the rain, and they were producing this beautiful scent. And when you walk out in the spring, you notice it. petricore, walk in a way where people around us say, what is it about you? If you don't know this about yourself today, you and I. We're a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar people, and We have a job, and it says this. It says, we are called to proclaim the praises of the God who has called us out of darkness into his light. Life is hard, but he is calling us out of this darkness into his light. If you look at the book of Proverbs, that describes it this way. One way is you can lean into your own understanding. Or we can choose to walk this other path and trust in the Lord. In all of our ways, our eating and our sleep, and our walking and our working, we acknowledge him. When I think of that word, petricore, I think of the fact that God is calling us to live this life where we are not missing what he's doing, but the fragrance of Christ that is everywhere around us. We're aware of it. Decide to take this one beautiful, precious life that you and I have been given and make it an offering to God. We see Jesus talking to people just like you and me. For some of those people around him, it has been a good day, and for some of them it has been a heartbreaking week. They have the Shama Israel, and they say this in the morning, and they say this in the evening, they say this prayer over their children. It's the last words they hear before they go to sleep. Matthew chapter six, verse one. Says, be especially careful when you're trying to be good so that you don't make a performance out of it. It might be good theater, but the God who made you won't be applauding. I don't know about you, but that's something that I find so easy to slip into. How can I appear good? How can I keep the truth that I wanna say inside so that people don't think the wrong thing about me. God, is looking at me saying, I love you. Do you know that today when God looks at you, he does not need us to pretend? He wants us to come with the truth, our authentic real selves with our one precious true life. Presented as an offering because we know he loves us. Jesus says when you do something for someone else, don't call attention to yourself. Instead, do it quietly behind the scenes so no one sees it. Have you ever heard anyone call someone a hypocrite? We call them actors. The word hypocrite just means an actor. Someone who's pretending to do something because they think they need to pretend. It's so rare in life to have people around us who are calling us to truth, who are calling us to be real. What if you don't have to play act. You can just be real. That's what we're supposed to be for each other. No one needs an actor, but this world is desperate for you and for me to be real. To be the loving, caring people that Christ created us to be. To have people come up and say, I don't want you to pretend. I want you to be your full true self. Live with radical generosity. When you help someone out, don't think about how it looks. Just do it quietly, unobtrusively. God, made you, created you in love. He's working behind the scenes, helping you out quietly. Maybe You're sitting here today saying, God is not helping me out. I don't know where he is. Maybe he's over there helping you out, but he is not helping me out. The problem for some of us, especially if you grew up the way I did, you may have been accidentally assuming that prayer was a transactional thing, right? If I say this prayer in this way, then God will see me as good and he will answer what I've asked him to do. But what if that is not what you need? What if you are asking God for something that is going to move you off the path that he has created you for? We can walk into prayer with hands open that the loving father who made us and loves us knows what is best for us and he hears us. As any parent knows, you want your children to come to you. But sometimes there are hard nos we have to say because we love them and we see something they cannot yet see. What does this mean for us? How do we live these lives knowing that God is calling us to something so beautiful? God, I wanna take this ordinary life, my coming and my going. I wanna take all of it and I wanna offer it to you. The my week started off pretty hard, to be honest. You didn't meet her, but I had an amazing friend. She got cancer five years ago, and she fought so hard as many people do. On Monday, we celebrated her life. Celebrated her children, celebrated the impact she had. As we were getting ready to say goodbye to her, a few people got up to speak and in a row, seven women stood up to talk about their best friend. She was the kind of woman that everyone thought, I'm her best friend. She's the kind of woman who CS Lewis spoke about in the Great divorce. I don't know if you've read it, and there's a moment there where the narrator's standing there and someone has passed away, and he said, who was that? And the man next to him says, you wouldn't know her. You wouldn't know her. She lived a quiet, faith-filled life and her priest was able to speak to it with such joy because she was so known by him. She was so known by her community and she was loved so well. Her life was not wasted doing these faith-filled small things day after day. In fact, the impact of her life was multiplied out and all around me. As we turned to offer each other the peace. I could look into the eyes of precious children who knew how loved they were, in part because of her. I was given the gift of knowing this person who loved Jesus. The whole morning, the whole Catholic mass was about Jesus. And it was about the impact he had had on her life and on others. That's what it means for us to believe we are holy. We are set apart, we are created to make his name great. So how can we do this? I know you're called to do this because the Bible says this incredible truth. It says, you and I, we are a priesthood of believers. We're called to be the people that walk alongside one another. We get to walk into a world full of pain and say, you are not alone and you are loved. God, make me an instrument of your peace. What's your word Is it love? Is it faith? Is it hope? Is it light? Is it joy? Ask God to keep that in you this week. Can we just take one moment and take two or three deep breaths. Even that breath is a gift. Be God's instrument this week. God, make me an instrument of your peace. Where there is hatred let me sow love Where there is injury, pardon. Where there is doubt, faith. Where there is despair, hope. Where there is darkness, light. Where there is sadness, joy. Oh, divine Master grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console, to be understood as to understand, to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive. It is in pardoning that we are pardoned. It is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Share the good news this week. May God bless you and keep you, may his face shine on you and give you his peace. Amen. I hope our time together encourage you and will equip you with the tools you need to move into the vibrant life you desire. I'm here to help you live a brave, creative, purpose-filled life. And if you'd like to learn more. You can follow me on Instagram or Facebook, Kelly tibbits life coach, or visit my website kelly tibbits.com. I look forward to connecting again soon.