Ep 32: Be at Peace Among Yourselves

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

prayer, viewpoints, scripture, write, lives, love, pray, peacemaker, talking, journaling, ukraine, peace, fitch, kristin, faith, answered, people, journal, day, conflict

Welcome to spark of faith. This is your host, Kristen Fitch each day on the show, I'll be bringing you words of encouragement and stories that are inspiring and will lift you up and provide you with hope to go into your day and just feel a little lighter, a little more hopeful. And on occasion, we'll bring on guests and talk about great and important topics about gathering together and fellowship and faith, and how we can just be more beautiful, loving humans. Here we go. Let's get started. I'm welcome back to another episode of spark of faith. This is your host, Kristen. And before we jump into this quick episode, I just want to let you know I will start having guests on the show. Let's see, I think next week, I will have my first guest interview, I'm super excited. I will be interviewing and talking with him having conversations with pastors and just regular people that are just walking in their lives and faith that have something to share with us a maybe a message of hope, maybe a message of overcoming whatever it might be. So stay tuned, I can't wait to start incorporating in those aspects of the show, which was always the intent of the show as I got going. So we'll definitely have short, Kristin inspirational episodes, and then we'll tie in a little bit longer guest interviews and conversations. And as always, I would love to hear from you. If you have something in particular, you'd love to see on the show. I would love to hear from you. So you can either email me at Kristin at Kristin Fitch calm or you can DM me on Instagram. Thanks. So today, I actually want to bring up two things. The first is, I wrote in my prayer journal or flexion journal this morning, which I haven't been doing that as consistently I realized in the last month because I date my entries. And while I have done plenty of things like these podcast episodes in working on a, let's see a presentation coming up or a talk for Christians, women, online summit and lots of things. I haven't been daily doing my prayer journaling. And I have to tell you, when I opened it back up, and I dated the page, and I wrote in a little bit of Scripture, and then I do a reflection. And then I write down prayers on hab, and then prayers that were answered. But I forgot how good that felt to do that I forgot how much I needed that time. Even if it's five minutes to do that, take that moment or those couple minutes and have that act, because it makes me slow down and really think about the Scripture, not just read it because I'm rewriting it. And then to take a few minutes to reflect on what is it that I really want to put on paper or I want to kind of say to God, or I want to let him know, that's kind of happened in my life. So the first thing I would just tell you is if you've never done a prayer journal before, it is a fantastic habit to pick up. It's just like any other journaling, you can just get a notebook or any, you know, a three ring binder, just get paper in it. But just every day, or if you can't do every day yet, just do it weekly. But you know, for me the way I do it, and people do it all differently. I like to write a you know, a little bit of Scripture at the top, maybe when I've seen in a devotional that day or recently or from the Bible or wherever I might get it. But I just I grab a piece of scripture because it sort of centers me to start that that page. And like I said, I do a little reflection. But I don't really have any expectations for that reflection, I just I write something. And then I do a section at the bottom, which is prayers. And what I love that someone explained is it's easy for us to remember our trials and tribulations. But sometimes it's hard to remember the prayers answered the things that have been that have happened our lives that are actually, you know, God working in or through us or for us. And you know, I think they say the basically like those things that happen for the good are written in pencil, whereas the things that the hardships in our lives are often written in, you know, permanent marker, if you will. So I think it's important because when we write our prayers, especially if we can go back maybe monthly, and look at our old prayer journal pages, we can actually see what prayers have been answered that we've been praying. And of course, I'm not saying you pray a prayer once and it's necessarily going to, you know, happened, but you know, sometimes people pray for years or a lifetime for the same thing, because of course, it's it's not on our schedule always. But what's important about that is if you go back and look what some people do in you know, I think this is amazing effort. Write down the date, the prayer, you know, was answered. I mean, how powerful is that? To really see the work of God in your life in a tangible way. Visually, you're seeing oh my goodness, I forgot I prayed this or you knew you prayed, but maybe you hadn't acknowledged that the prayer was answered. So that's the first thing I'm talking about is, you know, a prayer journal, you can do it in just a couple minutes a day, I'd like to do it in the morning, some people do it in the evening, or when they have a break in their day. But it's a really powerful way to spend your, you know, five or 10 minutes in the morning, trying to just have that connection to God and really take the time for yourself to really reflect on where you're at how your life's going, and sort of, you know, what have you been praying to or in for. But the scripture that hit me today that I wanted to talk about is, let's see, it's one, theologians 513. And I think of the way the state of affairs are in the world right now, with the conflict in Ukraine, you know, there's tension in, you know, China with if they might do something. So there's just, there's a lot going on. And now a lot of countries, because of the Ukraine, Russia conflict, are starting to say they're not going to be shipping out certain commodities, you know, certain food products, because they want to make sure that their own country has enough food, because of course, with the rest of Ukraine conflict, they're not going to be exporting quite a bit of things, which a lot of people were relying on prior to this. And, you know, I'm sure in the future we'll be so in the state of the world, everything we have going on this tension rising. This scripture really kind of spoke to me and it says, Be at peace among yourselves. And I mean, wow, to that just hit me. Now, obviously, I'm not saying that we can create the peace, you know, us individually over in Russia and Ukraine. Now, of course, we can pray for that conflict. And we can pray for that war to stop for the best outcome for it not to escalate into biological nucular, you know, anything else, kind of just crazy. But beyond that, what we can do is how are we actually showing up in our own lives? Are we at peace with the people around us? Or do we continue to stir the pot? Do we continue to take sides, that we are so staunchly, you know, in our position, that we don't even see that instead of, you know, being a peacemaker, we are actually a, you know, creating hostility in creating anger and divisiveness in the world. And I think a lot of us aren't being honest about our very strong viewpoints. And I don't mean in our faith, I mean, in the way that we're, we're stepping out into the world what we believe about politics or COVID, or anything else. But if we feel so strongly that our view comes before how we treat other people, if our views come above, respect in love and generosity, that others any others, I don't care where they fall on any platform or, or, you know, spectrum. If those views are putting a barrier, a blockade up between you and other human beings, then I have to tell you, maybe it's time to check yourself. Maybe it's time to get quiet with yourself and be honest about our your viewpoints or your opinions and what you were told by someone whether you might believe it to be true, but is it really worth it? are holding those viewpoints? holding a grudge, if you will, almost. Because if you think that someone on the other side have a viewpoint or an opinion, you know, there's no way they could be right, there's no way that you know, you can even love them because you're so angry with where they fall on these these opinions or viewpoints. This is where the problem is, is it's not about the viewpoints. It's that we're so entrenched in these viewpoints that we're not seeing. They're big, they're coming between us and people we love. They're coming between us, in our entire country coming together. The end of the day, these are these are fleeting things. But you know, it's not fleeting. What's not fleeting, is long term peace. What's not fleeting is love, sharing hope with others, being generous with others. And if we could just show up in the world more loving, more generous every day. And that was our default. Not having these, you know, almost visceral kind of reactions to other people in other viewpoints if we just shut our mouths online and in conversations when they didn't serve the relationship. Dang, I can't imagine how much better the world would be right now. Even with the conflict going on in Russia and Ukraine, a lot of it has to do with you know, they think this and then we're hearing No, that's not true at this is true. I mean, I don't think it's one plate one thing or the other, right? I mean, it's never as clear cut as we're being told. The story is never when you're getting it from one side, it's never going to be the full story. It's never going to be the full truth. Of course, I'm talking about humans and how it's spun in the media. I'm talking about the narrative, the storyline. I'm obviously not talking about that there's not a truth, right, like God's truth. But, you know, so today, I just want us to step into the world. And remember, one theologians 513, which says, Be at peace among yourselves, a one What if we should have every day and that's the first thought we had. If we just took a month minute to center ourselves and to say a little prayer, Lord, helped me be at peace in my day helped me be at peace with the people around me, and help us be at peace with each other. That would be so powerful. So that's it. I just encourage you, if you are able try to pick up prayer journaling, if you've not done it before, if you do it, that's amazing. And like I said, Let's just show up in the world and figure out how do we be that person that is the peacemaker, the Peacekeeper, in our relationships in our communities, and on social media. Thanks again for listening to spark a faith. If you enjoyed the show, we would love it if you would share it with a friend. And if you would leave us a rating and review on Apple podcasts because it helps us get discovered by more people who spread more hope in the world. So thanks again. And we send a weekly little encouragement email as well just go to spark a faith.com and enter your email address and we would love to encourage you in your inbox as well.