Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: Hey, guys, this is Naim, and you've reached the Mosaic Church Podcast. So excited that you're part of our listening community and love for you to be even more connected.
[00:00:10] Speaker B: So check out our website.
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Join us to reclaim the message and the movement of Jesus together. So would you consider giving to this ministry? I know that God is able to do immeasurably more through us when we come together. Thank you so much. God bless you and enjoy.
[00:00:56] Speaker B: Good morning, Mosaic.
How y' all doing this morning?
Good, good. I like a lively crowd. Keep it up, okay? Keep it up. My name is Kristin. I am one of the teaching pastors here at Mosaic, and like BJ said, we have made it to the point of the year where it is Thanksgiving, the point of the year where you're probably thinking about the things that you're thankful for or grateful for, because when you sit down at a table in this week, somebody's probably gonna be like, let's go around and everybody say something, right?
So we've got those things. We've got our family, maybe our jobs, all of the stereotypical things I think that we think of, which are good.
But I will tell you something that I realized this week that I'm really thankful for, which is just growing up, like, the option to change my mind and for my beliefs to evolve. I'm really grateful this week, especially for being able to just kind of grow up in my faith and who I am as a person.
So, younger Kristen, back in the day, I thought that my job was to keep the peace in my family.
And so it was that kind of family where my dad had an important but kind of stressful job, so he might come home from work and hadn't quite gotten the stress out yet. My mom would send me in to, like, make jokes, just kind of loosen him up a little bit, you know, when my parents argued, as all parents do, from time to time, I would take my younger sister to another room or somewhere else so she didn't have to hear it or know what was going on. And anytime that I was in a fight with someone, be it my younger sister, or a parent or someone else. I was taught to swallow my feelings and just kind of keep the peace.
Any other eldest daughters in the room who are like, yeah, I can relate to that.
So over the years, I actually began to pride myself on this. I was like, this is my job and only I can do it because I'm amazing. I'm like the glue that holds my family together.
But what I did not realize at the time is that there's a difference between peacekeeping and peacemaking. See, younger Kristen would have loved the verse that we're going to look at today in our series that is on not just how to get blessings, but how to be a blessing in the world around us. So we're gonna go through Matthew 5. 9 today, and you can help me read says, blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.
See, I came to realize decades later, through a good number of years of therapy also, that there is a difference between peacekeeping and peacemaking. And that just because I wasn't rocking the boat, it didn't still the waters around me.
Chaos can still happen and be churning underneath the surface, whether or not we choose to see it.
There is a difference in peacekeeping and peacemaking. And, see, I think being peaceful in Christianity often leans towards peacekeeping. And it's categorized by two different things. I think the first one being niceness. Not kindness, not kindness, but niceness, where everything just has to be nice.
Our words are nice. We're very careful about our tone and our body language when we communicate, we say, very mindful, very demure.
I was like, where's my TikTok, people? They're gonna love that one. Okay, very nice. Right? We don't want to bring up anything that is gonna make people feel bad about their choices or maybe things that they've said, because niceties don't ever want to be seen as divisive or aggressive. Those things are not all in the same bucket of keeping the peace.
Keeping the peace is also about conflict avoidance. And so not only are we nice in what we do, but we don't talk about hard or heavy things. Often. That means we don't even talk about sad things that might grieve people, because we don't need to approach anything where people might disagree, because, again, it could lead to conflict. And the goal of peacekeeping, the goal of, like, conflict avoidance, is to keep the majority of people happy. We wanna keep the majority of people happy.
Anybody else grow up with this kind of idea of faith or peace in your Christianity?
Okay, See, there's a lot of Don'ts when it comes to peacekeeping. But the question today is actually, what are we supposed to do? What do we do as peacemakers? And I actually love we're gonna read that same version in the nlt because I love how this one is phrased.
It says, God blesses those who what, work for peace, for they will be called children of God. Peacemaking, friends, is not passive. As we learned in our last series when we went through the book of James, our Christian values actually have value when they become more than a belief system that we just hold into our minds and become something that we actively live out in our lives.
Let's go ahead and look at James 2, a verse that we did just a couple months ago.
It says, what good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but has no deeds?
Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food.
If one of you says to them, go in peace.
Go in peace.
Stay warm and be well fed, but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it?
The whole point of this section is James is saying, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied with action, is what is dead.
Faith without action is dead. See, where peacekeeping might be built on good words, peacemaking is evidenced by good works.
I'm gonna say that for y' all again. If peacekeeping is built on good words, peacemaking is evidenced by good works.
And peacemakers understand that that good means for the good of everyone because they understand that we are all connected. And that's why it's the peacemakers who will be called children of God.
Have you ever looked at a child, whether it's a baby, a toddler, maybe an older child, and you see this child somewhere and you're like, oh, I know who your par.
I know who your parent is, right? This happens to my daughter, Marley, all the time.
Even more so now because she's the same height as me.
So now they're like, are you mom twin? What's happening? What's happening? My mini me, right? And so how do people know? How do they know that she is my child immediately? Because, number one, she looks like me.
So maybe you see a kid and you're like, do they have the same eyes? Do they have the same smile? Do they have the same laugh?
Or do they act like their parent? Maybe they have the same mannerisms. Maybe they start picking up and using the same catchphrases, or the way that they show up and interact in the world is the same.
See, often you can tell who a kid belongs to because something within them reflects where they came from.
That's why it's peacemakers who will be called children of God. Because it is the peacemakers who look like God out in the world. It is the peacemakers who act like God, carrying out his heart for people and living out their faith in such a way that the watching world around us looks at us and go, ah, I know who your dad is.
I know who your father is. I know what family you are part of and what family you belong to because of the way you show up and the way you act in the world.
As peacemakers. If these are people that we want to be, we have to do the work of making peace. And it actually starts internally.
We have to start with peace within ourselves.
And some of you are struggling right now, and I get it, because it's overwhelming. And on one hand you're looking at the news or social media for large scale things that are happening and going on.
And at the same time you're dealing with things internally that are private and personal and that other people really don't even know are happening. And it leaves you feeling anxiety, it can leave you feeling despair or even fear.
And so you can't find inner peace within yourself because you don't feel settled or you don't even feel safe within your mind and your spirit.
Some of you are having a hard time finding that inner peace, maybe because of some choices that you've made, some things that you did or things that you said. And so instead of finding inner peace, you're left with guilt and shame and regret.
You might even be finding yourself in like a self inflicted isolation because you've convinced yourself that no one else wants to be with you, that you're of no good or no benefit to anyone else, and that God doesn't actually even want you to be able to find that peace because you deserve all of the chaos and the things that are churning within you. You can't find inner peace because you've convinced yourself that God is mad at you and removed his peace from you.
But we get to go to the Scriptures and learn and see what we know about God's peace. And in Philippians 4 it tells us this.
It says, the peace of God, which transcends, surpasses, goes beyond all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
Effectively, what this means is that it doesn't matter what you feel, it doesn't matter if you feel peace within you or not, because it is accessible to you right now.
It is accessible to you when your emotions are swirling and you feel overwhelmed. It is accessible to you when you feel. When your heart is racing and you don't know what's going on. It is accessible to you even when you find yourself in a place of conviction that maybe you did something to put yourself into a situation that really is of your own doing.
God's peace is still accessible to you even then.
And we can invite God's peace in to calm the chaos and to help us settle in a way that we don't have to understand and in a way that we don't even have to have words to be able to explain.
We just have to invite God's peace in and be open for it to settling within us.
Part of knowing how we can access God's peace and what maybe is blocking us from it is understanding who we are and how we were wired up. Are there any Enneagram fans in the house?
Oh, I'm obsessed. Let's talk after service. I'll get you on the Enneagram train. Okay. The Enneagram is not a personality or it is a tool. It's not a personality test. It's an assessment. Okay? And it will help you to understand how God made you. And it really is based off of motivation. So the Enneagram will help you to understand why you do and think and feel and behave the way that you do. All right? It's not about the what, it's about the why. And so you take this assessment, and you will identify with one of nine different types. And the Enneagram 9 is actually called a Peacemaker.
For these people, we would expect it to be easier, right? And it might be because Enneagram Nines are really motivated by, like, an inner stability.
They want everything to be calm and everything to be chill. And so they can bring and embody the peace of God and bring it into situations in a unique way that maybe other types can't. So for some of you, it might be easier. For others of us, like, I am an enneagram 3, which happens to be one of the more aggressive types of the Enneagram, it is a little bit harder for me to tap into that peace of God and be like, God, just fill me with your peace so I can bring it to other people.
But it doesn't mean that it's impossible.
If it is hard for you, I highly suggest that you take the Enneagram assessment because not only will it help you to understand why you do the things that you do, it will also help you to see where maybe you're stuck, why you're stuck. Why? You might be perpetuating kind of the same cycles over and over so that you can figure out what is blocking you from accessing God's peace and how maybe he wants to give it to you in a unique way different than maybe what you've been taught or the one way that you've always thought you could experience God's peace.
So after we do the work of peace within ourselves, then we have to work for making peace with other people.
And you've probably heard of the phrase the war on peace. There's a war on peace right now. This often is referred to with, like, societal or cultural things. A lot of times we hear the war on peace when there are systemic forces maybe that come in and threaten, like the communal thriving of all people together for people to live at peace and harmony as a community.
But when it comes to relationships, doesn't it sometimes seem like it's not a war on peace, it's a war for peace?
Because once we are trying to go into a conflict, if we're entering into a relationship where we feel like we have to kind of like go to the other side, doesn't it always cost us something?
It always costs us something. Peace with other people has always required a sacrifice. And we see this first in the crucifixion of Jesus. If we look at Ephesians 2, it says, for Christ himself has brought. Help me out.
Peace to us. He united the Jews and the Gentiles into one people, one people. When in his own body on the cross, he broke down the wall of hostility that separated us in his own body, he broke down the dividing wall that separated us from any other group of people.
Yes, Jesus made a way for us to have peace with God. But what he was really doing here in this sacrifice was providing a new way forward between people in a world where division and hostility and exclusion are justified, often in the name of Jesus.
What Jesus actually offers us instead is forgiveness and grace and compassion and inclusion and unity.
And he gives us these things so that we can offer them to other people.
Things like forgiveness and grace and unity are great when we take them into ourselves, but there's not a whole lot we can do when we hold onto them.
Those kinds of things only really find their value and their purpose when we then extend them to other people.
Jesus broke what divides us to make us one family, brothers and sisters under the same Father as the same children of God. And if it cost Jesus something to be able to offer this peace between us and make peace between People, as followers of Jesus, we should expect that it's also going to cost us something.
Many of you are probably going to be at tables this week with people that maybe you haven't talked to in a while, people that maybe you haven't really seen or maybe you've avoided seeing since the holidays last year.
And I know that you're considering, do I even show up to this? Do I even go?
Because you're weighing the cost, right, of what happens if I go and what happens if I don't.
And you're weighing out which one maybe is worse.
You're already thinking about maybe not even showing up because you're dreading the potential conflict and the conversations and the questions that you believe will be waiting for you. Maybe at this gathering of people, as you're considering, or maybe even getting ready to go, I want you to consider, what is the cost that you're willing to pay?
What are you willing to. To give up in order to make peace with other people?
Are you willing to lay down your posture of defensiveness?
Are you willing to lay down your need to be understood by other people?
Or could you maybe listen with curiosity and compassion that might lead you to understanding just a little bit better, maybe, where somebody is coming from?
Are we willing to lay down our pride and our opinions, our need to be right or to have the last word or to have things go our way in order that we might empathize with someone else and be able to better understand their lived experience?
You will need to ask God what He is calling you to do and how he is calling you to show up with his peace the next time you go into what is likely to be a conflicting situation.
Is God asking you to forgive someone or to forgive someone again, or to forgive someone again? Again?
Cause it's that person that you're gonna do 70 times 7, like, all the way to the end on forgiveness with them. Is God calling you to do that?
Is God calling you to be the peaceful presence that represents him in a room that is filled with tension?
Is God asking you to go first in offering kindness, where typically there's a wall of tension?
Friends, this can be easy. Again, this is not showing up with niceties.
This is showing up with kindness.
Maybe the person that you assume is going to give you the cold shoulder and you just know they're gonna not talk to you. You just beeline right for them in all grace and you compliment them or you tell them their hair looks good or you hug them or whatever.
All of these small little steps actually Help to melt and the iciness and the wall of hostility between people.
Maybe God is calling you to actually be patient and to create time and space for your family members to see the things that you've seen and to learn the things that you've learned so that they can get to the place where you are, you know, maturity much different than we think as children. Maturity is not actually tied to our age.
You might be going into a situation where God is like, listen, I know you're younger.
I need you to show up the more mature person and bring my peace into this situation.
See, the restoration of a relationship might not be the goal. You may not find yourself back where a relationship ever exists like it once did.
But as a peacemaker, what you are called to do is to honor the imago dei, the image of God in that other person who is your brother and sister in Christ, remembering that because Jesus now stands in the middle where the dividing wall used to be, we can rely on him to be the peace that will come in the place of tension.
The last place that we need to work after we've worked to create peace within ourselves and peace for other people is to make peace in the world around us.
And specifically, we need to make peace in the world around us for the vulnerable population, whoever that happens to be in the moment. Okay? We have to work for peace for the vulnerable population, which changes. And we know this, whoever it is in the moment.
You may or may not know that a week ago, the U.S. border Patrol was deployed to Charlotte, which is the city that Mosaic exists in.
And we are a very, very diverse church.
We have people from all over, different places, different kinds of people, and we come together to create this super diverse, multiethnic, multicultural church that we are so proud of that is not just a church, but is a community, and that so many of you have chosen as your chosen family.
And so, as your pastors and your friends, we get to know your stories, and we get to know your lives.
And there are so many stories and things that have happened that you don't share publicly, but you trust us with. And we have the honor of walking with you in some of these seasons privately, because for whatever the reason, you're not ready to share these things publicly yet.
And so I can tell you that there are a lot of stories and there are a lot of things that have happened this week in our city with the presence of these agents.
And as a mom and a former public educator, I'll tell you one of the stories I can tell you that sticks out to me the most is the number of students who were not at school on Monday, which was the first school day after the agents came to Charlotte. There were 30,000 students who did not go to school on Monday.
And there are some national news places that are picking up coverage of this, and they're talking about how students are protesting and they're doing walkouts. And walkouts did happen on Tuesday when the absence count went up to 56,000 kids.
But that's only part of the story.
The other part of the story, as someone who has been very heavily involved this week in trainings and advocacy and talking to the people who are in the education system, I can let you know that the other part of the story is that the majority of those absences happened because there were families who were afraid to even take their kids to school because of racial profiling.
They were afraid to leave their homes. So it's 30,000 students who missed, not only their education and their social support, but many of them, the meals that they relied on two times a day to be able to eat.
In my daughter's class alone, 50% of her classmates were missing.
And so I had to have a conversation with her as the mom in the afternoon about maybe where her friends might be and if they were going to come back.
Some of our immigrant neighbors are afraid.
Some of our immigrant neighbors are afraid to leave their houses, to get groceries, to go to work. They're losing income because they're afraid to go into their businesses. They're afraid to take their students to school.
Some of them, some of our migrant neighbors are even US Citizens who are living right now in fear because of the threat of oppression, because of who has shown up in our city as children of God. These are our brothers and sisters. And Scripture is clear on what we are supposed to do and how we are supposed to handle situations like this.
Scripture tells us that we are to care for the vulnerable, that we are to speak up for those who can't speak up for themselves, that we are to do what is just and what is right. We are to love mercy, and we are to defend the needy. We are to feed the hungry and invite the stranger. And we are supposed to see our neighbors that are being harmed and love them with an actionable faith.
Friends, these are the words of Jesus.
This is.
And that's why peacemaking isn't passive. It's a holy disruption, because it refuses to operate and participate in systems that make peace for some or keep peace for some people while denying it from others.
Peacemaking is A holy disruption as children of God, if our siblings are not safe, our family is not at peace.
We've been talking all week as a staff about what is our response and what are we to do, what are we called to do, and who are we meant to be in this moment? So I actually want to invite Pastor Naim up to come on up, if you'll help me welcome him, to let you know what we've been doing and how you can actually be part of what we're gonna do as well.
Hello.
[00:25:23] Speaker A: Hello.
[00:25:24] Speaker B: Hello. Hello.
[00:25:25] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:25:26] Speaker B: So you have a unique story because immigration is actually personal for you.
[00:25:30] Speaker A: It is. It is, right? It is. Yes.
[00:25:33] Speaker B: Tell the people.
[00:25:34] Speaker A: Yes. So I'm brown.
No, no, no.
[00:25:38] Speaker B: Who you are.
[00:25:39] Speaker A: So I'm Pakistani and grew up in Kuwait and came here to the US and got asylum, which means I got a citizen, got permission to stay here in the States. And then, yeah, went through immigration, went through all of it, got a green card, and then eventually got my citizenship. But so I have. And my family did it as well. I got two brothers, two sisters, and mom and dad all went through it. So I understand immigration more than some, and I know that what's happening right now and the way to fix immigration, this is not the way. There are better ways to do this. There's a lot of better ways to do this. And so. So what we want to. We were thinking about is, like, how can we, as a church be alive in this moment? Like, what is the church called to do in this moment? And what I realized is this, is that, you know, like, the countries will go to war all the time, but the church is there to heal the wounded. That's what we're here for. We're not here to talk about who should do what and why we should do this. We're not here to make opinions or be a political institution. We are here for people, and that's it. Right. We're here for people.
So what we want to do is we want to practically be there for people, and we want to be people of peace. And so what we're doing is we're taking $10,000 from our budget and we're giving it to several, you know, organizations. Yeah. So we got. Who do we have?
[00:27:11] Speaker B: Yeah, we are going to give some money to our Bridge for Kids and some other of it to Caterpillar Ministries. And basically, between these two organizations, they work with immigrant and refugee families to do everything from academics to legal aid to groceries, helping them work the system, basically, and provide whatever it is that they need for their families right now.
[00:27:31] Speaker A: All right. But we're not. We're not done yet. We're not done. Obviously, if maybe you walked in, you saw that we're collecting all kinds of things. Things too, right? What is that for?
[00:27:38] Speaker B: Yep. We are also. Thank you. For those of you who brought food for nourish up. We are restocking their food pantry as well as giving them delivery drivers. They have a lot more grocery deliveries right now than normal. And so we've been able to provide them with food for restock as well as. As delivery drivers.
[00:27:55] Speaker A: Yeah. And then we're not done yet. Also, what we're doing is, is that you probably walked in, you found an envelope on your seat.
[00:28:03] Speaker B: You.
[00:28:03] Speaker A: If you got an envelope, do you see an envelope right next to you, pocket in front of you envelope, you know, if you have it, grab that, if you don't mind, wave it up in the air. Wave it like you just don't care. Yeah, yeah, do that thing. Okay, so what is that? That is an envelope not for you to put money in, but it has money inside of it.
So what we're doing is we want to help you seed. We want to see what God wants to use and use you to, and the spirit wants to use you to impact people's lives. So you have $20 and you can do a couple of things with it, right?
[00:28:37] Speaker B: Yeah. If there's somebody that you know and you already know of a person and you're like, hey, they've missed income this week. They need gas. I need to help them take their kids to school. Use that $20 however you see fit. Also, we're gonna send you an email this week of lots of local restaurants and businesses that maybe have been impacted. So, like, maybe after service today, you want to go to an immigrant owned restaurant for lunch and you're going to invest in that business, you can take that $20 on top of what you would already generously tip them and add that $20 to give that back and to bless them right now.
[00:29:10] Speaker A: Yeah. And the reason why we want to do this is because there are some of us who have the capacity and the ability to be a practical blessing, as in provide things. But some of us, we're on a tight budget and it's just. It is what it is. And so we just don't want. We want to take away the excuse. We want to take away and just help. And so if you're a college student, you're like, man, I've been broke for a while.
Well, guess what? You just got 20 bucks, not for gas, but for something else. You know what I'm saying?
So, yeah, what's great about that is that, people, you're going to have an opportunity to really ask God about something cool. That maybe there's a divine moment that he's setting up for you. And you're like, you know, God, who do you want me to give this to? And it's just great when you ask God, take your time. There's no rush to get rid of it. Maybe you wanna add to it, but let's see what God does. And let's be people of peace. Let's practically do. So here's why we did this also, and that is we get up here all the time and we talk about, listen, we need to do this. We need to be these kind of people. We need to be these kind of people, but we actually have to be these kind of people. You know what I'm saying? We actually do the work. And so this is. This is a great opportunity for you guys to be empowered, to actually do the work. Yes.
[00:30:20] Speaker B: Thank you.
[00:30:20] Speaker A: Yeah, of course.
[00:30:23] Speaker B: So many of you have asked us this week. You're like, how do I help? What do I do? I don't know what to do. I know some of you are still holding that $20 and you're like, I still don't know what to do with this. And that's okay. We're gonna send an email this week, so make sure that you not only receive but also read our emails. And we're gonna put a list of lots of local places that maybe you can go and check out this week. We would love for you to, just like Pastor Naim said, just ask God, how can I be a blessing? And how do you want me to use this? I also will say, cause this is something that I struggle with.
Share your stories of what you're doing. Like, you can talk about this. And I often wrestle through, okay, if I do a good thing and I live out my faith, am I bragging? Like, am I being prideful? Is this just virtue signaling? Cause I want people to think I'm doing a good job.
I'm gonna tell you that it's not.
I think when we actually live out the things that we believe, when we put works to our words and we let people know what's happening, we actually then can inspire other people to do the same thing.
So I don't need you to take pictures of necessarily the people that you're helping. But if you have social media, you wanna talk to your Friends and family about it. Tag us, let us know. We would love to know your stories and the things that you're doing and. And the way that you have chosen to partner with God in making peace for someone else with this money that you have.
We exist to do this right. Mosaic. I'm so proud to be part of this church. I'm so proud of you and the people that you are. Thank you so much for your generosity. We would not be able to give this money to you to go be a blessing to someone else if y' all had not given us that money to begin with. With.
So thank you. Thank you for believing in the heart and the mission of Mosaic. We are people who believe that God can take something that maybe was not intended for good and really turn it around and make good come out of it. This is the disruptive love of the gospel, where we live out the words of our faith with the works of our actions.
I would love to, if you stand, if you're able, I would love to pray specifically over these envelopes.
And what we're gonna do here to end our service is we're gonna sing one more song. You can stand and you can sing, you can sit down. Whatever helps you to be in a posture of prayer. We also have response stations around the room. So on either side of the room is a communion station if you'd like to take communion today. There are also candles on either side of the room just to represent. Maybe there's a specific person or situation that you've been praying for. You can go light a candle. God knows what it is anyway. But you can light a candle just as a representation of that. We've also got a cross over here with some post its. And if you're watching on Livestream, we've got private prayer rooms as well in case there's something that you want us to come alongside you in prayer about. But I want you to go ahead and grab that envelope and hold it in your hand and let's pray about what God's going to do with those today.
God, we already know the good that is going to come from this generosity. God, we know already that you are speaking to the people who are afraid and, God, that you are present even in the situations when they feel like they don't have peace.
God, we thank you for inviting us in to partner with you, God, and we pray for divine moments. Lord, that these envelopes would provide more than physical needs.
God, that they would provide hope. God, that they would provide a moment of peace.
God, that maybe this money, God, this act of peace, God, this act of your love and generosity, Lord, might point people to you, God, that they might see you in a brand new way, God, and understand that maybe there is a different or new way to be a Christian and to live out the love of Jesus.
God, we thank you for the people of Mosaic. God, I thank you for their heart and their willingness to serve their neighbors, God, people that they maybe don't even know.
God, we thank you for the people who have shown up in our city all week, God, to care and to love and to serve their brothers and sisters.
God, we pray for divine moments. God, we thank you for inviting us in to partner with you and God, we pray that we would always be people who are going growing in our faith to not just profess how much we love you with our words, but God, that we would actionably show it with our works.
God, we trust you with all of these situations. We lift up all of the people and the problems and the situations and the tensions that are on our minds, God, because we know that when you show up, you can turn anything around.
In Jesus name, amen.
Thanks for listening to this message from Mosaic church in Charlotte, North Carolina.
For more audio and video content, visit us at MosaicChurch TV.
