Kindness- Positive Influence Trait #5

BE KIND- That phrase can be spotted on T-shirts, stickers, folders, notebooks and bumper stickers. I have seen sentiments of kindness on all sorts of things. The world calls for kindness. AND YET, the world doesn’t really choose kindness. And sadly neither do Christians.

So Let’s talk about kindness

As a very young child I remember a song I was taught in our Wednesday kids club.

Pretend this is in a sing singsongy tone

“Be ye kind one to another tenderhearted forgiving one another even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you. Do do. do do do do Ephesians 4:32”

And just like that I ha d “words hidden in my heart.” (Psalm 199:11). Or did I?

The world doesn’t realize it calling for a biblical principle when they yell from the roof tops to be kind. Unfortunately most times we yell be kind when we want someone to be kind to us , OR our causes. BUT when it comes time for us to BE KIND to someone different we can have billion reasons why I don’t “need” to be kind to someone else. We talked about THAT yesterday!And I find it interesting that in both the Fruit of The Spirit verses AND the Love Chapter verses that Kindness follows patience.

Why is that?

Well I think that the very first act of kindness you can show someone is Patience. Patience is the first descriptor of LOVE. Kindness is the second. You cannot have LOVE if you are not patient AND kind.

So let’s break down Ephesians 4:32. Be Kind- a command- It’s NOT an option. But then we all ask “well what does kind look like?’

tenderhearted
forgiving one another

Tenderhearted-having a KIND, GENTLE or sentimental nature (Oxford Languages)

Have you ever noticed how Scripture repeats itself. OVER AND OVER AND OVER AGAIN! It’s because as humans we are DENSE. We need these constant reminders to not be selfish. And as we progress we will see that all of these traits build on each other. They NEED each other. We NEED patience in order to be kind and gentle. Don’t worry gentleness is coming !!

Forgiving one another- we also talked about this with patience yesterday! But this verse confirms that it is an act of kindness BUT there is a clarifier. Forgive as Christ forgave you!

YIKES

THIS IS HARD! Why? Because Christ forgave us-before we ever knew we needed to be forgiven. Long before we ever asked for forgiveness. This was so hard for me to wrap my brain around but my hubby graciously helped me through this understanding not long after we were married. This wasn’t ‘between him and I but a hurt I had sustained. There were many tears. What happened? Someone was very unkind and very harsh when she could have chosen to be understanding.

I struggled with why people couldn’t see how harsh tand rude hey had been and just apologize. I was holding onto a bunch of stuff and it was coming out whenever I talked about these situations- and I was turning into them!

ABSORBTION

I knew Ephesians 4:32- but I wasn’t letting it change me. I have learned (and am continuing to learn) to forgive and be tenderhearted. This is n’t just something where you learn the verse and bam you have arrived.

We tend to think that we can memorize ll the verses and we lift up people who have memorized hundreds of verses but then that’s it… That’s all they do with it. I have known people who have used their memorization of verses as a point of pride. I’m more interested in WHAT you do with this verses. Do you let those verses CHANGE you and mold You into the kind- tenderhearted-forgiving person God wants you to be? You know to be more and more like Jesus?

Ion deficient

Over the last few months we came to realize that despite me putting in an absurd amount of iron rich supplements and food into my body I could not absorb the iron. This was because my red blood cells were too small. If you aren’t able to absorb the iron it doesn’t matter how much you cram into your body it’s useless.

The same is true for God’s word. You can cram it in but until you are ready to use it and apply it and do the hard work with it- IT’S USELESS.

DID YOU NOTICE?

I left a part of that Psalm 119 verse out! Because that’s what we do. We focus on one part (I am to hide God’s word in my heart. CHECK I have all of Philippians, Ephesians and James memorized look how amazing of A Christian I am) BUT we leave off “That I might not sin against God”. Because that require Heart and life changing work.

And that means hard work-painful work. Because that means I have to admit that I might not be as good of a person than I thought I was.

A Good Gauge of Your HEART?

What comes out your mouth! (Luke 6:45 NLT)

⁴⁵A good person produces good things from the treasury of a good heart, and an evil person produces evil things from the treasury of an evil heart. What you say flows from what is in your heart.

(We will actually revisit this verse tomorrow. ).

That last phrase “what you say flows from what is in your heart” is the biggest indicator of what someones heart motives are. What they find most important. And it’s generally when they aren’t happy about something. AND THEN THEY LOSE THEIR TESTIMONY (aka their positive influence).

And what’s the first thing that we hear out of someones mouth that ruins their testimony? Unkind words. We should be building people up NOT tearing them down. We should harken back to the phrase “If you can’t say something nice, then don’t say anything at all.” that our mothers taught us over and over and over again (Yes we are a dense breed).

Out of the Mouths of Babes- or a 16 year old

Our oldest son is a very caring (tenderhearted) and servant hearted teenager. We are blessed as we watch him grow. And one day last week he looked at me with sad blue eyes and said “I can’t believe I ever thought they were godly people.” I was stunned. He had come to terms with the very thing I talked about above. Unforgiving unkind words- behavior lived out opposite to what these people said they believed. HYPOCRISY. He didn’t have to be told it existed. He saw and experienced it first hand. The sad thing is Those people don’t even realize they had lost their positive influence and that it had turned to a negative influence.

Our Kindness speaks Volumes when you are genuine and authentic. WHEN YOU ARE REAL. You can say you are kind and gentle but if you aren’t it will be revealed when you hit your boiling point. When the pressure is put on and things don’t happen your way do you choose GRACE AND MERCY- Do you pick forgiveness as Christ forgave you? Do You put your own wants or desires aside? OR do you just let people have wants on your mind because you are entitled to your opinions?

Entitlement isn’t an act of kindness.

Now it’s Your turn

These are hard heart questions. I challenge you to take these things and pray through them asking God to reveal what is really hidden in your hear- or perhaps in light of Luke- not so hidden.

This isn’t a once and done process either we need to do a heart check regularly. As you do when something slips out of our mouths we will eventually be able to recognize the sin and do a heart check.