Fruit of the Spirit - Part 1 - KINDNESS

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Tuesday, May 21, 2019

But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives:  love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.  There is no law against these things!                              Galatians 5:22-23

Paul, the apostle, uses fruit as a metaphor to explain the way God prepares and uses His own nature and strength in us to be a blessing to others.  It’s really a great metaphor (of course God doesn’t need my approval…I’m just celebrating the truth here). 

Fruit from our earth’s bounty is a continuing staple of refreshment, nourishment, and tasty blessing in my life.  If you ask what I had for breakfast, and fruit is not mentioned, call the FBI, because you’re talking to an imposter, or my evil clone; you’ll probably find I’ve been kidnapped and put on a boat to Shanghai. 

Over the next week or so I’d like for us to enjoy examining together the fruit of God’s Spirit.  There are nine kinds of fruit in this cluster of heavenly produce.  Today we begin with kindness.

There are a ton of words that are associated with a person being kind:  benevolent, caring, compassionate, generous, giving, thoughtfulness, consideration, helpfulness, charity, tenderness, sympathetic, tolerance, understanding, courtesy, decency, altruistic, gracious, patient, cordial.

All those words have their birthplace in the human heart.  Kindness cannot be enacted by Presidential fiat, Congress passing a law, or the United Nations international court.  Rather it is evoked by a gift of human unselfishness which includes another heart, usually one that is in need.

In Acts ^(11:27-30) we find at Antioch a church full of believers exercising the gift of kindness.  One of their own, Agabus, is a prophet, and predicts a coming famine in the Roman Empire.  Knowing the church at Jerusalem is already experiencing hard times, they didn’t wait for the prophecy to hit (which it did several years later).  Instead they immediately took up an offering for their fellow believers in Jerusalem and sent it with Paul and Barnabas.

I know what that’s like.  Elizabeth and I have experienced some rough times financially over the years.  Sometimes it was self-inflicted, just spending unwisely.  At other times the causes were just a matter of life happening.  We’ve had family and friends who helped us, and one particularly kind anonymous helper who just sent unsolicited funds through the mail. 

During one crisis of our ministry, I was coming to the end of ministry in one church and had nowhere to go.  A couple of dear co-laboring ministers recognized the signs of depression in me and made it their mission to get me out of my routine – a lunch, a time of listening, and some prayer later, their kindness gave me some hope.  It proved to be salvation for my sanity, and a strength for the journey.

During that same period there was a meeting that had all the signs of a lynch mob with the pastor’s neck as the center of the agenda.  One of the leaders stood up and gently, but firmly challenged those who were conspiring to push me out the door, and God used his leadership to change the whole tenor of that group.  His kindness to stand with me was the difference between calm reason and a broken spirit.

Kindness cannot be overrated!

For You Today

Let’s let Scripture finish our devotional thought on kindness today:

The seeds of good deeds become a tree of life;  Proverbs 11:30a

If your gift is to encourage others, be encouraging.  If it is giving, give generously.  If God has given you leadership ability, take the responsibility seriously.  And if you have a gift for showing kindness to others, do it gladly.  Romans 12:8

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day.

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[1] Title Image: Pixabay.com  
             Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture quotations are from The New Living Translation©

So, Which Gift?

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Tuesday, August 7, 2018

All of you together are Christ’s body, and each of you is a part of it.  Here are some of the parts God has appointed for the church:  first are apostles, second are prophets, third are teachers, then those who do miracles, those who have the gift of healing, those who can help others, those who have the gift of leadership, those who speak in unknown languages.  Are we all apostles?  Are we all prophets?  Are we all teachers?  Do we all have the power to do miracles?  Do we all have the gift of healing?  Do we all have the ability to speak in unknown languages?  Do we all have the ability to interpret unknown languages?  Of course not!  So you should earnestly desire the most helpful gifts.  

1 Corinthians 12:27-31^(NLT)

The body needs toes…trust me!  Fifteen years ago, it was becoming really difficult for me to walk and not cry at the same time.  The painful joint in my big toe had deteriorated from injuries and lack of attention by the toe’s owner.  My doctor tried injecting stuff to make the toe forget its’ pain, but it didn’t help.  The final resort was the knife!  That day on the operating table, my surgeon took my toe apart, put it back together, and then awakened me to go home (I’m glad he got that in the right order!). 

There’s nothing medicine can do to keep a body in working condition past the time when God calls – but, for now I walk without pain in that foot.  The point is my foot, and all those toes, are important to the health and function of my body; when my toe is in pain, my whole body commiserates.

The Apostle Paul makes this same analogy for the body of Christ, the church.  There are skills associated with spiritual gifts.  Not everyone is an apostle, or pastor-teacher, or gifted to help in extraordinary ways.  But every part of the body of Christ, like a toe in the physical body, is there for a reason God deemed necessary.  The usefulness of my big toe makes it very noticeable when pain is present.  Toes are the primary base of stability for the whole body, and the big toe, along with its neighbor, are the strongest, most durable in the body.[2]  Toes also help lengthen and quicken our stride when we push-off from a standstill; running fast requires toes!

So, enough about toes (lest they become prideful over all this attention); what about all the other parts of the body?  Obviously, we haven’t got space for the whole medical journal here – but the point isn’t hidden; we are put together by God in amazing ways.  All the parts of the physical body serve a purpose, and in the analogy of physical body and spiritual body, there is no mistake about God creating His church with such diverse, and incredibly useful/valuable parts. 

Paul gives us the shopping list of gifts, and even puts them in a kind of spiritual pecking order.  But, in the end his advice is for us to desire the most helpful gifts.  What I believe the apostle was getting at is when God selects you to have a special gift, it is for a special purpose that you will fulfill better than anyone else in the place He has called you to serve.  God gave me a life’s-task to be a pastor-teacher, teaching God’s Word and cooperating with God’s saints to put God’s Word in action.  If I put that aside to be an evangelist, or hold meetings of faith-healing, or build skyscrapers, or play third base for the Braves, or run for president, I will not be as useful in the kingdom as when I stick to preaching and teaching.  That is my most helpful use of what God gave me; it is how I am to be a steward of His gifts.

And so, there it is:  the most helpful of gifts are those gifts used unselfishly in the service of God…the One Who gave you those gifts.

For You Today

A word about the church, and your job, and your family, and your school, and your circle of friends, dfer, and every place you find people:

Take care of the body’s toes.

Just like a plumber needs an electrician, and an architect, and the general contractor to make everything fit together; your church, job, school, family, and friend circles consist of every part, large, small, seen, or hidden – some with greater purposes, and some with lesser – but all…All….ALL…ALL serving God’s purposes with value and dignity.

So, which gift should you be pursuing?  Well, what do YOU think of toes?

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day. 

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[1] Title Image:  Courtesy of Pixabay.com

[2] UCSB Science Line