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©
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture quotations are from The New Living Translation©
