Kindness

Kindness

The root meaning of kindness in the Greek language comes from two words:  useful and profitable.  Kindness is not just being “sweet”.  Kindness is a sweetness that produces change.  If you are kind to someone then it means you bear profit in someone’s life or are useful in someone’s life.  Kindness has power because kindness changes lives.  Kindness is not just giving, but giving in the area that they have the greatest need.  Kindness is sweetness with perceptivity.  Four greatest acts of kindness that one person can ever impart to another person are: 

(1)                           Safety. The need for safety is one of the greatest needs in anyone’s soul.  To make someone feel safe means you will live by the standard that says, “I will NEVER have the right to attack, criticize or be harsh towards anyone.”  The Greek definition says that kindness is the exact opposite of harshness.

(2)                           Praise.  Pour into people; make them alive. “ Therefore encourage one another and build up one another” (I Thessalonians 5:11). Praise is useless however, if people don’t feel safe.

(3)                           Offer to help.  An offer to help is from a servant’s heart and the goal is to win their heart, give them your heart and have the love of God flowing through you.

(4)                           An honest response.  Kindness goes beyond being “nice” – telling people what they want to hear.  It means being bold enough to speak truth and stand firm in the principles you believe in.  

Are you a kind person?  Are you useful in other people’s lives?  Do you bring great profit to others?  Do people feel safe around you?  Do you praise?  Do you serve? Are you honest?  Where is the only place that you can get filled with kindness?  “But the fruit of the spirit is . . . KINDNESS” (Gal. 5:22). 

Many times nice people are not kind people.  Nice people are often unhealthy souls that never want to offend anyone, and they never bring change that is profitable.  The most evil thing that one person could ever do to another person is to give them a false security of salvation and nice people do that all that time because they do not want to offend anyone with the gospel.  Absolute truth is offensive.