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. 

Series: "Fruits of the Spirit"

A few years ago, my daughter Amanda and I were asked to write some articles for "The Real Bible".

http://www.amazon.com/Real-Complete-New-Testament-Biblezines/dp/0718010663/ref=sr_1_1?s=gateway&ie=UTF8&qid=1285351420&sr=8-1

Here is one of those articles:

Love

“You would if you really loved me.” a girl’s boyfriend whispers in her ear.  An enraged teenager screams at her mother, “You don’t really love me!” A pastor is ending a sermon,  “And now these three remain: faith, hope, and love, but the greatest of these is love.”  But, what is love?  Yes, God is love, but what is a good definition for love?  If love is what the world says, then it is often synonymous with sex, or a worldly phrase that says, “You owe me.” 

If we take a deep look at what God’s love is, we realize that God’s love is not only different than the world’s love, but it is different than what we usually think it is. A Biblical definition of God’s love says that love is an offer to give from a secure heart.  Insecurity minimizes your ability to receive God’s love and God’s love minimizes your ability to be insecure.

God’s love is a gift. No gift can be demanded or manipulated. It may be asked for and granted, but never manipulated or demanded.  The world however, feeds off insecurity by manipulating love by saying, “I’m hurting so you need to give to me.”  If you give in to this manipulation, you will walk in insecurity; you will not have God’s love to pour out on anyone else. 

A gift is offered and not forced. 1 John 3:16 says, “For God so loved the world that He sent his only begotten son that whosoever believes in Him will not perish but have everlasting life.”  The ultimate gift was offered.  God gave us the option to accept or reject it. God’s love says that you don’t have to “fix” anyone.  To know God’s love is to live in the security that God unconditionally thinks that you are wonderful!