This.
Wisdom Hunters:
"“Love is kind”… 1 Corinthians 13:4
Kindness is a natural application of love because it makes one feel loved. It is the ability to be accepting when everything within you wants to be rejecting. It is a strategy for forgiveness when you are wronged or when someone takes advantage of you. When your trusting spirit has been violated, you still love by being kind; you stop fighting, and you start forgiving.
Kindness means you are pleasant to be around because your countenance is inviting and shows interest. It is as much an attitude as anything, and it is the ability to see beyond the immediate to the potential. Kindness means you go out of your way to love someone. People who are unlovable become prime candidates for your kindness. A family member who is far from God, deep down desires unconditional love and kindness.
Love keeps you kind, especially toward those who are closest to you. They do not deserve your dredging up hurtful, bitter, and unforgiving words from the past. Love is kind in its conversations. Harsh and abrasive speech is absent from kind conversation. Love produces words that are “kind and tenderhearted” (Ephesians 4:32). Love is able to extend kind words that cheer up heavy hearts (Proverbs 16:24). Pray to God for kindness to reign in your relationships with kids and teenagers. Children translate kindness into love, for it is their language of love.
We all have blown up and lost our temper over disrespectful attitudes and actions from our offspring. The temptation is to disrespect them when we have been disrespected, and the natural response is to become angry when someone else spews out his or her frustrations on us. But God has not called us to natural responses but supernatural ones. Kindness in the face of frustration is a fruit of the Spirit, and only through submission to your Savior will kindness come front and center. The fullness of the Holy Spirit in your life is what causes kindness to come forth.
Lastly, loving others with kindness does not preclude difficult decisions. Kindness is not patronizing, but it is authentic care and concern, and it is able to deliver hard truth that softens hard hearts. You can dismiss an employee with kindness. Likewise, you can disagree with kindness in a heated debate. Harshness has no hold on those who are controlled by Christ.
Therefore, kindly love people through difficult situations. Serve those who are experiencing financial difficulties, for example. Kindness is king for followers of King Jesus, so love with kindness and watch them come around and embrace Christ. Kindness kills sin and sadness, and brings to life love, forgiveness, and hope. Allow Jesus’ loving kindness to flow through you, for kindness toward the needy honors God (Proverbs 14:31). Kindness resides where love is applied, because love is kind."
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
Thursday, February 2, 2012
Self-Evaluation
Self-evaluation is one of those things that I hate doing...but love doing. Here's a quote from a book by Jerry Bridges called The Transforming Power of the Gospel.
"We will not grow unless we see our need to grow, we will not pursue holiness unless we see how much we are still unholy, and we will not see our unholiness unless we look at the holiness of God instead of what we perceive to be the unholiness of our neighbor. This is why we must face up to the sinfulness of our own sin. Our sins are not mere "mistakes"; no, they are acts of lawlessness, of rebellion, of despising God and his law... dwelling on the seriousness of sin causes us to realize our need of the gospel and our need of embracing it everyday. It is against the dark backdrop of our sinfulness that the beauty of the gospel shines so brilliantly. Nothing prepares a person to understand and embrace the gospel so much as a personal awareness and conviction of one's own sin."
"The best preparation for the study of the gospel is neither great intellectual ability nor much scholastic learning but a conscience impressed with a sense of our actual condition as sinners in the sight of God. A deep conviction of sin is the one thing needful in such an inquiry, a conviction of the fact of sin, as an awful reality in our own personal experience of the power of sin as an inveterate evil cleaving to us continually, and having its roots deep in the innermost recesses of our hearts." - James Buchanan
I don't know about you, but I know that after reading this chapter I was overwhelmed with my own conduct. I don't want to become the person he talks about that focuses so much on others sins that I forget to look at my own and then when I do just see them as mistakes. I think it has been a long time since I have been overwhelmed with my sinfulness. I think sometimes we focus so much on the freeing power of the Gospel that we almost begin to look at our sin as a small thing. The "God will forgive me" attitude is very present. Even if I would never admit out loud that is what my actions portray.
"the gospel keeps us from self-righteousness because the gospel is only for sinners. Embracing the gospel every day forces me to acknowledge I am still a sinner in need of the mercy of God. It keeps me from lapsing into a performance-based relationship with God because I know that my performance is never good enough." -JB
I know that I do not want to forget to feel the weightiness of my sin, but there is the forgiveness. We can not forget the repentance part or that Christ has already paid for our sin. So we can rejoice in that...but how can we truly rejoice if we have never felt the weight of our sin? So I leave you with this line from "It is Well with My Soul."
"My sin, oh the bliss of this glorious thought. My sin not in part, but the whole, is nailed to the cross and I bear it no more. Praise the Lord, Praise the Lord, Oh my soul!"
"We will not grow unless we see our need to grow, we will not pursue holiness unless we see how much we are still unholy, and we will not see our unholiness unless we look at the holiness of God instead of what we perceive to be the unholiness of our neighbor. This is why we must face up to the sinfulness of our own sin. Our sins are not mere "mistakes"; no, they are acts of lawlessness, of rebellion, of despising God and his law... dwelling on the seriousness of sin causes us to realize our need of the gospel and our need of embracing it everyday. It is against the dark backdrop of our sinfulness that the beauty of the gospel shines so brilliantly. Nothing prepares a person to understand and embrace the gospel so much as a personal awareness and conviction of one's own sin."
"The best preparation for the study of the gospel is neither great intellectual ability nor much scholastic learning but a conscience impressed with a sense of our actual condition as sinners in the sight of God. A deep conviction of sin is the one thing needful in such an inquiry, a conviction of the fact of sin, as an awful reality in our own personal experience of the power of sin as an inveterate evil cleaving to us continually, and having its roots deep in the innermost recesses of our hearts." - James Buchanan
I don't know about you, but I know that after reading this chapter I was overwhelmed with my own conduct. I don't want to become the person he talks about that focuses so much on others sins that I forget to look at my own and then when I do just see them as mistakes. I think it has been a long time since I have been overwhelmed with my sinfulness. I think sometimes we focus so much on the freeing power of the Gospel that we almost begin to look at our sin as a small thing. The "God will forgive me" attitude is very present. Even if I would never admit out loud that is what my actions portray.
"the gospel keeps us from self-righteousness because the gospel is only for sinners. Embracing the gospel every day forces me to acknowledge I am still a sinner in need of the mercy of God. It keeps me from lapsing into a performance-based relationship with God because I know that my performance is never good enough." -JB
I know that I do not want to forget to feel the weightiness of my sin, but there is the forgiveness. We can not forget the repentance part or that Christ has already paid for our sin. So we can rejoice in that...but how can we truly rejoice if we have never felt the weight of our sin? So I leave you with this line from "It is Well with My Soul."
"My sin, oh the bliss of this glorious thought. My sin not in part, but the whole, is nailed to the cross and I bear it no more. Praise the Lord, Praise the Lord, Oh my soul!"
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