Today's episode is all about kindness. We're going to be diving deep into why it's important to have a kind heart. I will be pairing this with prayer, scripture, and reflection.
This episode is number 5 of 9 episodes about the fruit of the Spirit. In the first four episodes, we went over love, joy, peace, and patience. If you haven't checked out those episodes, go check them out first and come back to this because all of these episodes are going to go hand in hand with the fruit of the Spirit. To really take this journey of transformation with me, you need to make sure you check out each episode and do the reflection on each episode. I know that if you take this journey with me to really dive deep and reveal the fruit of the Spirit in our hearts, that it can and will transform your heart.
So first I'm going to say a prayer to reveal kindness in our hearts:
Lord, I pray that you lift up every single person reading this right now and that you reveal kindness in our hearts. I pray that you open up our eyes to see the truth of your words, you open up our mind, our hearts, our ears, and our spirit to you Lord. I pray that in every aspect of our life that we show kindness to others, we have that kindness and compassion in our heart and we let that shine through to others. I love you so much, Lord. In Jesus' name, Amen.
So now that we have our hearts open to receiving kindness and compassion, I'm going to go straight into some Bible verses:
"Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you." -Ephesians 4:31-32
It's so important to remember to get rid of the bitterness, rage, anger, and all of that, and just be kind and compassionate to other people, even when we don't agree with them, or like the things that they do, say, or stand for. Everyone in every walk of life is different and we just have to be kind to others, show compassion, and be forgiving. Not everyone is going to have the same heart that we have. Not everyone is going to think the same way that we do, so we can't expect people to act according to the way that we think they should act or the way that we would act. God sent his only son to die on the cross for our sins to forgive us of our sins, that was the ultimate sacrifice. If God can forgive the world of all of our sins, send His only Son, and all of that, then we should be able to forgive others. I'm not saying that we are anything like God, he is the Almighty and is full of mercy, love, and grace. But we should be able to show kindness to others and have compassion in our hearts as Christians and disciples of Jesus Christ.
"A kind man benefits himself, but a cruel man brings trouble on himself."
-Proverbs 11: 17
So when you are kind, there are many benefits that you're going to reap from being kind and one of them is just having love in your heart and not hatred. If you're cruel, you're going to have hatred in your heart. Just like we talked about in the first episode we did on the fruit of the Spirit about love and what Jesus says about love, we have to love one another. That's why I say that each part of this fruit of the spirit goes hand in hand because without love you can't have kindness, joy, peace, and patience. All of these things go together and it's so important to remember to be kind. You don't want to have hatred in your heart, because that does good for no one. A cruel person has hatred in their heart, therefore they're going to have trouble. For someone that truly believes in Jesus Christ, has the Holy Spirit within them, and is asking God to reveal the fruit of the spirit in their hearts, there's no way for us to have hatred in her heart and to be cruel.
"Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy." -Matthew 5: 7
Just like Jesus Christ is full of love, mercy, and grace, we should also be merciful. Especially when we're disciples of Christ, we're trying to follow Jesus Christ, and live the way that he wants us to. I actually have an episode on what it means to be a disciple of Jesus Christ if you want to check that out. We've also been doing our Bible studies on John, which is all about Jesus Christ, his disciples, his teaching, and just everything with the life that Jesus Christ lived. Jesus is full of love, mercy, compassion, and grace, and whenever we're merciful to others, and we show that mercy and compassion to others, it will also be shown to us through Christ.
"For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins." -Matthew 6: 14-15
If we can't forgive others that have sinned against us, then that means we have hatred in our hearts and we're not truly saved, so we won't be forgiven of our sins. In order to be forgiven of our sins, we have to ask Christ to come into our hearts and forgive us of our sins, and once he does that, we have the Holy Spirit within us and this fruit of the spirit (which is the 9 things that we're going over.)
It's so important for us to go through each week with these 9 episodes and ask God to reveal these things in our hearts; love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Before we can show kindness, we have to have love, joy, peace, and patience. Once we have all of those things then we can show kindness and compassion to others. That's why I say at the beginning of every episode, to make sure that if you haven't listened to the other previous episodes, to listen to those first because it's very important with this transformation of the heart to go episode by episode, week by week, and really to reflect on each of these different things with the fruit of the spirit.
Now let's do some reflection on kindness:
1. Brainstorm some ways that you can show kindness in your everyday life
-It can be the simplest of things; helping out someone in need, saying encouraging words to someone, texting one of your friends that you know has been going through a hard time and just letting them know that you're here for them, etc.
2. I want you to pick at least one of those things each day and do it
-I want to challenge you guys to not only do it to the people that you love and that you want to show kindness and compassion to, but also those people that you may not want to show kindness and compassion to.
-Ex: Maybe you have a coworker that gets under your skin because they're always grumpy or in a bad mood
-Ex: Maybe you have a grumpy neighbor down the street
-Here's the thing, we never know what battle someone else is secretly fighting and it's not up to us to judge or to say that one person deserves more kindness than the other, it's important for us to show kindness and compassion to everyone
So I hope this episode helped you guys to really reveal kindness and compassion in your heart and to be able to spread it to others. Especially with the way that the world is today with COVID, the election, and just every single thing that's happened in 2020, it's so important for us as Christians, but also as human beings, to just show kindness and compassion to others. We never know what someone is going through behind closed doors and our simple encouraging words, or smile, or just a helping hand, or any way that we show kindness could make their day a little bit brighter. Ultimately that's what we're here for, to spread the gospel and the love, mercy, and grace of Jesus Christ and to love one another. When we love one another, we also want to show kindness to others.
I love you guys so much.
Never forget to choose faith over fear.
-Lorena Camille (Faith Fuels My Fire)
p.s. If you'd rather listen to Faith-based, business, mindset, and mental health tips, then check out my podcast. There I will share my personal experiences, stories I've never told before, and bring you along with this hot mess life of mine. New episodes every week.
For weekly Bible Studies, tune in every week to my podcast. Every week I go over a new chapter/s of the Book of John.
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