Kindness

P 2167 Forget power dressing – practice ‘HEAT OF THE MOMENT’ dressing.

/ DVH

Colossians 3:12-14: “Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe YOURSELVES with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.” PS: did you notice that LOVE is our ‘over’-coat? Actually, I think having a grievance against somebody else could easily be called a heat-of-the-moment-need-new-clothes opportunity!  So today, I want to talk briefly about spiritual clothes.  This is not about using our will-power it is about accessing HIS power to overcome.

There is a kind of a rumour within Christian ranks that says that once we’ve prayed about changing some unscriptural behaviour or other in ourselves, that’s all we need to do – God will do the rest. 😳 Somehow, magically, these abhorrent traits will just evaporate over time. And if those things don’t disappear then, ergo – the Lord is not unhappy about them so we don’t have to worry about them any more! Rhubarb. That’s not scriptural. Change is normal in the Christian life!

I urge you to read Colossians 3 again. ‘You do it’ is implied in the text. God Himself is not going to come to our house and spiritually dress us. And it does not matter how long we’ve laid on the floor at church, or cried our eyes out over our sin! He has already told us what He expects from His kids, and we have to choose to participate in this process as a matter of obedience to Him. The entire bible has instructions that tell us how to know Him, and how to follow His ways. It even describes in detail what His new clothes look like so we can’t claim a lack of knowledge. We cannot remove our obedient effort from His processes. 

Before you throw up your hands and tell me ‘that’s works’ – works and faith go hand in hand. Read James 2:18. The method looks like this – we pray.  And we ask the Holy Spirit to help us. ‘Help help Lord!’  “Submit to God, resist the devil and he will flee.” (James 4:7) So we deliberately, on purpose, pull up our big grown-up pants and choose to be kind etc. and we do it simply because Jesus said so!  We ask for His help, then we yield to His will, His way. Obedience and faith go together. When we act in faith, we are not pretending – our focus is on obeying what Jesus said in the book.

Faith primes the pump and obedience provides the action. That sequence is all over the bible. Samson prayed for help, then he pushed on the pillars he was chained to and he pushed them down. His faith was demonstrated by what he did. This is true for all of us. Who we are, as well as who we are becoming is ruled by our choices. Our choices become extremely important. I have found that the Lord does this work in me progressively and steadily. “He tells us everything over and over— one line at a time, one line at a time, a little here, and a little there!” Isaiah 28:10. The Holy Spirit allows what I call ‘opportunities to change.’

I have to be honest with you, His opportunities are not always opportune! In other words I get opportunities to control my motor mouth, or temper, or lack of patience at a time, or temptation to lie, when it is definitely NOT easy, desirable, or convenient. I might even have been sorely provoked by the circumstances or someone else’s behaviour… but their behaviour is not my business. However, my response is. Those inconvenient moments are my opportunities to clothe myself in the things that God values – instead of the automatic, or even polite responses this world looks for. I am very wary of polite responses because they are often a covering for an alternative inner attitude – which can be far less than polite! We don’t pretend, we draw on His strength using our faith.

The plus side of wearing the Lord’s clothes is that when we have submitted ourselves to His will, His way;  our character begins to change, because now our faith is in operation.“Whatsoever you do, do it with all of your heart, as though you were doing it for the Lord.” (Colossians 3:23) It is as if a new strength to overcome my flaws comes upon me. But first I have to consent … and then I step out in faith. That usually involves me shutting my trap when angry words are bubbling and fermenting away on the tip of my tongue. And that’s precisely when I need His heat-of-the-moment clothing. 👋🏻

P 2156 Our children belong to all of us.

/ DVH

The Western world has very firm ideas about how to raise kids. No smacking or corporal punishment of any kind. You are supposed to reason with them, or maybe bargain with them, and/or bribe them. Well that’s not in my bible! And it could be why we have teenagers rampaging about, doing things that are not good for the community or themselves. Many kids are being left alone daily by their parents in favour of a bigger TV, car or house. Kids need love and attention, first. 

The first point I want to make today is this: nobody’s flesh is reasonable. Even children are little bags of ‘gimme gimme, I want want … ’ We are the adults, we need to carefully choose what is actually good for them. Meanwhile despite public opinion, kids are not basically good – left to their own devices they can create havoc. While I agree that we should not thump the daylights out of a child to govern its behaviour – because when you do that you introduce fear – we definitely need to do much better than we’ve been doing. Toothless warnings don’t work. If we don’t discipline our children then rebellion takes over. “Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child; The rod of discipline [correction administered with godly wisdom and lovingkindness] will remove it far from him.”  Proverbs 22:15. 

My best advice is first of all, asap, introduce kids to Jesus. We desperately need people prepared to dedicate their lives to raising the next generation for the Lord – people who are called by God, to witness to and share with kids. And then we must deliberately DISCIPLE them. Teach them daily how to follow Him. It can be helpful to remember that you are teaching individual children. Blanket statements are not as effective – the Lord Jesus sees individuals so we should too. He knows their names! When you have a bunch of kids together you will quickly find none of them are the exactly same. Love the kid in front of you like it is the only one. And BTW, don’t typecast them either. Nobody is all one thing.

Back when I was an active parent, I learnt that some children need strong discipline, and others barely need a feather… plus a whole range of stuff in between. So you really do need to know what is what, before you sail forth and do them harm! Discern the child’s nature as well as the reason for its behaviour. Back to my point – our children belong to all of us – this world around us will not profit if we only care about OUR kids. There are too many orphan-spirited kids in our world today. Children get into mischief and trouble without supervision. We are so busy saving the whales, etc. we’ve forgotten, first of all! –  We need to save our children! They won’t magically arrive as mature adults – they need direction and supervision.

I want to share a story from my own history. When my son was much younger, he used to play with a kid who lived up the road. That kid was a bit of a bully. One day this boy picked up a big lump of concrete and threw it at my son’s head and hit him on the temple. There was blood everywhere … I calmed my boy down and fixed his head, then, my temper took my feet out of the front door. I’m pretty sure I was NOT thinking very Christian thoughts at the time … I imagine I left my Christianity in the sock drawer! I was so furious, I marched up the street and banged on the front door of the other boy’s house. 

This boy’s father was often home and the man was a huge fellow.  Sadly, I can’t tell you why he was home – I didn’t know them well enough. At the time I was shaking like a leaf with anger … as well as quite a bit of fear chucked in. However, when he opened the door I still shouted at him. I told him to control his son or else … I have no idea what I was going to do about it if he didn’t BTW! The guy just kept laughing at me and slurping his beer – I truly don’t think I had much of an impact on him at all. However, he must have told his son to stop playing with mine and there were no further incidents. 

Recently, I’ve begun to realise that when you are under pressure, what is really INSIDE you – comes OUT. And the only kid I cared about that day was mine! At the time I was not even remotely concerned about the poor kid who had a beer-in-his-hand-father-drinking-away-at-two-o’clock-in-afternoon!  I’ve repented, but I don’t ever really remember even apologising to the guy nor did I speak again to that boy. I just sort-of kind-of avoided them after that. I let my embarrassment and pride win.

My point is this, these kids are the future, and it is unrealistic to label badly behaved kids as: ”Somebody else’s problem,” like somehow we have no part in them. Undeserved kindness has a profound influence on kids, I know it did on me when I was young – I can actually remember the names of people who were kind to me. Punishment may become necessary, but it needs to be tempered with wisdom and mercy. Psalms 127:3 says: “Children are God’s love-gift; they are heaven’s generous reward.” Matthew 18:10:“Be careful that you not corrupt one of these little ones. For I can assure you that in heaven each of their guardian angels always see the face of My heavenly Father.” Mark 9:36&37 “Then He had a child come and stand among them. He wrapped the child in His arms and said to them.“Whoever welcomes a little child in My Name welcomes Me.”

I have learnt the hard way that when things get difficult we can easily forget what we believe – in favour of simply taking care of our own. We all live on the same planet and we need to remember that today’s children are tomorrow’s leaders. This world’s children belong to us all.  We simply must care enough to help them find their true selves in Christ. 👋🏻