Kindness part 1
So Logan was doing his homework tonight, and one of the things he had to do was write three sentences about what makes someone a leader. The first thing he wrote was, "To be kind." Because a true leader doesn't use his followers to his advantage, he takes care of his followers. Kindness. Number one. Not the bottom line, but the top line. First things first. And that really hit me hard. Because he IS kind. He's got one of the softest, sweetest hearts of anyone I've ever seen. Which is why I always tell him that I'm proud of him for his good behavior... but I love him because of his heart. But, of course, that got me to thinking about kindness. And I thought about Ephesians 2:7, "That in the ages to come he might shew us the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness towards us through Christ Jesus." Like... we still seem to--for some unknown reason--have this idea of a mean, angry God who is out to get us every time we mess up. Even though, in the Old Covenant (which is where this idea seems to originate) God set up an entire system of animal sacrifice in order to keep us OUT of trouble. The sacrificial lamb... the scapegoat... It has NEVER been God's heart to "get us" in a negative sense. It has always been His heart for Him to be our God and us to be His people. And that's what happened on the cross: God GOT us. In the best way. And He didn't get us by taking anything. This idea that God was so angry that He HAD to kill someone and Jesus stepped in to save us from God is really kind of absurd when you understand that Jesus IS God. So, what? God was saving us... from Himself? Nah. God died in order to save us from death. Before the cross we were dead in our trespasses and sins. So we needed a second death in order to catapult us into a new life. A death to death. The death OF death. So that we wouldn't have to struggle with all of that anymore. Grace, right? And I've always taken Romans 5:20, "Morever the law entered, that the offence might about. But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound" to be the difference between the New and Old Covenants. The Law was the Old Covenant, and that's where sin abounded. But now, on this side of the cross, grace abounds. The sin of the world has been taken away. Those who are born of God CANNOT sin because His seed remains in them. And, as we saw in our key verse for today, God's grace was prompted by His kindness. He did it out of the goodness of His heart, if I can say it that way. He did it because He loves us. He gave us His only begotten Son. His Spirit. His life. He gave us everything He has and everything He is. That's what love is. To me, that's what kindess is. Seeing a need and meeting it. Giving what you've got out of an open heart. Letting what's truly inside come out by knowing and believing that its inside. Being kind to people whether you're a leader or not. Letting the kindness you've been given lead YOU and then leading with that same kindness. Receiving and releasing it and in that way experiencing it . My dad has always said, my whole life, "You can never be too nice to people." And those, friends, are words to live by!