“Earlier this morning,” Stan commented, “I was reading in the apostle Paul’s second letter to his friend Timothy and I had one of those ‘zapped-by-the-Holy Spirit’ moments.”
“Zapped by the Holy Spirit?” I replied. “What’s that mean?”
“For me,” Stan replied, “it means that I was shown something in God’s word that really convicted me.”
“What,” I asked, “caused you to have that reaction?”
“Paul was instructing Timothy to be ‘kind to all’,” Stan replied, “and I had the sense of being asked by the Holy Spirit how I measure up to that.”
“Oh,” I said, “being kind to all. That’s a pretty high standard.”
“You got that right,” Stan replied. “In my natural state, I tend more to being kind of kind to some of the people some of the time. But there’s a solution.”
“What’s that?”
“The Holy Spirit,” Stan replied. “Kindness is listed as His fruit. If I will just get me out of His way so He can manifest His fruit it’s likely that it will be manifested. If I don’t, it won’t.”
“As well,” he added, “the first-listed fruit of the Spirit is love, and in his first letter to the church in Corinth, the apostle Paul described love as being kind.”
“Didn’t Jesus say something somewhere about God being kind?” I asked.
“He did,” Stan replied. “In Luke’s gospel, Jesus is recored as saying that God is kind to ungrateful and evil men.”
“Ungrateful and evil men,” I repeated. “That sounds like why God the Father, out of His love for the ungrateful and evil world, gave His Son so that all who believe in Him can become grateful and righteous.”
“And kind,” Stan added with a smile.
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Bible verses to consider:
. . . but be kind to all, . . . . 2 Timothy 2:24.
But the fruit of the Spirit is . . . kindness, . . . . Galatians 5:22.
Love is kind, 1 Corinthians 13:4.
And be kind to one another, . . . . Ephesians 4:32.
But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return; and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High; for He Himself is kind to ungrateful and evil men. Luke 6:35.
Prayer: Thank you, Father, that out of your love and kindness you gave your only begotten Son so I had the opportunity to believe and be able to look forward to life eternally with you when my time here is completed. Thank you, too, for the gift of the Holy Spirit whose fruit includes kindness. I confess that too often I do not express the kindness you intend for me to manifest as being yours. I do that because I choose to manifest something other than kindness. Please forgive that foolish approach to living the life you intend. Please help me in following every step of your lead so I am, in fact, kind to all just as you intend. Thank you I can and do bring these prayers before you in the name of Jesus. Amen.
Think on this: Have you accepted God’s loving, kind, free, and gracious gift of life eternally with Him when your time here is completed? If no, why? If you do have the assurance of salvation and redemption, how are you doing with what the apostle Paul instructed Timothy (as well as all of us), in being “kind to all”? If you sense the need to change how you view and express kindness, how is that change going to occur? Is that what you want? Why or why not?
Waiting for the Train 