Love Is kind

Sometimes what can look like weakness in marriage is a weakness at all. It's the opposite.

And Wilson says she realized that as she watched her mom demonstrate patience and perseverance. Remember as a teenager speaking, non-constant backbone you need to stand up to dad, you need to do this. You're basically a slave as they continued in their relationship. I watched her and I realize home. She's wrong and where what I thought was weakness strength. It was beauty was perseverance it was patience. It was long-suffering. She just used her strength and she served all of us. It wasn't just my dad. It was all of us in a way that was. It would take your breath away.

This is family life today hosts are Damon and Wilson on Bob Lapine. You can find us online@familylifetoday.com real love and marriage, love the way the Bible defines it is a strength, but weakness talk more about that today. Stay with us and welcome to family life to the thanks for joining us some time just sitting here wondering how far would we have to go if if we as people describe describe Dave so Emily, we have people to arrive day of God's not how far down the list would we have to go to know until kindness appeared as no descriptive word. I think that would be toward the top with the printer that I absolutely kind really, absolutely, I been called many things kind that I don't think of the meat.

I've been called competitive as I go along. This kind of know that normally you don't think of yourself as a kind person. I think of myself as wanting to be a kind person. That's a good thing. The only time you're not kind is when you're driving. We don't want to go there. I am not kind. There is talk about kindnesses because this is one of the attributes of love that the apostle Paul lays out in first Corinthians chapter inward, and we know some I wrote a book about this little pastor that I will read all the amazing book I just finished a book called love like you mean it. Where we dive deep into first Corinthians 13 and think in marriage. What if these things were true about us.

What if we were patient. What if we were kind. What if we did not insist on our own way. What if we were not resentful. What if we were not rude to one another. These are all of the things that Paul uses to describe what genuine love looks like in first Corinthians 13 and I'm convinced that husbands and wives, their marriages would thrive if they were saying. I want this to be true about me and in how I interact with you. I want to be this kind of person.

If our biggest disagreement was, I will be more kind than you are. No, I won't be working. You are that if that's what you're fighting about.

We have a pretty good man and I gotta say we've been poking fun at you, you know because you read of a book on marriage and you're sitting here with this, but I gotta be honest as I read it I thought this book can transform families. It's a know it your goal. If we could actually live out what God says love is and there's such a great description first printing 13. That's why it's such a famous passage.

And yet, very few understand it. So now in a sale Katrina book to help Cisco. This is more than a poetic reading at a wedding.

This is a picture of godly, mature love, and if I start to live in that intermarriage. Not only would our marriage be transformed. Think about this. The neighbors would want our marriage right they would. And so now the Gospels being spread through our neighborhood the city the world because a couple lives out godly love, so I just want to frame that because that's how powerful I think what you wrote is and you will have fun looking at these words but this love is kind. How many marriages how many pictures of love being kind. Do we have. It's not what's being held up as a model. I think some people mistake niceness for kindness. So in a nice person is a person who's polite, a person who is gentle, a person who will be respectable others. A kind person is somebody who proactively seeks to bless another person who so kindness is not how we respond to other people.

Kindness is how we initiate with other people. It's where we step in and say my goal in our interaction is for you to be blessed for you to thrive before you to to flourish and I'm going to proactively seek to do things that will make that happen. That's a kind person with an example of that mom but it that look like for you and Marion. I'll give you simple this is just one of those simple little mundane things, but Mary and I were at a we can to remember getaway and our friend Tim Downs was speaking and Jim said that he had early on in his marriage, decided that one of the ways he could bless his wife was by making sure that her car was always full of gas that she didn't have to worry about stopping to get gas now I know some people are like all so the man has to get the gas and woman check no one that he just wanted hurt not to have to worry about it and so he would proactively try to make sure that that her car was always full of gas and I remember Attorney Maryam and said like. Would that matter to you and you will gather to be nice so I thought okay what that something simple I can do a just an act of simple service that says I want your life to be easier.

I want your life to be better and so I will do things that help make that happen. She does it for me all the time I go to the closet every week and there are close there that were clean, that are now clean and hanging there and and I can put them on. I don't have to think about that and I don't worry about that.

And I've said or would we try to acknowledge this to one another. I just so you know. Thanks for doing the laundry because I don't mind doing the laundry.

I know you know my but thank you for doing it because it's an act of kindness toward me and something I don't have to think about and your your loving me when you do these simple acts of kindness. Those are simple things. I'm trying to think on a bigger level. How do we do the more profound things in each other's lives that demonstrate a kind of loving kindness. Think about that word that's the word in the Old Testament that describes God more than any other term that used his has said is the Hebrew word it's his loving kindness and the Bible says his loving kindness is better than life. The Jewish people. If you went to them and said you know God is holy.

That's of course God is holy, will you know that God is his perfect will of course God is perfect. You know God is a God of loving kindness they go away is that mean we expect God's to be high and lifted up, but a God who is full of loving kindness. This is God who says I'm going to proactively seek to bring blessing to you and I'm gonna pour that out.

That's God's character and it should be our profound character to say I want you I want you to be blessed so I'll give you an example, when the kids were little Marianne wanted to go to Bible study Fellowship in the evenings and she found it was a great discipline for her to go through BSF in the structure and the notes in the lectures and the homework she loved it and it was really up our profound time of spiritual growth and that meant that on a particular night I was home taking care of the kids. Now that's what husbands do affect my son tweeted out recently, something he said I'm taking care of the kids.

I'm not doing my wife's job is that I'm being a dad. This is what dad to do. It's not mom's job and I've taken it over for a few hours now it's my job to so I bet I didn't look at it and say this is onerous, but I was taking care of the kids that night so that she could be free to grow, to thrive spiritually. I think kindness is a way where we look at each other and say I want that for you. I want you to be better. I will bless you.

So what can I do so that your blessed here's the hard thing about that we hear that we think instead of thinking. All I want to be kind to my husband or I might do things for Mike has been that will bless him, here's what I contend again. I think some other people continue. I wish my husband would be like that the gas story. Night daughter and Bobby prayed and notices, but when your tone about filling up your wife carve guests.

My wife and I die Dragon very much father had the same thing happened. She said her dad every Sunday not only filled up his wife's car, but the kids older kids that were driving their cars to wait since your dad fills up everybody's cars and you never have to get gas and she said now that is so sweet I thought that's so amazing, so the next time I get gas. It's the middle of winter, it's freezing cold. The wind is and I don't even tell Dave about this thing that I'm getting gas and pumping it thinking I wish my husband with me and cut my gas. That's the trick is we oftentimes think what could my spouse be doing for me but were asking that God how can I be kindly donated Bob to be kind, I put a gas pump in our garage where you never have the right, but I think you know as we think the kindness I think one thing to identify the book and were done about it is you think kindness is these grand gestures you know and yet that is true. Like I keep my vow. I honor my commitment that's being kind to my spouse, but it is these little little acts of service that really you you walk away from person and go. They were so kind as they they took her this little detail like the gas I was thinking you know, again I don't know what Dan would say, but when we had little boys and she was fried and it was chaos.

One gift I gave her was once a month.

Was it once a month we caught a boys day out.

It was take the three little guys and go away for the day. Basically where I tend to stay home. Brenda and I look back now and go. I was in love moment, there was a kindness moment, then I've got a thousand other stories reflect the time and answered this but don't go into details but you know she sent. I got a drive just to Ohio five hours to speak at this woman's conference will you make sure you change the headlight in the car. She knew him not to let someone else do it is gonna cost money, so I gotta do it myself. And you know this is six weeks out every week.

She said did you change it all know, oh no, we get to the day of, and I still hadn't changed them and him and him long time horrible moment I was doing all these kind acts for the day trying to help Hanning make sure his time at the place is great in cooking meals and so then when he didn't do that. I was so mad at him thinking how you can even change the light in the car.

This is what's interesting, researchers have shown that the amount of kindness demonstrated in a marriage is the single greatest predictor of marital satisfaction and stability. If we look at each other and go you know my spouse is a kind person who does not want to do forever with somebody was kind and if there's an absence of kindness. That's the other side of this.

If there's a disregard if we are unkind toward one another. If were not proactively seeking the good of others, then that's the sandpaper that starts to rub holes in our marriage relationship and causes us to feel that low level dissatisfaction that we go. This is no fun for me, saying the book he seen a kindness acts like a marital disinfectant when he mean by that. It means that the germs that can build up in just the day-to-day interaction with one another. The little irritants that creep in to where you're sitting at the gas pump going.

I wish my husband would do this right and and you feel that way if you come home from the gas station. After feeling that way and you walk in and Dave is in the kitchen and he just finished sweeping the kitchen and M.it's cleaned up and he says yeah I had a few minutes and I thought I just straighten up around here because I know you just been busy all of a sudden the grumbling. You were doing at the gas station evaporates. It's not like you walk in and go will that's all well and good but if you just build up my know you get car to go okay. He really is kind he really is thinking about me.

He really does love me because that's out again.

Kindness is the expression of I'm committed to your good. I want to see blessing happen in your life and who does not want to do forever with a person like that yet. How do we get that especially the back in our marriage because I know for many of us. It's like I kind to the person it came to the door right after yelling that I have kids not being kind to my wife, and then the doorbell rings and immediately your kind.

That person will walk away from my front door Symantec.

I was really kind and I would say you are you are nice when were polite there you go in and that's different, so kindness is an intentionality that says but think about it this way if you woke up tomorrow morning and you said okay. What's one thing I could do today that would be per a proactive way of blessing my spouse something I could do that would serve or that would demonstrate love and care that would say I want to bless you if we just set out I'll do one thing a day that would do that and if we understand what blessing looks like for our spouse. That might be you send them out on affectionate text. It might be that you do in active service. You know we can get into love languages and how all of that manifest. But if you say, my goal is to bless you today. What is one way that I can do that and then I'm going to do that whether you blessed me back or not. That's a great, if you do it and you go. I bless you for four days and you never did anything know you just have to say I want to be a loving person. The Bible says God's kindness leads us to what repentance I believe that our perpetual kindness toward another person were were actively seeking to bless them. God can use that to break through the hardness of their heart and to bring them to a point where they go. I do not deserve the blessing that you are to me and I need to change as a result I need to be a different person doesn't always work. It's on a magic formula that like okay if I do this for a month and them fix my spouse. We are responding to God's kindness toward us by being conned toward others. So if if you're asking the question, how do I develop kindness when you reflect on the fact that you are the recipient of amazing kindness.

God has demonstrated his loving kindness he blesses you. Now he says can you do this for others and you say yes Lord II can do this. Look at how you have blessed me I can be a blessing to others. What would you say is the opposite of kindness.

And don't say unkind, you're not allowed to use that word. Later on in the passage it says love is not rude. It's not irritable and it's not resentful and I think the opposite of kindness is rudeness, irritability, and resentment and and so I think Paul later in the passage is saying again. Be kind by not being rude, irritable and resentful and so we have to seek to identify MI rude and and how I manifest rudeness toward my spouse and my irritable MI resentful about things. My spouse and how do I curb these and this is where how do I get rid of these and replace them with proactive goodness toward another person. It's not just Emma get rid of these and then I'll be kind know I get rid of these.

But I still have to cultivate proactive goodness toward another deck is one of the one of thoughts came to my mind tell me what you think Bob is one of the opposites of kindness is selfish yeah because the only way I'm gonna treat and kinder. Even my neighbor is if I get my eyes off of me and think I really want to honor them. What would honor her today and I me what you said earlier I think is a great action step.

What if every listener said starting today is day one of 30 days. If you undo a month and I'm to take my eyes off me and wake up tomorrow and say what what is one thing I can do to bless and be kind to my spouse and the other thing I was thinking last if you don't get any response back from the spouse. If you do these acts of kindness and they have no response or say anything here's I would say to. Don't forget that this consent almost an act of worship to God. It's not doing something to get something back from your spouse. This is an act of worshiping every single little thing you do.

God sees it as recently with four of our grandkids that range from age 5 to just four months and you talk about self-sacrificing their mom and dad. Boy, they are just getting it done and it is a hard phase of life and I sit there and I remember as a young man thinking I'm doing all these things and nobody sees nobody notices yet. I remember one day praying and I said DC me and I felt like he said I see every act of kindness and serving that your giving to your family and I feel like he's always applying askew. I can see that it's an act of worship.

I think you're exactly right. And that's where we have to ask the question, are we trying to cultivate love so that we can get something out of it or we trying to cultivate love because God has demonstrated his love for us. This is what John says. He says behold the manner of love.

God has given to us.

That's an interesting versus his first John 31 behold means look very carefully at this stare at this. Fix your eyes on this look deeply into this, behold, and what's is the manner of love. It says, behold, a the kind of foreign love like you've never seen from anyplace else. It's an uncommon love behold the uncommon love God has lavished on us that we should be called children of God. Okay so that's how God loved us his loving kindness is better than life so for us to be kind and loving to other people is to say I'm the recipient of this. If I'm the recipient of this I can now lavish love and kindness on you, not so that I get something in return but because I'm a child of God. He has lavished love on me, and he's called me to lavish it on you make. Jesus loved us without an expectation of anything in return, Jesus loved us while we were still his enemies.

Jesus loved us by giving himself up nuts and want to love you for 30 days and then if you don't turn around, I'm not. I keep loving you. Okay, that's our picture that's our model is also in the fittest. Kindness right is a result of being filled with cats. It pours out of us. As a result, and it pours out. If you have drunk him. Yes, it's that that's where, when, when we go I just on any kindness left in me. Then we go back to God and we drink it in.

We meditate on his kindness toward us and we go. Oh yeah, I'm filled up with kindness because God has been kind to me I'm I'm aware of this now. Now I can pour out what is that look like for you. Well it it means that when I'm spiritually depleted with any of the spiritual fruit when I'm banging on empty because I'm tired or I'm drained or whatever else I have to take time to dig into God's word. I have to take time to worship. I have to take time in prayer and to just stop and recalibrate my thinking about who God is who I am why I'm here. What matters most in life.

What's my assignment and then just think about that and go okay that I needed that recalibration now I can get back I can get back in the game it it can come out of me now more naturally because I've spent time with the Lord, and he supported them to me and I know for me there is no one emphatically.

No one in my life kinder to me than this woman sitting right here, to my left, my wife, she is beyond the kind and it's amazing because you know your spouse can be the one that will not be kind because they see it all you other people are kind to you.

They walk up there kinder like this and I say don't really know the flaws, she knows it all and speaks life speaks kindness you do honey, it's just amazing and I also buy what you just said I know why because of an amazing guy know that is not why I walked down every day and I walk into the kitchen and there she is with the word of God often on her knees, hands raise singing, praising God being filled up with the love and kindness of Christ in her life and then she overflows it to me and it's at its beauty that it doesn't happen. Apart from Christ I say I see the point has. I'm desperate for him and I know that I can be mean.

We all Kim and that's where the regular disciplines of the Christian life are how we go and make sure that we are perpetually filled up this it was what it means to be filled with the spirit knife to walk in the spirit it, it means that you spend time with God, filling you up your aware of his presence. Your aware of his power in your life and when you are empty you go to him to get filled up. You don't go to your spouse and say you need to fill me up so that I can pour some of this back on you know your Gordon and he fills you up with this.

My burden here, as I wrote this book just continued to increase.

First, for my own marriage. The more we press into God's design for what love is supposed to look like the better your marriage becomes, and all of us have room to grow in this area. I mean anybody who's been married like we have more than four decades or you're just starting on the journey. There is room to grow. There's increased capacity for you to expand your love for one another in marriage and when you do when you start to align with what the Bible describes for real love your marriage gets better I promise.

It gets better, even if it's good, it gets better, and if it's got some rough spots those start to get worked out as you start to do what the Bible says were supposed to do and how we love each other. My hope, my prayer for this book is that this will help a lot of couples moved to a new place in their marriage where love deepens where they moved deeper into oneness with one another and they experience the kind of real joy that comes with doing marriage God's way loving each other. God's way.

The book is called love like you mean it.

It has just released this weekend.

It's available right now for order, you can go online@familylifeto.com to get a copy of the book or you can call one 800 FL today. There's an e-book available there's an audiobook available again if you like information about how to order any version of the book love like you mean it go to family life to a.com or call 1-800-358-6329 that's one 800 F as in family L as in life, and then the word today and anytime we look carefully at first Corinthians 13. We all kind of flinch because we all fall short of the standard of love that's described here. David Robbins was the person family life is with us and you felt that as you read through this passage right yet. I came into the studio confessing to you that was really convicting for me and I love where you took us at the end Bob because so much transformation happens as we pursue kindness, intermarriage and kindness is a fruit of the spirit.

You and I found myself listening being convicted about how much I'm not pursuing really intentional ruthless intentionality and being kind to Meg. I found myself praying an old spiritual breathing illustration and exercise I learned in college and from from Bill Bright and is that exercise of exhaling the sin that God is convicting this and acknowledging God's forgiveness of that sin and then moving to depend upon the power of the Holy Spirit to inhale by appropriating the fullness of God spirit by faith trusting him to control and empower me God is put his Holy Spirit inside those of us who believe in Jesus so that we wouldn't have to depend upon her own strength in our own efforts and so that we can constantly and continually draw from his divine resources to live with supernatural kindness, especially the relationships that matter most us when it's never been lost on me. The fact that right in that passage where Paul addresses marriage in Ephesians chapter 5 just before he gets to talking about marriage. He says be filled with the spirit because we can't do marriage the way God wants us to.

Unless were filled with the spirit. Thank you David for that not tomorrow morning to talk about really the opposite of what we been talking about today will order to talk about abuse in a family situation.

Jennifer Michelle Greenberg is going to join us to talk about the family she grew up in a churchgoing family with a dad who was an elder in their local church and who was coming home and using his daughter physically.

It's a sobering story. She joins us tomorrow share her experience with this. I hope you can tune in for that I want to thank our engineer today. Keith Lynch along with our entire broadcast on behalf of our hosts Dave and Ann Wilson about seeing you back tomorrow for another family life, family life to you as a production of family life of Little Rock, Arkansas.

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