The Power of a Tender Heart // Essential Life Skills, Part 6

A Different Perspective Official Podcast

How we treat other people, you and I, is the most powerful witness of who Jesus is in our lives. Treat them well, and they have every chance of experiencing His love first hand. Treat them badly, and they may never, ever, ever … come to know Him.

Kindness is a much underrated quality these days. Sure, we love it when other people are kind toward us in a world that seems to be moving ever faster, where things appear to be getting more and more transactional. In a world where people are retreating into digital, electronic friendships rather than real ones, yeah kindness when we experience it really stands out.

When you hear that word kindness, you know exactly what it means; no definition required, right? But exactly what is it? Well, it’s being nice to other people, surely. Hang on but which people? Because it’s ever so easy to be kind to the people who are nice to us but a dictionary tells me that kindness is the quality of being friendly, generous and considerate. Great, and I’m sure that there are people in your life toward whom you find it incredibly easy to be kind quite simply because they’re kind to you in return.

But what about the difficult people in your life? Conflict lies all around us and it’s conflict, in all its forms, that robs us of our peace and joy because we’re quite simply not made to be in conflict all the time. Ask anyone would you rather have peace or conflict? Well, you know the answer. So let me ask you again, what about those difficult people in your life?

Here’s what Jesus had to say on this very thing. Luke chapter 6, verse 35:

Love your enemies, do good and lend expecting nothing in return. Your reward will be great and you’ll be children of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked.

God is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked, eh? Well, he is. In fact he’s been kind over and over again toward you and me. Even when we’ve been ungrateful, even when we’ve done the wrong thing, even when we’ve been wicked over and over and over again. Love your enemies, then. Do good to them, lend to them, be to them just as God has been to you: kind to the ungrateful and to the wicked. Why? Well it always bring peace? No, not always although it will substantially increase the chances of peace.

Think about those times when you’ve been acting like a fool and the person you’ve been hurting turns around and responds to you in kindness. Nine times out of ten it’s enough to disarm any sense of hostility you may have had in your heart, right? And whilst that won’t always happen, what will happen is that God will notice. God will see you and your reward from him will be great.

Like I said, kindness is such an underrated quality these days yet it has the power to bring peace and blessing to your life. But it’s hard to be kind when you have bitterness and anger in your heart.

One of the things that God’s word talks an awful lot about is what’s going on in our hearts, in your heart and in mine. There’s a reason for that. The heart is the seat of our emotions and when we have bad stuff happening in there, deep on the inside, we can’t help it, it bubbles to the surface. We end up speaking and acting that bad stuff out. So it’s easy for me to say to you be kind to other people. It’s easy to say but it’s incredibly difficult to do with anger and bitterness bubbling away in your heart.

Might I ask you today: who do you feel angry towards right at this moment in your life? Whose words or deeds have hurt you and left a root of bitterness in your heart? Toward whom have you hardened your heart in a defensive response against that pain? Because today I’m believing that God wants to set you free from that as only He can by his spirit and his word. Are you ready? Ephesians chapter 4, verses 31 and 32:

Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander together with all malice and be kind to one another. Tender hearted, forgiving one another as God in Christ has forgiven you.

It’s quite a list there of destructive emotions: bitterness, wrath, anger, wrangling, slander and malice. And if I said to you today: put them away, get rid of them, let me tell you it wouldn’t make an iota of difference in your life. But today, right here and now it’s not me that’s saying it, it’s God through his word and he, he has the power to help you to do exactly that.

When God speaks through his word as he is here, through Ephesians chapter 4, verses 31 and 32, when the Holy Spirit lifts that word off the page and writes it on your heart, He gives you the power you need to change. More power, in fact, than you’ll ever need.

So friend, take his word into your heart right now. Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander together with all malice and be kind to one another, tender hearted. Forgiving one another as God in Christ has forgiven you. Replace all those negative emotions with a tender heart, as soft heart, a heart that feels and loves and gives. Just as God in Christ through His terrible suffering has forgiven you.

Because armed with a tender, gentle, kind, forgiving heart, you can change lives with God’s love. Armed with a tender, gentle, kind, forgiving heart, you can build bridges of peace, bridges into hurting, desperate lives that one day, one day, Jesus will walk across. Be tender hearted, forgiving one another as God in Chris has forgiven you.

It’s one thing to talk about kindness and tender heartedness. They’re good things but words are cheap. A little bit of kindness here and there can be an incredibly powerful thing. When someone’s having a bad day and you come along with a word of encouragement it can light up their whole world.

But if all we ever do is speak, well it starts to wear just a little bit thin after a while because sometimes people need a helping hand and there’s nothing quite as powerful as doing love. Not just speaking it but doing it in a practical way, right into someone’s area of need. Actions, as they say speak louder than words. That powerful truth played itself out on the cross on Calvary 2000 years ago. 1 John chapter 3, verses 16 and 17:

We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us. And so we ought to lay down our lives for one another. How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or a sister in need and yet refuses to help?

We know that God loves us not just because he says he does but because through Christ’s incredible suffering on that cross, we know he does. As a direct result of that sacrificial love that God poured out through the suffering of Jesus for you and me, you and I are called to lay down our lives for one another.

That implies sacrifice, that implies suffering. It’s not always convenient to lay down your life for someone else, in fact I’d go so far as to say it’s rarely if ever convenient or comfortable to lay down your life for someone else. And then, just to remind us that we’re not talking about some lofty theory here, the Holy Spirit guided the apostle John to bring it down to our level, to apply it practically to our lives and to our relationships.

How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need yet refuses to help?

The more economically developed a society becomes, the more self-sufficient we become, the less likely we are to help one another in practical ways. In places where life is an economic struggle, look people routinely help one another in practical ways because they have to to survive. But the wealthier we become the less likely we are to help.

Who, in your circle of family, friends, work colleagues or acquaintances needs practical help, today? A child minded, a lift down to the chemist to pick up a prescription, a lawn mowed, and yes, even some money to make the next car payment.

Actions speak the love of Christ into people’s lives, far more powerfully than words.