LOVE IS KIND (Adapted from a talk by Rick Warren.)

Scripture Reference: Luke 10:25-37

We’re continuing in our series of “40 Days of Real Relationships With God’s Love.” This week we look at the phrase in 1 Corinthians 13, “Love is kind.” As we go through, verse by verse, this great chapter on love – 1 Corinthians 13 – the Bible says that we need to be kind.

What is kindness? Kindness is love in action. Last week I said love is not a feeling. It is something you do. It creates feelings. But love is an action. It is a belief that you put in your behaviour. The Bible says that love is kindness in action.

Jesus once told a famous story to illustrate this truth. It’s called the Good Samaritan. Let’s listen to it now, and look out for the three attitudes shown by people in it.

1. Keep My Distance attitude. Luke 10:30-31 says this: “A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side.”

This is the lifestyle of avoidance. Don’t get close to people because they might ask you for help. Don’t get close to people because you might be needed by them. Keep your distance. Keep all your relationships superficial, shallow. Be distant. Keep people at an arm’s length, because if you get close, you might get involved. And if you get involved you might get hurt.

2. Curious but Uninvolved. Luke 10:32 says, “So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side.” (NIV) He was a temple assistant. He sees this victim lying there, beaten half dead, naked, bleeding to death, looks at him and keeps on walking. I was feeling pretty self-righteous about this until I realized I do this all the time on the Motorway. We like to stare at accidents, but we don’t want to stop at them. Traffic always slows down - What’s happening over there? Did anybody get hurt? Did anybody get killed? But does anybody want to stop? No

Have you noticed it’s a lot easier to gossip about people’s problems than it is to help them with it? We love to talk about other people’s problems, to discuss them, to read about them. That’s why the gossip magazines are the most popular magazines in the world. We like to read about other people’s lives but not to do anything about it. Curious but Uninvolved.

3. Treat Others How I Want to be Treated. Luke 10:33 says, “But a Samaritan, as he travelled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. ” If you want to grow in love – and that’s what we’re talking about these 40 days, how to built authentic relationships – then you’re going to have to learn the lifestyle of kindness.

This Good Samaritan did four things that you and I need to do, if we’re going to learn to be kinder, loving people…

1. Start seeing the needs of people around me.

Kindness always begins with the eyes – the way you look, the way you see. If you’re not aware of needs, you can’t care about those needs. You have to see the need first. The Bible says in Luke 10:33, “...when he saw him, he took pity on him” (NIV). Circle “when he saw.” That is the starting point. If you want to learn to become a kinder, more loving person, you’ve got to change the way you look at the world. You’ve got to expand your vision, you’ve got to become more observant of the needs around you, be more sensitive. Why don’t we see the wounds of the people around us? One word – busyness. Hurry is the death of kindness. If you want to become a more loving person, you’ve got to slow your life down in order to see the needs of the people around you. The first step to kindness is to ask God to give you spiritual radar, that you would be on the lookout for people in need around you who are hurting emotionally, spiritually, physically and in any other way, who need help, encouragement, concern.

Some of you were born sensitive. The rest of you are like me. It’s easy to not be sensitive to what’s happening around you. But if you care, you’ll be aware. So the starting point to kindness is to say God, “open the eyes of my heart that I may not only see you, but I can see the needs of the people around me”.

Kindness starts with sensitivity. Kindness starts in the eyes. It starts with awareness, observing what’s happening in people’s lives.

I’m going to ask you to rate yourself on these four qualities of kindness. 1 would be “I need to work on this,” and 5 would be “Everything’s great.” How would those you work with rate you on sensitivity? How would your children, if you have them, rate you on your sensitivity to their needs? How would your spouse rate you on sensitivity? How would your neighbours rate you? Do you even know anything about your neighbours? Are you sensitive to their needs?

Evaluate yourselves on a one to five basis. Do you need work in this area, or is everything going great?

2. Sympathise with people’s pain.

It’s not enough to just see their need, you must feel their pain. The Bible says this in Luke 10:33, “When he saw him, he took pity on him.” (NIV) Circle “pity.” First, his eyes kicked in. Then his ears and his heart kicked in, and he’s filled with pity.

The Bible tells us “Weep with those who weep.” In other words, share their sorrow. Enter into their emotion. Feel what they feel. How do you do that? Sympathy begins with your ears. It’s learning to listen. The better listener you become, the more sympathetic you become. Sometimes kindness is just listening. In fact, advice giving can actually be counterproductive to kindness. Joe Bailey wrote a book on grief, on losing a loved one. He called it A View From the Hearse. He says this from his experience: “I was sitting, torn by grief, and somebody came along and talked to me about God's dealings of why it happened, of hope beyond the grave. He talked constantly. He said things I knew were true. But I was unmoved, except to wish that he would go away. And he finally did. Then another one came and sat beside me, and he didn’t talk at all. He didn’t ask me any leading questions. He just sat beside me for an hour or more, listened when I said something , answered briefly, prayed simply and left. I was moved. I was comforted. I hated to see him go.” Sympathy involves the ears. Listening is a form of kindness. Sympathy does two things. It meets two of your basic needs: the need to be understood and the need to have your feelings validated. Both human needs. That what you feel is something normal and other people have felt it before. What is the law of Christ? It’s called the Great Commandment. “Love God with all your heart........ and love your neighbour as yourself.” Mark 12:30 (NLT) Do you like sympathy? Of course you do. Do you like people to sympathize with you when you’re hurting emotionally, physically, whatever? Of course you do. The Bible says do the same to others.

God often allows problems in your life just to teach you to be sympathetic to others. 2 Corinthians 1:4 “He comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort others. When others are troubled, .” (NLT) So every problem you go through is an opportunity to learn how to be more sympathetic.

Rate yourself on your sympathy toward other people. 1 means “Needs work;” 5 means “Things are going great.” How are you in your evaluation of sympathy?

3. Seize the moment.

Seize the moment to be kind. Don’t wait. Do what you can at that very moment. This is what the Good Samaritan did. “He went to him, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, brought him to an inn and took care of him.” Luke 10:34 (NIV) He took action. As we said last week: Love is something you do. He didn’t just say, “I’m sorry for this guy. Isn’t it a shame? Isn’t that too bad?” He actually did something. Notice, he stooped down. In other words, he got on the man’s level. He didn’t pretend he was superior, and he didn’t talk down to him. Second, he uses what he had. Other translations say he dressed the man’s wounds with wine and oil. Why? That’s what he had on his donkey. The wine worked ok because it’s alcohol. It’s an antiseptic. The oil worked ok because it would be soothing to the wounds that he had. Then it says he dressed him with bandages. Where did he get the bandages? Obviously this guy’s not a doctor. He doesn’t have a first-aid kit. And the man has been stripped naked so he didn’t have any clothes. The bandages are the Samaritan’s own clothes. He takes his shirt off, rips it up and starts bandaging this poor unfortunate victim. The point is: He did what he could with what he had at that particular point. He didn’t call a professional. He says, “I'll take care of this man’s needs. I'll move into action right now.” And he did what he could with what he had at that particular moment. Proverbs 3:27-28 (NLT) says, “Do not withhold good from those who deserve it when it’s in your power to help them. If you can help your neighbour now, don’t say, ‘Come back tomorrow, and then I’ll help you’ .” Circle the word “now” twice in that passage. Never walk away from somebody who deserves your help.

The Good Samaritan teaches two very profound lessons about kindness. If you want to genuinely become a kinder person, you must be willing to do two things:

• 1. You must be willing to be interrupted. Kindness doesn’t happen on your schedule. It happens on their schedule. That’s why they need kindness. At that moment, you’ve got to drop everything you’ve got. Have you figured out that love is often inconvenient? Have you figured out that kindness takes time? Sometimes to stop and be kind to somebody, your whole schedule for that day just goes out the window. Think of the excuses this man could have given.

• God intentionally puts people – needy, hurting, hurtful people in the path of your life? They’re in front of you all the time. You don’t see them because you’re insensitive or unsympathetic. But He puts those kinds of people around you all the time in order for them to get ministered to and in order for you to learn kindness. That’s the way we learn kindness. You don’t learn kindness reading a book about it. You don’t learn kindness being kind to your kids and then they give you a big hug back. You learn real kindness when you don’t get anything out of it. And it costs you in your schedule or time or something. God has uniquely placed individuals in your path.

• This is going to happen to some of you today. You’re going to leave this service and before you even get home, you’re going to have a divine encounter. You’re going to go out to lunch, and there’s going to be a waitress who needs a kind word because she’s having a tough time. And God's going to give you an opportunity and you have the choice – will I seize the moment or will I let it go? Will I just say forget it and say, I’m too busy? I’m tired. I don’t have the energy. God is giving you the opportunity to grow in kindness. That’s how we learn to love.

• 2. You must be willing to take risks. To be kind, you must be willing to take a risk. Many times, the one thing that keeps you from being kind is your own fears. Fear makes us unkind. The most cruel people are the most fearful people. So you have to look at your fears. Just imagine the fears the Good Samaritan could have had. They were all legitimate.

He could have said, “What if the robbers are still here?” “What if it’s a trap?” “What if he rejects my help?” Today, we’d say, “What if he sues me?” “What if I go over to help this man, and I don’t know what to do or say?” We sometimes don’t want to get involved in other people’s pain and brokenness because it reminds us of our own pain and brokenness. Fear makes us unkind. We need to deal with others, and we need to let God deal with us in love. The Bible says, “There is no fear in love. Perfect love casts out all fear.”

Jesus said it like this in Matthew 7:12, “"Treat other people exactly as you would like to be treated by them ”(Phillips NT) That of course is the Golden Rule. This is our memory verse for week 2 of the 40 Days With God’s Love. Now you’ve got two verses down. Last week was “Let love be your greatest aim.” 1 Corinthians 14:1. And the Golden Rule, “Always treat others as you would like them to treat you.” Matthew 7:12

Rate yourself on spontaneous kindness. How quick are you when you see a need, you sense a need, you sympathize with the need, how quickly do you spontaneously act? Is this one where there’s a little delay, and you have to think about it and say, “I’ll write the letter in a month,” or “I'll call in a week,” or do you do it instantly? Rate yourself on that.

When the inevitable crises of life come into your life, who’s going to be there for you? If you’re not in a small group yet, it’s not too late to join a 40 Days With God’s Love group.

If you want to become a kind person, the fourth thing you need to do and the fourth thing the Good Samaritan did ...

4. Spend whatever it takes.

Start seeing the needs of others, sympathize with their pain, seize the moment to be kind and spend whatever it takes. There is always a cost to kindness. There is always a price tag. It inevitably causes you to sacrifice time or money or energy or reputation or something. Privacy maybe, to sacrifice that. It costs to be kind. In Luke 10:34-35,(NIV) it says, “Then the man [the Good Samaritan] put the man on his own donkey and he took him to an inn where he took care of him. The next day he handed the innkeeper two pieces of silver [These were denari, which were about two months worth of wages.] and he told him to take care of the man. ‘If his bill runs higher than that,’ he said, ‘I’ll pay the difference the next time I’m here.” This guy did all he could to take care of a total stranger. First, he ministers to him, administers first aid at the scene of the crime. He then takes him to a hotel. He puts him on his donkey, which by the way means that he walked. So he had to walk the 20 miles to Jericho because he put a hurting man on his donkey. He gets him to a motel. He checks him in. He nurses him through the night. He provides for his care. And then he pays the bill. Then he says, “By the way, I'll be back this way in a little while, put it on my tab and we’ll put it on my Visa card”. This man did whatever he could to help, whatever it takes. What did he gain from this? Nothing. He didn’t even know this man. He’s a total stranger. He gains nothing back from him. Kindness is when you do something for somebody without expecting anything back. So why be kind? Why should I be kind if people aren’t always going to repay me?

Here are a few of the things the bible says about kindness:

• God has been kind to me. And, by the way, it wasn’t some miniature favour, some casual favour. It was extravagant kindness that God has shown you.
• The Bible says kindness is an act of worship.
• The Bible says kindness honours God.
• The Bible says kindness makes you happy.
• In fact, the Bible says kindness makes you attractive. Proverbs 19:22 (Living Bible) “Kindness makes a man attractive.” There’s hope for us men! You could be a spiritual Brad Pitt! Just start being kind.
• The Bible says kindness makes other people want to be kind to you.
• The Bible says God blesses kindness. In fact, over and over again in scripture, God says, I will repay you for any kindness you do to others.

Isaiah 58:10-11 says, “Feed the hungry and help those in trouble. Then your light will shine out from the darkness, and the darkness around you will be light as day.........You will be like a well-watered garden, like an ever-flowing spring” (NLT) God says this: “When you assume responsibility for the needs of hurting people around you,” God says, “I guarantee to meet your needs.” What a deal! God says, “When you take on the needs of other people around you, I guarantee that your needs will be met by Me, God.” You can’t beat that. He says, “I'll lead you, I'll bless you, I'll take care of your needs.”

• “Your own soul is nourished when you are kind.” God has promised many, many great benefits for kindness.

During these 40 Days Building Relationships With God’s Love, we’re not just thinking about love, talking about love, listening about love, studying about love. We’re actually going to practice doing it.