Kindness in Relation to Trust and Endurance

You might say that adopting an attitude of kindness has little to do with resisting provocation. On the contrary, kindness is a motivation to action. Even when someone insults us, we can show them that we are not offended by their actions, by our expression of kindness towards them. Kindness is love expressing itself through our manner, words and deeds.

Kindness turns the other cheek when people strike us (Matthew 5:39). Kindness is willing to go the extra mile with someone - even when it is not in our best interests to do so (Matthew 5:41).

The Bible tells us that we should not love through mere sentiment, but through our actions towards others (1 John 3:18).

Kindness is an Aspect of Love

Faith is the ability to believe the promises of God’s Word and to be able to trust Him as a Father. We have seen in 1 Corinthians 13:7 that the verb form of faith is an aspect of love.

We know from Galatians 5:6 that faith works by love. Kindness is also an aspect of love; we know this from 1 Corinthians 13:4. All the aspects of love work in conjunction with each other and are maintained in balance. Love is the nature of God, and therefore, is something that we receive from Him by the Holy Spirit. Trust is something that we receive from God just as much as kindness is something that we receive from God.

We cannot expect to be kind beyond our ability to trust God. Neither can we expect to trust God beyond our ability, or at least our willingness, to be kind to others.

Is Kindness a Rule?

It is easy at this juncture to make a rule out of this and say, “You must make an effort to be kind, otherwise, God will not give you the ability to believe Him for something.” This puts the burden on the believer to manifest kindness – something which is an attribute of God love – as a means of experiencing all the other attributes of love.

Kindness, just like trust and endurance, is something that we receive from God. Romans 5:5 says that the love of God has already been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit.

How Do We Partake of this Love?

Therefore, if God has already given us love as a free gift – what is required of us in order that we might flow in that love?

Advocates of the message of pure grace would say that all that is needed is to listen to the message of grace being preached. I like that and agree with it wholeheartedly.

Some people would also say that we forfeit the love of God as a result of wrong mindsets. Therefore, we must make efforts to identify and challenge those mindsets. I am also inclined to this argument as well. But without an effective, God-given means of correcting wrong beliefs and attitudes – we can easily make this a constant work of introspection, self-condemnation, repression and pretence.

Endurance and Hope Compared

In order to better understand the difference and similarities between hope and endurance, we need to look again at the true meaning behind the Greek words elpis (G1680) and hupomonē (G5281).

Hope

The Greek word elpis (G1680) is a confident expectation of good which can be specific or generic. Hope gives a person a sense of trust and confidence in something or someone, regardless of what their senses tell them.

The word elpis (G1680) seems to be more applicable to a person’s attitude as well as their mental and emotional wellbeing. Without elpis (G1680) it would seem that a person would lapse into a state of despair. A lack of elpis (G1680) would seem to be responsible, at least in part, for anxiety and depression. It seems obvious to me that a person could simply not have faith for the fulfilment of a promise without elpis (G1680).

Endurance

The Greek word hupomonē (G5281) means steadfastness, constancy, endurance. These words have a strong emphasis on a person continuing to do something. We can therefore see that hupomonē (G5281) is geared towards action. The need for this kind of endurance would obviously become more apparent the more challenging the circumstances become. Without endurance, a person will give-up on a project or endeavour before it is completed – even if there are negative consequences for doing so.

Hope and Endurance are a Gift

Thankfully, hope and endurance are not something that we do, as such. We do not need to make an effort of the will to have hope and endurance. Hope and endurance are aspects of God’s love, His nature. Therefore, hope and endurance are something that we receive as a free gift, and express freely and effortlessly in our lives – without coercion.

Hope and Endurance are not Separate

Perhaps it is possible for a person to continue in an endeavour if they had hope, but not endurance. But we must consider the fact all of the aspects of God’s love are something that we receive together as a gift – they are not something that we must do and they are not something that we receive separately. I believe that it is not possible to have hope and yet not have endurance and vice-versa.

God’s Endurance and Approval-Seeking

Approval-seeking through works, usually requires some form of feedback from others in order to make it feel worthwhile and in order to sustain some sort of conviction that they are doing the right thing.

If a person does not get the feedback they need, they can start seeking that approval in subtle, or even in rather obvious and often annoying ways: “Are you happy with that? Is that what you wanted? Did I do ok?” If a sense of gratitude is not forthcoming from those people we serve, it can cause them to become angry and frustrated towards them. When this happens, they can threaten to withdraw something from the other person, such as love, appreciation acts of kindness and so forth.

When a person is performing works that are not motivated out of pure love, it will feel awkward, tiresome and cumbersome. For this reason, loveless works, when not sufficiently appreciated, result in frustration.

But we must remember that love never seeks appreciation from the other person. Love serves unconditionally without seeking appreciation or a reward. God is love, so when we serve one another out of love – it is God serving humanity through us and as we know, God does not require a reward or appreciation – so neither should we. When we serve other people – we must remember it is God whom we serve. See Colossians 3:22. It is not man who meets our needs – it is God. See Philippians 4:19 and Deuteronomy 8:18. We get into trouble when we mistakenly believe it is our boss at work or spouse who meets our needs. Although God meets our needs, He often uses a human agency for this purpose. The Bible says, “…men shall pour into your bosom.” See Luke 6:28 KJV.

When we feel unappreciated we can end-up vowing to withdraw ourselves from making such efforts in the future. God’s endurance does not do that: it is fuelled by His love, by His conviction, not by the gratitude of others. You can expect to be tested in this area, so when you do good things for people who don’t seem to give you any visible signs of encouragement and thanks – remember that the love of God does good unto others - even when it is not given a reward from other people.

God's endurance gives a person the conviction they need in order to do what they do, without asking the questions, "Am I meant to be doing this? Is this God's will for my life or does He want me to do something else?" We should not doubt what we do for others, judging by their responses. God's endurance sets people free from doubting themselves and from wasting their time doing the wrong things.

It can be difficult to determine if you are doing something according to God's will for your life, through logical reasoning alone. It is not so bad if you can see immediate, visible and tangible benefits in response to the things you are doing. But we cannot always have that luxury.
There are times when people can be so desperate to please God and other people through works, that they overestimate the benefit of what they do, fooling themselves and other people.
There are times when we can be doing things on a regular basis, which never seem to bear fruit.

A lot of what we do in life, if not most of what we do, is done with other people. When other people are involved there can be personality clashes and differences of opinion. It is for this reason that we need the longsuffering aspect of love, so we can accept other people, just as they are. If what we, and the people we work with, do not let the love of God define who we are and what we do – there will be contention. It is for this reason, that the Apostle Paul added the comments that we see in Galatians 5:24-26, after telling the Galatians about the fruit of the spirit.

God's endurance gives us the power to rise above self doubt, boredom and weariness – so we can walk in the Spirit and experience the fullness of what He wants to do in us and through us.

Zeal and Ability

I have noticed that zeal can become activated as the result of a perceived ability or opportunity. If you try your hand at some new endeavour and find that you have an unexpected flair for it – the soul can take this as being evidence that it is something you were born to do.

When the soul is hurt, desperate and needy – it will be on the lookout for something that will make sense of the pain in your life, something that will meet all your needs, something that will define you and something that will somehow compensate for the shame of your past. But this makes your fulfilment, wholeness and respect of others – conditional on your ability to perform.

If we love someone then we will accept them just as they are; we will accept the choices they make about how they live their life. This does not mean that we have to condone and agree with what they do, but it just means that our love for them does not fade due to circumstances. We need to be able to love and accept people just as they are without judging them and without basing our love for them on what they can do for us or how well they perform. This unconditional acceptance is incorporated into the longsuffering and kindness aspects of love.

I believe that this performance mindset is formed during childhood when we somehow feel rejected by other people. We see those children who are loved, respected and appreciated just the way they are. Then we see those children who have an ability of some kind, which seems to attract the positive regard of other children, teachers and parents. So we reason that if we had ability and were to perform well for other people, then people would appreciate us. But this is not love - because love appreciates a person even when they do not have a great deal of ability and even when they fall short of what was expected of them.

We must realise that God loves and accepts us, just the way we are - not because of our performance and behaviour - but because of Christ's obedience right up to His sacrificial death upon the cross. Now we can approach God the Father with boldness, as if we were His only child. Therefore, we should never feel the need to put on a performance in order to please God. I have noticed that when people serve in church, a lot of the time it can be out of a want for approval: both God's approval and other people's approval.

Children need to be shown unconditional love by their parents, if they do not; they will grow up to be obsessed with ability and performance. Such children can become obsessive about what they do to the point of becoming workaholics. This is something that was noticed in the work of the Psychologist Carl Rogers.

In Rogers’ studies, he contrasted what he called conditional positive regard and unconditional positive regard. Rogers noticed that some of his clients were workaholics. The reason for this was that they were not given enough unconditional positive regard by their parents – they were only shown love and approval in response to their behaviour. *

I have established a formula regarding ability: ability or opportunity minus love equals pride, greed and zeal. The opposite of love is fear. Fear in the broadest sense is not just despair and timidity: fear can also manifest itself as anger, greed, lust and pride. A perpetual state of fear will always be accompanied by lust, which can include envy, jealousy and greed, because the soul that fears, will be devoid of the love and life of God.

The perception of opportunity or ability to the wounded soul will have the result of effectively turbo-charging zeal in that person. Such zeal will not be that which comes from God by His love, it is not the God-kind of endurance that only hupomonē (G5281), which is an aspect of love, can provide. For this reason, zeal or lust can only last a short period of time. This kind of zeal usually runs-out when the mind begins to realise that it cannot gain the sense of approval (we could also say “positive regard”), and the sense of security, that it is seeking after.

This kind of zeal will be created purely by the soul for its own selfish purposes, even if it drives a person to behave in a way that is to the detriment of the other person. In other words, zeal that is conditional on ability or opportunity alone – is anger, greed, lust and pride, and therefore, is not of God.

* You can find out more about Carl Rogers here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Rogers

Endurance and the Need to Avoid Complaining

The word hupomonē (G5281) is also described by James Strong as being cheerful (or hopeful) endurance as well as patient continuance (waiting). The concept of cheerful endurance in found in Colossians 1:11 - where it is expressed as all patience and longsuffering with joy. See Colossians 1:9-12.

Colossians 1:10 re-enforces the concept of hupomonē (G5281) - patience being the power from God that we need in order to commit to action. The Bible often uses the term walk in relation to a person’s lifestyle, so this verse implies that a person’s behaviour is affected by hupomonē (G5281).

The Bible says that we ought to do all things, that means everything - without complaining and disputing. Philippians 2:12-14 NKJV. Philippians 2:12-14 NLT.

Vincent’s Word Studies has the following to say about verse 14:

Murmurings (γογγυσμῶν)
See on Jude 1:16; see on John 6:41. Compare 1 Corinthians 10:10.
Disputings (διαλογισμῶν)
See on Mark 7:21. It is doubtful whether disputings is a legitimate meaning. The kindred verb διαλογίζομαι is invariably used in the sense of to reason or discuss, either with another or in one's own mind, Matthew 16:7; Matthew 21:25; Mark 2:6; Luke 12:17. The noun is sometimes rendered thoughts, as Matthew 15:19; Mark 7:21; but with the same idea underlying it, of a suspicion or doubt, causing inward discussion. See 1 Timothy 2:8. Better here questionings or doubtings. See on Romans 14:1. The murmuring is the moral, the doubting the intellectual rebellion against God.

The Greek word goggusmos appears a total of 4 times in the King James Version of the Bible. It is translated as murmuring 2 times, grudging 1 time and murmurings 1 time.

According to Thayer’s Greek Definitions, this Greek word means:
1) a murmur, murmuring, muttering
1a) a secret debate
1b) a secret displeasure not openly avowed

The Greek word dialogismos appears a total of 14 times in the King James Version of the Bible. It is translated as thoughts 8 times, disputings, doubtful, doubting, imaginations, reasoning and thought - all once.

According to Thayer’s Greek Definitions, this Greek word means:
1) the thinking of a man deliberating with himself
1a) a thought, inward reasoning
1b) purpose, design
2) a deliberating, questioning about what is true
2a) hesitation, doubting
2b) disputing, arguing

Marvin R. Vincent suggests that the “murmuring” is the moral, the “doubting” the intellectual rebellion against God. Putting these two words together in relation to the things you do in everyday life: we are not to express our displeasure in what we do and to reason in our minds why we must do those things. We are God’s servants, after all, and everything we do is to be done in the will of God – by Him and for Him.

It has been suggested that hupomonē (G5281), the God-kind of endurance protects a person from despair. Perhaps the despair that it protects a person from is the murmuring, doubting, complaining, reasoning and debating that constitutes rebellion towards God?

We are to avoid thinking, murmuring and saying to ourselves and others, things like:

- “I hate doing this – it’s so boring!”
- “I can’t do this, it’s just too difficult. Perhaps I’m meant to do something else?”
- “I don’t know why I do this; nobody seems to appreciate anything I do in this place.”
- “Where is this getting me? Will this ever achieve anything? Will this ever change for the better?”

In relation to the message of grace – we are brought back to the argument as to whether or not an effort is required upon hearing the Gospel being preached – that effort being the need to think positively.

Adherents to the radical message of grace would argue that no action or effort is required on behalf of the believer – all that is required is to listen to the message of pure grace – which itself brings the power of God to enable the believer to think and act in accordance with God’s will.

It is true that being set free from guilt, releases a believer from the accumulated mental and emotional garbage that has been controlling their lives - but to what extent I wonder? Does this mean that we do not have to do anything to change our thinking? Perhaps this is where the Liberty Savard style of loosing and binding prayers can come into effective use? For more details on this - see my previous post on this subject: http://thedivinenature.blogspot.com/2009/05/liberty-savard-and-keys-to-kingdom.html

Whatever the case may be - it is this inner dialogue, this worrying and reasoning and complaining which constitutes unbelief - which is wrong belief.

Some Christians would say that God will bless believers even when they sin. I’m inclined to agree with this to an extent. But I believe that Christians limit, or even forfeit, their blessings when their thinking, and therefore believing, is not right.

Conviction and Compulsion – Part 2

I've had enough of trying to force myself to do things when I have no conviction in my heart about it - even if those things are written in the Bible. Just because the Bible says that we are Christ's witnesses - it does not mean that we have to sign-up for every evangelistic outreach that the church organises.

I suppose that the "just do it" message irritates certain people into making an effort to seek after the truth, rather than provoking them to do things without God's anointing and blessing. Otherwise, we can constantly use the excuse of, "Well I'm just not called to do that.

If God wants me to do something, then He will have to give me a sign, or talk to me about it. But even then, even when I know what is right, I cannot act upon it if I do not have peace and a desire from within my heart. Until that happens - I'm not going to do anything.

The Bible tells us that we have to seek God - not wait for God to seek after us. Although in truth, it is always God who takes the first steps in seeking after us.

Apostle Paul prayed that the church at Colossi would have patience and all longsuffering with joy. The fact that Paul prayed for those attributes and did not tell them to "just do" things or to "just have" those attributes, indicates to me that he knew they could not muster what it takes, in order to take on challenges. It alerts me to the fact that those attributes are from God.

If an attribute is an aspect of the divine nature, then it is something that sheer willpower alone cannot attain; the divine nature is something that man receives from God. That is the reason why we have to pray for those things.

I believe that most people have been conditioned to know through experience that if that conviction is just not there, then everything else you need to see it through will not be there either: patient endurance, peace, joy, wisdom and so forth. This leads some people to become very tentative about almost everything that they propose to do.

Then there are other people who hardly think twice about what they do, they are confident and spontaneous in everything they do, because they have become conditioned to believe that everything they do will be successful. Even when these confident people get something wrong, they usually learn that such an occurrence is typically a one-off and they can afford to take the chance.

So, there are broadly two kinds of people in this world: the first kind is the positive, confident type who does things spontaneously; then there are the second type of people are fearful, negative and tentative about anything they do.

Conviction and Compulsion – Part 1

When it comes to being in the flow of the Holy Spirit, it comes back to what I call conviction and compulsion. I struggled with apathy, lethargy, anxiety and depression for years. I struggled to do a lot of things without an almighty spurt of energy. It was a major breakthrough for me when I finally gained the revelation that Jesus really did mean what He said when He spoke the Words, "Apart from me you can do nothing."

I believe that no matter what you do, there has to be conviction in your heart that it is the right thing for you to do. You can take this concept to extremes to the point whereby you won't do anything unless you knew for certain that God has called you to do it. There are times when we do get that level of heart-felt conviction: we know it is God and we cannot help but act upon what He tells us to do.

As Christians, we all need that kind of conviction at certain times in our lives. But the kind of conviction that I am talking about here will often be just enough conviction to get us doing something without questioning it twice. We might even wonder to ourselves, "Is this God or is it just me?" However, if it is heart-felt conviction from God, it should be enough to cause us to do what we need to do without deliberating about it for a significant length of time.

Charismatic Christian preaching often seeks to set people free from apathy by making statements such as, "You can do things even when you don't feel like doing them" and, "You don't have to fell confident to be confident" and, "Just step out and God will anoint you." But if a person does not have a conviction and compulsion in their heart, such preaching will not do them much good.

Pep-talks cannot substitute the conviction and compulsion that only God can deliver. Such pep-talks can cause apathetic Christians a lot of distress as they agonise over decisions, leaving them wondering if they are wrong to wait for an inner conviction about what they should do; they can end-up wondering if they should force themselves to things that they have no conviction about.
I do realize that some people can take things to extremes.

I don't know about you, but I've had enough of going through the same old rigmarole of deliberating to myself over any little thing that I intend to do or other people expect me to do. I also don't appreciate people calling me lazy and uncaring because I am battling-away with a spiritual condition of apathy and lethargy.

I have learned that if I have to have a debate with myself, if I consider doing something, then God is not in it. That does not necessarily mean that God does not want me to do that thing, it just means that I do not have the grace I need in order to commit to it and see it through.

If I find myself having such debates when it comes to doing almost anything - then I know there is something not quite right about my spiritual condition and I have to address it.

Constancy

The Greek word hupomonē (G5281) appears a total of 33 times in the King James Version of the Bible. It is translated as patience 29 times, patient 2 times, continuance and enduring both once.

According to Strong’s Dictionary of Greek Words, the Greek word hupomonē (G5281) translated patience in the King James Version, means:
From G5278; cheerful (or hopeful) endurance, constancy: - enduring, patience, patient continuance (waiting).

According to Thayer’s Greek Definitions, this Greek word means:
1) steadfastness, constancy, endurance
1a) in the NT the characteristic of a man who is not swerved from his deliberate purpose and his loyalty to faith and piety by even the greatest trials and sufferings
1b) patiently, and steadfastly
2) a patient, steadfast waiting for
3) a patient enduring, sustaining, perseverance

According to the Concise Oxford English Dictionary, the word steadfast means: resolutely or dutifully firm and unwavering. The word constancy is described as follows: 1. occurring continuously. 2. remaining the same. Faithful and dependable.

The word faithful is described as remaining loyal and steadfast.
Whilst the word persevere is described as being: to continue in a course of action in spite of difficulty or with little or no indication of success.

I think that this is the best description of endurance and patience is this one from Joseph Thayer: the characteristic of a man who is not swerved from his deliberate purpose and his loyalty to faith and piety by even the greatest trials and sufferings.