If ever we needed to know the difference, it is now!! Read this below from John Eldredge👇🏻It’s a powerful truth. 🙌🏻
Side note- John Eldredge quotes CS Lewis Screwtape which is an allegory about the nature of temptation, the story is told through letters from senior demon Screwtape to his nephew Wormword, a demon charged with luring the soul of “the patient” on to Satan’s path.
“And so Screwtape reveals the Enemy’s ploy—first make humans flabby, with small passions and desires, then offer a sop to those diminished passions so that their experience is one of contentment. They know nothing of great joy or great sorrow. They are merely nice.”
CS Lewis The Screwtape Letters
Christianity has come to the point where we believe that there is no higher aspiration for the human soul than to be nice. We are producing a generation of men and women whose greatest virtue is that they don’t offend anyone. Then we wonder why there is not more passion for Christ. How can we hunger and thirst after righteousness if we have ceased hungering and thirsting altogether?
As C. S. Lewis said, “We castrate the gelding and bid him be fruitful.”
The greatest enemy of holiness is not passion; it is apathy. Look at Jesus. He was no milksop. His life was charged with passion. After he drove the crooks from the temple, “his disciples remembered that it is written: ‘Zeal for your house will consume me'” (John 2:17). This isn’t quite the pictures we have in Sunday school, Jesus with a lamb and a child or two, looking for all the world like Mr. Rogers with a beard. The world’s nicest guy. He was something far more powerful. He was holy.”
My thoughts on the difference between kindness and niceness.
I just thought how the word “kindness” gets thrown around and really they don’t mean “kind” they mean “nice”.
Kindness just might very well offend. The cross is offensive to those perishing. Jesus didn’t come to be nice but he was kind.
Biblical kindness is of the Spirit under the first virtue “love”
All the other fruits of spirit fall under the first which is Agape love—an active sacrificial love that seeks the highest good of another person. This love and the other fruits of the spirit don’t come natural in our sinful state.
Satan is an imitator and he will try to disguise himself in a false mask of these fruits—an “angel of light”
We can only have the fruits of the spirit by being connected to The Vine. It is the Holy Spirit in us. Apart from Him we can do nothing.
It is all Jesus.
Is Jesus glorified in our kindness?
Is the gospel elevated in our kindness?
In all we do, do all to the glory of God!
He is making us more like Himself. He is making us holy.
Speak the truth in love. Don’t fear man! It is none of our business how they respond. We are just told to proclaim the gospel. This is kindness. ❤️
Let us go about the Father’s business not the world’s business.
Take my life and let it be consecrated Lord to thee. Take my moments and my days. Let them flow in ceaseless praise.
Take my hands, and let them move
At the impulse of Thy love;
Take my feet and let them be
Swift and beautiful for Thee,
Swift and beautiful for Thee.
Take my voice, and let me sing
Always, only, for my King;
Take my lips, and let them be
Filled with messages from Thee,
Filled with messages from Thee.
Take my silver and my gold;
Not a mite would I withhold;
Take my intellect, and use
Every power as Thou shalt choose,
Every power as Thou shalt choose.
Take my will, and make it Thine;
It shall be no longer mine.
Take my heart; it is Thine own;
It shall be Thy royal throne,
It shall be Thy royal throne.
Take my love; my Lord, I pour
At Thy feet its treasure-store.
Take myself, and I will be
Ever, only, all for Thee,
Ever, only, all for Thee.
stones from the quarry 