Showing Kindness

Dannah Gresh: It’s easy to point out what’s wrong in our world and our country, but Kathy Branzell says change starts in you and me.

Kathy Branzell: If you have no hope left for America, if you have no hope left for the church, just imagine what transformation would take place if we all just decided to humble ourselves.

Dannah: This is the Revive Our Hearts podcast with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, author of Choosing Forgiveness, for July 5, 2021. I’m Dannah Gresh.

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but there’s a bit of an epidemic happening in our country . . . and I did use the correct word. I know you’re thinking, Doesn’t she know it’s a pandemic? It’s worldwide! Well, I’m talking about the epidemic of anxiety and anger. It is impacting my heart so deeply! Do you feel it, too?

Nancy, a few months ago, you and I gathered right here in the studio with the President of the National Day of Prayer Task Force, Kathy Branzell. We aired the program we recorded that day back in May, a program on prayer and praying for our nation.

But when we were finished recording that, our hearts rose up with concern about this problem of anger and anxiety in our country. Do you remember that?

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: I do, and after we finished recording, we just kept the conversation going. 

Dannah: There was no stopping us.

Nancy: There was no stopping us, and thankfully our producers kept . . . what do they do? It’s not tape they keep rolling. They kept recording.

Dannah: I think it’s eavesdropping, is what they did. If they kept recording while we were having a girlfriend conversation, I think that’s called eavesdropping. (laughter)

Nancy: And I’m so glad they did, because as we come to this month with a theme of kindness—the kindness of God and our kindness toward others—we felt this conversation fit perfectly into that dialogue. I’m so thankful that we’re able to air it today.

I think you, our listeners, will sense the Spirit touching your heart as, Dannah, you and I both did when we had this conversation with Kathy Branzell. So now, let’s listen.

Kathy: It makes me sad that America is so anxious and so angry right now. Right before we started, I was reading Psalm 66, verses 16, 17, and 18. In verses 16 and 17, they’re saying: “Come hear what I have to say, because my mouth was busy praising the Lord, but if I had hidden [cherished, regarded, some versions say] iniquity in my heart, He wouldn’t have listened.”

So my prayer today has been, “Lord, what am I hiding in my heart, what am I cherishing in my heart that doesn’t belong to you? What is America cherishing in our heart as a nation?” I think back to Daniel, who took responsibility for the sins of his nation, and repented to God for the sin of his nation.

And maybe we’re thinking right now, Well, I didn’t do that [those sins]. I’m not guilty of that.” But our anxiousness, our need for comfort, our voices in the pandemic of, “Oh, I just want to get back to normal!” 

Well, I’m not sure going back is really an option with God. He seems to be always moving forward. I just wondered, What has America cherished in our heart, that God’s like, “I’m not done with you; there’s still more for you to learn; there’s still more fire, there’s still more refining.”

He’s not giving up on us, which is, again, why we don’t grow weary of praying.

Dannah: I needed to hear that.

Kathy: But here, “Search me . . .” That’s the personal piece of prayer: “Lord, start with me. What am I cherishing in my heart that is not of You? Search my heart.” In seeking Him there’s a searching, a personal searching. But then you ask Him, “Lord, search America and convict us of what we’re cherishing.”

Nancy: Here’s what I love about that passage, because there can be this sense of despair or just impossibility. We want God to work in us, but we don’t see that happening in our nation, so you can feel hopeless about all this.

But look at the next verses, Psalm 66:19–20, 

But truly God has listened; he has attended to the voice of my prayer. Blessed be God, because he has not rejected my prayer or removed his steadfast love from me!

So in the midst of this very broken fallen world, that is not yet—maybe never—acknowledging its idols and its sins, I can acknowledge that in my own heart. I can pray, and God hears. He attends to the voice of my prayer. He doesn’t reject my prayer; He doesn’t remove His steadfast love from me.

I mean, we can be in the middle of the place of blessing and intimacy with God even while maybe nobody else collectively, corporately in our nation or our world, is paying the slightest bit of attention. Our happiness and our well-being doesn’t depend on whether the world or the nation are listening to God and getting right with Him.

Kathy: It’s the individual glory story.

Nancy: And we still, in some way that we can’t explain, can be a means to God pouring out His mercy and grace on others who aren’t there yet. Our prayers become an avenue not only for our relationship with God, but potentially for others to have relationship with Him.

So we can’t measure the effectiveness of what’s going on by what condition our world is in. It’s in a horrible condition! “What condition is our nation in?” It’s in a horrible condition! All we can do is acknowledge the horrible condition in our own hearts and pray, and know that God will hear our prayers; He won’t reject them.

He won’t remove His steadfast love from us. He may push “pause” on judgment, which we’re already experiencing, and turn it around and have mercy.

Dannah: The thought that is running through my head is, “The lost will act like the lost.” It would be nice if we didn’t! 

Kathy: Absolutely!

Nancy: Yes, that’s good, Dannah.

Dannah: That means we get humble. That means we take ownership. That means we search our hearts. That means when we point our fingers of concern, we realize there are three [fingers] pointing back at us. God has something in our hearts that needs to be revived and changed and shifted, if we’re feeling that there’s judgment going on in our nation right now.

Kathy: Right, yes. If we’re crying out for revival, we want it to start somewhere, so why not with us? Why not be willing to be an instrument of that? You know, a lot of instruments that are used to pave a street . . . They just repaved a street, this alleyway, next to my house. It was loud, and it shook my house—some of the things that they used. It’s not a gentle process!

What if every time we just wanted to give someone the “what for,” instead remember what we’re here for and we stopped and we prayed for them. What if we returned their rebuke, their anger with love, with kindness, with the fruit of the Spirit—the result of His working in our life—and it became the flow of our conversation. 

So many times we’re like, “love, joy, peace!” But really, if you roll it backwards, if you get the “love” ones—love is patient, love is kind, and that whole self-control moment—that would change America!

Nancy: I’m thinking as you’re talking, Kathy (and you and Dannah and I all see this every day), about the dialogue that’s taking place between believers on social media about our country and about our world. There is anything but love, joy, and peace! It’s so unfiltered!

It’s an indicator of what is in our hearts, because what is in our hearts is what comes out from our tongues and on our keyboards—the anger, the pride, the arrogance, the criticism. It has to be offensive to the Lord, and it is putting us in a bad place. The testimony to our world is not making Jesus desirable.

Kathy: Right. I said this earlier. Chase the fruit to the root. Acknowledge there are people roaming this planet every day that think, If I disappeared tomorrow, no one would even notice! You know, people talk about, “Oh, people look right through me all the time.” The receptionist, the assistant, the behind-the-scenes, the tech guys . . . 

Nancy: . . . the “shadow people.”

Kathy: Acknowledge someone. Just smile at them; look at them not through them. Affirm, say something kind—affection and appreciation. If we just behaved in the way that you talked about, that would draw more people to Him. Those are the people.

That’s what we look for from God. When Jesus said, “Love one another as I have loved you,” stop to ponder, “How has Jesus loved me? What do I require of Him? What do I ask of Him?” Then be willing to give that to others, and that will change America!

Because, like you said, we have somehow lost the art of having crucial conversations without them quickly turning into critical confrontations. We’ve got to go back to the art of taking every thought captive (see 2 Cor. 10:5) and being able to have crucial conversations about Jesus Christ—and His kingdom come—with one another, without it turning into a boxing match.

Nancy: Kathy, that’s so beautiful. It’s really us expressing the heart of Jesus—Him expressing His heart through us—to those we’re in contact with, people we know, people we don’t know. So, you unpacked “acknowledge” and “affirmation” and then you mentioned “affection” and “appreciation.” Do you want to just unpack those a little bit for us?

Kathy: Somehow, in our lifetime we got twisted, we got crooked, and so right now our responses just seem to be anger or anxiousness. Two more “A’s.” You can tell I taught kindergarten and grew up Southern Baptist, where the preacher would give you alliteration. I love alliteration. I think in alliteration.

But think about how people have loved you, how Jesus has loved you. How has a person doing their job made your life better?—just the fact that they did it. Say thank you to people, acknowledge them, affirm them as human beings.

Appreciation and affection go a long way—praying for people, again—but just smiling at somebody will change the whole chemistry makeup of a human being; we don’t realize that.

Nancy: Yes. It’s been a little hard with masks. My husband will walk in and he’ll say, “I’m smiling!” I mean, he’ll say that to somebody else.

Kathy: I know, because it can look like you’re glaring at somebody! It’s like, “No, I’m smiling!” That’s great. But just take every thought captive. For me it was like, “Take every emotion captive. Why am I feeling this way? Why am I responding this way? And how would I want Jesus to respond to me in this moment?”

That will straighten out the twists and the turns that we’ve allowed the counterfeits in our life right now.

Nancy: I think about the people God has used to bless my life, to encourage me, to strengthen me, to give me motivation and desire to press on when it’s hard. People have been also used—including my sweet husband—to help me see blind spots and areas that need to change. Robert does this with such gentleness, with such love.

He’ll say, “You’ve never been loved this way before.” And it’s true! This draws our hearts; this is how Christ loves us. And others, when they love us this way, it motivates us to want to respond to the Holy Spirit and to be willing to make changes.

When you walk to the door and you open it and somebody has a two-by-four hitting you over the head, that’s not going to win your heart. It’s not a way of winning outsiders to the faith—when we’re using two-by-fours in social media, in our conversations about nonbelievers.

Dannah: Right. Nobody ever comes to Christ because we prove they’re wrong . . .

Nancy: . . . or we yell at them.

Dannah: Right, they come to Christ because we prove we love them. That’s complicated today and it looks different in different situations. But I think we need to be reminded of that very simple thing right now.

Nancy: I’ve been reading (and I know, Dannah, you’ve been reading it, too) a wonderful book by Dane Ortlund called Gentle and Lowly. He talks about how Jesus is gentle and lowly in spirit (Matt. 11), and how He comes to us in our suffering and our sinfulness and His heart toward us is compassionate; it’s tender! 

He doesn’t love our sin, but in dealing with us in our sinfulness or our suffering . . . Our suffering may have come from things people have done to us or things that we’ve done that have caused suffering or shame. But how Jesus comes to us as a gentle and lowly Savior, and how that wins our hearts, it captures our hearts.

The appeal of this book is for us to put on that heart toward others in their sinfulness and in their suffering. As we are gentle and lowly, and as we are humble and compassionate, it makes Christ beautiful to them in a way I think we’re having a hard time doing as the church today.

Kathy: Right. Loving others as He loved us. It’s like this moment of obedience. Yes, united in love. Can you just imagine the transformation? If you have no hope left for America, if you have no hope left for the church, just imagine what transformation would take place if we all just decided to humble ourselves. 

The three things that Jesus did every day along the way: He prayed and He taught us to pray, He loved and commanded us to love one another, and He commissioned us to go and make disciples-—people who are curious students, learners, about Him. And I just pray that my life sparks somebody to want to learn more about Jesus.

Nancy: I think sometimes there’s a fear that if we have that gentle and lowly spirit—that humble spirit, that loving spirit—we might be treating sin lightly or that we might come across as if the sin of this world doesn’t matter, as if we’re condoning sinfulness.

I want us to be the people who do it well. When people hear us, I want them to know we don’t love sin, we’re not cheering for sin, we’re not condoning sin. But we see ourselves as sinners in need of a Savior, so we’re humble, and we’re compassionate and tender toward people who are bound up in their sin and desperately need freedom.

Kathy: Yes, and it’s not too late! Here’s a moment. If you’re sitting there and all of the sudden you got hit in the back of the head by a two-by-four because you’re thinking about a moment you didn’t do such a good job being lowly and gentle and grace-filled with somebody.

Nancy: And don’t we all have those?

Kathy: Whew, wow! It’s not too late! One of the most powerful, powerful things God gave us was the power of an apology. When we tell Jesus we’re sorry, when we repent from our sin, there is forgiveness.

Nancy: Or to our husband . . .

Kathy: That’s the same thing, for your husband, for your children, for your neighbor, for that “woman at the well” that you’ve been judging when she comes to draw water and you’ve been whispering to your friends about her when she shows up at lunch. 

It’s not too late to go and say, “You know what? I owe you a huge apology. As a follower of Jesus Christ, I blew it, so I want you to know I said I was sorry to Jesus first, but now I have to come to you and tell you, ‘I’m sorry,’ because the way I treated you, the things I said to you, were not of Him. Will you please just forgive me?”

Nancy: Yes, that’s humility, right? It’s not that we’re perfect; it’s that we’re perfectly able to acknowledge when we’re not. 

Kathy: Yes, there are a lot of people who have left the church, who have walked away from God, because of something someone in the church did. But we are imperfect people being perfected by a perfect God, so please, I beg you, go say, “I’m sorry.”

Nancy: I carry such a burden for this—in my own life and in our lives collectively as a people of God. I follow a lot of Christian social media, and there’s a lot going on in the Christian world today that is shameful and tragic and sinful and things that give the enemies of God cause to blaspheme. We don’t want to add to that by our spirit.

I found myself, again, as I was reading this book by Dane Ortlund (it’s in my head right now) Gentle and Lowly, there was a chapter that I read just a few weeks ago on “The Beauty of Jesus.“ They’re short chapters. He just talks about aspects of Christ’s character and just His beautiful spirit.

I read it just before I was getting ready for the day, so as I was doing my makeup. (Robert and I were actually away for a little break.) I was in the restroom in the hotel room, and I started singing that old little chorus “Let the Beauty of Jesus Be Seen in Me.” I’m not much of a singer, but just that old chorus was on my mind.

And Robert heard it from the other room and he texted me. He was just touched. He didn’t know what I’d just read or why I was singing that. And then, after that chorus, the next one that was on my heart that I started singing was:

May the mind of Christ my Savior live in me from day to day;
By His love and power controlling all I do and say.
May the love of Jesus fill me as the waters fill the sea;
Him exalting, self abasing, this is victory. 

The Spirit of Jesus or the spirit of self . . . one of those two things is going to come out. It makes such a difference in our homes, in our social media, in our conversations.

Just think if we were really reflecting the beauty and the compassion and the tenderness of Jesus, the humility, what a difference that would make in this hardened world!

Dannah: Revival. Yes. Do you know what I’m thinking? I’m thinking that our visit today, Nancy, with Kathy Branzell from the National Day of Prayer Task Force has me not only stirred to pray for our country—and change in it—but for me, that I would change, that I would be a part of the change.

Nancy: And by God’s grace, that can be true.

Kathy: For all of us.

Dannah: I hope this conversation has encouraged you to consider how your life reflects the beauty of Christ. Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth and I have been talking with Kathy Branzell about showing the love of Jesus through our kindness. 

Would you say you’re a kind woman? All month we’re focusing on the topic of kindness and why it matters so much. As part of this emphasis, I want to tell you about a resource called A Deeper Kind of Kindness. It’s a booklet from Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, and it will help you evaluate how the Lord is transforming you by His kindness to go and spread kindness to others.

You’ll receive this booklet when you make a donation of any amount to Revive Our Hearts. We want to thank you for your support. I hope this resource is a great encouragement to you! Visit ReviveOurHearts.com to make your gift, or call us at 1–800–569–5959 and ask for the booklet A Deeper Kind of Kindness. 

Do you know someone who displays the quality of meekness? What characteristics come to mind? Tomorrow we’re going to dig into why it’s good to be meek as we begin a series from Nancy called The Beauty of Meekness. I hope you’ll be back for Revive Our Hearts. Now, Nancy is going to close us in a word of prayer.

Nancy: I’d love to pray as we close this conversation, because, Lord, You’ve been speaking to each of us, to the three of us here in this studio. Actually, this program wasn’t one we had planned. It’s just a conversation, and the recorder was going.

But I thank You for it, because I needed it, and we need it. Lord, each of us in our mind’s eye can think of places and times and ways that we have not reflected the beauty of Jesus. Maybe it happened just today or yesterday.

Your Spirit has brought conviction to our hearts, and that’s a good thing; that’s a sweet gift. So maybe there’s a need to just humble ourselves and starting with You, the vertical first, and then with somebody else who was within earshot or somebody we were venting at or about, to just go and seek forgiveness. Say, “I was wrong. Please forgive me.”

And then to let You fill us with Your Spirit. It’s not just getting rid of the anger and the anxiousness, but it’s putting on the heart of Jesus that acknowledges and affirms and appreciates and shows affection.

So, Lord, help us to be clothed in Christ today—within our own homes, within our own workplace, on Zoom calls or in meetings, in emails or texting or on Twitter or FaceBook or Instagram.

Wherever we’re speaking or posting, I pray, Lord, that our lives will reflect the beauty of Jesus—His mercy, His grace, His love. May we speak to and about others today in the way that we would want them to speak to or about us. May we treat them with the kindness that You have shown to us—even those who may be enemies of the gospel. May they become friends of Christ, because we treat them as those who are created in the image of God, and we’d love them well. 

And Lord, I just can’t help but think if everyone of us who is having or listening to this conversation today would let You change us in these practical ways (forget all the other people who didn’t hear this conversation, just us who have been a part of this), if we would let You change us as Kathy has said, we might actually see the revival that we have been knowing is needed. Some of us have been praying for it, Lord, for a very long time! So thank You, Lord, for the work of Your Spirit, Your grace and Your mercy. 

Thank You for my sisters, our new friend Kathy Branzell and my longtime friend, Dannah Gresh. Together we just say, “Amen! Would you have Your way and do Your work in each of our hearts this day?” For Jesus’ sake, amen.

Revive Our Hearts with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth challenges you to reflect the kindness of Jesus! It’s an outreach of Life Action Ministries.

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