Trusting Our Kind God

This episode contains portions from the following programs:

"Seeing the Heart of Christ"

"Convicted by the Law of Kindness"

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Dannah Gresh: Fill in the blank: God is ______what? You probably have a lot of words you would use to describe the Lord—words like mighty or eternal. But, how about “kind”? Do you think of God as being kind?

I mean, let’s start with this: the very fact that He created us, gave us life, that’s pretty kind of Him, don’t you think?

Welcome to Revive Our Hearts Weekend. I’m Dannah Gresh, and I’m so glad you’re with me today. 

If you’ve never considered the kindness of God, or maybe you even have a hard time believing that, this episode is for you. Or if you know this about Him and have experienced His kindness, I’m so happy for you. But no matter what, I’m glad you’re here, because we always need to be reminding ourselves of who God is. And that’s what we’re going to do today. 

I want us to dig into this character trait of the Lord. We’ll look at His kindness up close. I hope you’ll see it as an invitation—to trust the amazing kindness of Jesus. 

First up is a truly special conversation I had with Pastor Dane Ortlund. He’s the author of a bestselling book called Gentle and Lowly that’s so insightful, and really speaks to the kind, compassionate heart of Christ. I think it is an especially important read if you find it easy to live in the mindset that God is unhappy or disappointed in you because of sin or unachieved dreams. Pastor Dane is here to give you a new perspective. 

Dane Ortlund: We can be believers, and we’ve been walking with the Lord for decades, but it can remain natural to us to believe God loves us, Christ loves us. He forgives us, we are His, but He’s tolerating us!

It’s a benign smile, but you know when we are sinning, [we think] His embrace cools a little bit, it relaxes just a little bit. And what the Puritans convinced me of from the pages of Scripture, is that actually—wonder of wonders!—it is in my deepest, darkest regions of shame, regret, and anguish that the heart of Christ is drawn strongest!

We just look at the pages of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and we see by His actions that is who He is, that is what He was drawn to do all over again, all the time. But then we somehow distance that from our own lives. 

This is a Christ I can enjoy following, being a disciple to, if actually when I’m stumbling most. He is nearest and closest in His heart!

Dannah: Let’s talk about mercy since it’s on those days that, I think, when we’re sinful that we have a harder time engaging with this gentle and lowly Jesus. So, talk to me about the mercy of Christ.

Dane: Well, mercy is what pours out naturally from God and from Christ when we have sinned, when we His people have sinned. God is love all the time to His people! Mercy is something that is more occasional, that comes to us when we are in need of it. 

So the Scripture speaks of God being “rich in mercy” in Ephesians 2 (v. 4). That’s really worth a whole lifetime of reflection. He’s not “middle class” in mercy. He’s not giving of it, but careful not to dole out too much. He is a billionaire in the currency of mercy! He loves it when we make withdrawals from that fortune.

Actually, the logic of the New Testament is, for example in the end of Romans 5, end of Romans 6, when we make withdrawals from His fortune, it grows! It is not lessened: “Where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more” (see Rom. 5:20). So that is deeply consoling for my mercy-needing daily life!

I don’t love it when my kids sin and screw up. I don’t want that for them, that’s not my heart. But when they do, there’s a certain way in which my heart goes out to them in a way it wouldn’t if they were not messing up. That’s all.

We understand this as parents. We understand the way we can look at a beloved one. When they are getting messy, there’s a way in which our heart goes out to them in a new way. So, that’s all.

I do not want to say—may I never say or communicate or be heard to be saying—that God is pleased when we sin or that He rejoices in some way. No! Let’s honor and obey the Lord for sure, and do so with all our might, by His grace for His glory.

But, His heart is drawn out to . . . I mean, Dannah, we don’t have to worry about, “Oh, well, do I need to go sin more in order for His heart to come out?” No. We’re going to sin, that’s not a problem! We will do it. Let’s not try to do it, let’s try not to. But we will, and when we do, take heart! His heart is drawn out to us.

Dannah: Yes. I had many years where I didn’t believe that those riches—that mercy—was for me. Now, I came to know the Lord as a young girl, a very little girl, but in my teen years I wouldn’t say I departed far from Christ, but I made some really bad decisions and broke my heart with some sinful choices.

It was really about ten years where I had this lie in the back of my head that the mercy of Christ was adequate for you and for her and for him and for everyone else, but it wasn’t enough for the sin and the secrets of my heart.

It was understanding this mercy, this concept of the riches of His mercy, and studying the letters to the church of Corinth . . . In fact, 2 Corinthians 1:3 calls God, “the Father of mercies and God of all comfort.”

That verse and the surrounding verses became the healing balm for my heart, to dare to believe: “Oh, yes, that rich vat of mercy, that’s for me!” He is the Father of mercies!

Dane: Amen! There is a certain holy, right audacity that healthy Christians have, to allow themselves to feel forgiven. I’m not for a moment suggesting moral compromise, but simply to allow our hearts all the way down to feel rinsed, clean. 

The problem for us believers, the problem for the church, the problem for any human isn’t, do they have too much sin? Do they have too great a need for mercy? The problem is, will they see their need for it? Our problem is when we don’t open up the vents of our heart to let it in, when we believe we can kind of make it ten percent of the way or halfway on our own.

But when we just open ourselves up to it, that’s not a problem for Him. That’s all He needs to work with!

Dannah: In fact, Matthew 11:28–30 does reference the kindness of Christ. Tell us about that, because it’s really eye-opening as we receive this mercy from Christ and realize that He’s inviting us not only to be fully healed, but into the work of passing that healing onto others.

That’s what blows my mind every day when I wake up! So take us back to the kindness of Christ.

Dane: Yes, we are not cul-de-sacs of the kindness of Jesus; we’re intersections through which it passes. We will only do that to the degree that we are enjoying His kindness for ourselves. 

And as you rightly just said, Dannah, “Take my yoke upon you, learn from Me” why? ”for I am gentle and lowly in heart,” that’s the core reason, that’s the anchor . . . okay, comma, “you will find rest for your souls.” And why is that? “For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

“Easy” is okay as a translation, but it’s the word that is elsewhere in the New Testament translated, “kind.” “My yoke is kind.” It might not be non-difficult. It’s not easy in the sense that you just put on the cruise control and now coast through life robotically, mechanically. Oh, no.

We take this mantle upon us, but the mantle that is on is actually a lifting of us. It is a yoke of kindness. A yoke is a big heavy thing put on you that you have to drag through the field!! And how do you do that? Well, the yoke that He puts on us—unlike every other yoke that we are trying on in this world—is a yoke of kindness.

So as we come to Him . . . I mean, we believe in our hearts that as we come to Christ, He is going to be depleting to us, and He is going to give us homework and a “to do” list, and He’ll be looking over our shoulders and actually, if we really want to live a full life, then we should kind of honor and respect Jesus, but we really need to leave something for ourselves. No.

As we yield everything to Him and totally collapse (that’s one of my favorite words, “collapse”) into His arms . . . because anyone can collapse. You don’t have to climb; you don’t even step; you just fall down into His arms. Anyone can do that if we have the humility to do it. 

If we collapse into His arms, we find Him placing this yoke of kindness; we are in an ocean of kindness. Easy? No, but always kind!

Dannah: I just love that word picture from Dane Ortlund . . . collapsing into an ocean of kindness.

But maybe that metaphor is hard to fathom. You cannot imagine an ocean full of kindness because you’re bone dry—bone dry emotionally, bone dry spiritually! Oh, I’m praying you’ll feel God’s kindness in the next few moments. 

Isaiah 55:1 is your invitation. It says: 

Come, everyone who is thirsty,
come to the water;
and you without silver,
come, buy, and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk
without silver and without cost!

And the promise when we come is this, from John 4:13-14. Jesus said, “Everyone who drinks from this water will get thirsty again." He's speaking about the water in the well that He's standing in front of. Then He goes on to say, "But whoever drinks from the water that I will give him will never get thirsty again. In fact, the water I will give him will become a well of water springing up in him for eternal life.”

Wouldn’t it be nice to be springing up with life-giving for others rather than just dragging yourself through life? My friend, Jesus is your deep well. He is who will satisfy you. In fact, Jeremiah 31:25 reads “for I satisfy the thirsty person and feed all those who are weak.”

You know, as I was looking at these verses today, they remind me of a song. I wonder if you’ve heard it. It’s called “Jesus, Strong and Kind” by the group CityAlight. It's a sweet song! It talks about why we can trust the kindness of Christ. 

Dannah: In fact, you’ll hear a reference to the passage we just dissected a bit with Dane Ortlund: “Come to me, all of you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest." Soak in these words.

Song: “Jesus, Strong and Kind”

Jesus said that if I thirst,
I should come to Him.
No one else can satisfy,
I should come to Him.
 

Jesus said, if I am weak,
I should come to Him.
No one else can be my strength,
I should come to Him.
 

For the Lord is good and faithful;
He will keep us day and night.
We can always run to Jesus;
Jesus, strong and kind.

Jesus. Strong and kind. He truly is.

I have something simple I like to do to remind myself of the kindness of the Lord, to help me be mindful. When He surprises me with His strength and provision, I simply say to someone nearby, “Do you know how much Jesus loves me?” And then I tell them:

• He just provided the exact amount of change in the bottom of my purse to fill the parking meter.
• He met me with the perfect Bible verse to comfort me this morning.
• He opened the door for me to talk to someone I’ve been praying to meet.

Every good and perfect gift comes from Him. And so, I praise Him for the kindness of quarters, Bible verses, or new friends! It builds the muscle of my faith to trust His kindness for bigger needs.

And, it’s not like everything always goes my way and Jesus always shows His love by giving me things. Sometimes hard times do come, and His kindness looks more like, well, a shield.

I mean, I’ve faced hard stuff in my life. Someone once threw a lawsuit at me and my husband. We’ve been the subject of gossip or lies. I’ve faced the fear of losing grandbabies when they were in the NICU. It’s then that God’s kindness shows up as a shield.

Like Psalm 3:3 says:

But you, Lord, are a shield around me,
my glory, and the one who lifts up my head.

If you need to sense the kindness of God as your protector, your shield right now, you might study Psalm chapter 46. Let me whet your appetite to open your Bible and read it. Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth has taught an entire series on this chapter. Here she is.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth (from "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God"):

Therefore we will not fear though the earth gives way, though the mountains be moved into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains tremble at its swelling.

The point is that there are things we think are stable and secure that at points we found out are not stable and secure at all. But if you have placed your hope in the eternal God, though all else around you gives way, then when it is all said and done, you will still have intact your most precious and necessary possession. 

Dannah: When things aren’t going how you’d like, lean into the kindness of God’s shield of protection.

Song:

Jesus said that if I fear,
I should come to Him.
No one else can be my shield;
I should come to Him.
 

For the Lord is good and faithful;
He will keep us day and night.
We can always run to Jesus;
Jesus, strong and kind. ¹

Dannah: That song again is "Jesus, Strong and Kind" by City Alight. I hope you’ll listen to—no soak in—the whole song sometime soon. Then, pass that truth on. I challenge you, if there is a friend in your life who needs to know the kindness and the strength of Jesus, send her a text with the song. Maybe teach it to your children, because it has great truth to soak their little hearts in. 

Now, what do we do with all that kindness from the Lord? Well, we pass it on. Let’s hear from Nancy again as she shares about kindness in action.

Nancy: Kindness is a giving love. It’s being useful, serving, and gracious. It’s active—goodwill toward others.

There is no way I will ever be able to love in this way. I’ll never be as kind as I need to be, as patient and long-suffering as I need to be.

Actually, that’s the first key to developing the love of God, to realize that I will never be able to love that way by myself. There is nothing loving in me. No matter how long I’ve walked with Him, I will never have any natural love inside of me. How do I get that love? I have to continually acknowledge to God that I don’t have it. I have to confess it to Him and then ask Him to fill me with Himself, with His Spirit, with His love.

So love acts kindly toward others. There are some wonderful illustrations of this in the Scripture, but one that comes to mind in particular is the story of Joseph. Remember the last several chapters of Genesis how Joseph experienced one event after another at the hands of people who treated him wrongly. He was mistreated. He was misjudged. He was abused. He was misused. A lot of the abuse came at the hands of his brothers.

Years after he had first suffered at the hands of his brothers and they had been separated for years, came the time when his brothers came to Egypt. Joseph was now second in command in Egypt, and he was in a position where he could have taken vengeance on everyone who ever wronged him, including his brothers.

His brothers came to Egypt. They didn’t recognize Joseph at first, but then finally Joseph identified himself to them. The brothers, as you can imagine, must have been just terrified. "What is Joseph going to do to us?" He was powerless when we wounded him, but now he’s a very powerful man. What might he do?

Genesis chapter 45 tells us his response. He said to his brothers, “You shall dwell in the land of Goshen [it’s a special place where I have set apart for you to live], and you shall be near to me, you and your children . . . There I will provide for you, lest you and your household, and all that you have, come to poverty; for there are still five years of famine [left]” (Gen. 45:10–11).

Then the Scripture says he gave them provisions for the journey back to Israel. He gave them changes of garment, clothing, ten donkeys loaded with the good things of Egypt and ten donkeys loaded with grain, bread, and food. That’s kindness at work.

Joseph owed his brothers nothing, but instead filled with the love of God, he said, “I choose the pathway of kindness.” He gave provisions to them. He said, “I’ll meet your needs.” He did it in practical ways: food and clothes and a place to live.

Think about the person who has most wronged you. Can you imagine yourself saying, “What can we do to meet your practical, physical, material needs?" That’s kindness. I know some of us are looking a little shocked, like how could this ever be? It cannot be unless God loves others through us. The kindness of God is what motivates our kindness.

You know what the book of Romans tells us and that is that the kindness of God leads us to repentance. When God is kind to us in giving His Son for us and pouring out mercy on us and meeting our needs—our physical needs, our emotional needs, our spiritual needs when we were rebels against Him. We were His enemies. We killed His Son and God says, "Draw near to Me. I’ve got a place for you to live—in heaven forever. I’ll give you spiritual food. I’ll come into your life. I’ll eat with you and let you eat with Me. I want a relationship with you. I’ll minister to your needs." Our hearts cry out, “Oh God, we don’t deserve Your kindness. How could You be so kind to us?”

Then what happens? We are moved to repentance. Kindness. Giving to others in useful service. I think one of the places that kindness is most important and most neglected perhaps is where? Inside the four walls of our own homes. Why is it we are more kind to guests and to strangers, to visitors, than we are to those that we live with? Why do we take for granted those that we know the best?

Now if someone comes into my home and spills something on the carpet—it has happened—or makes a mess or breaks something, I’m quick to say, as you would be if I were visiting in your home, “Oh, it’s no problem.” We’re quick, I’m quick when guests come to my home to show kindness. But what about the members of my own family?

If there’s a guest in my home and she wants to talk about something that is of interest to her, I’m going to take as long as she wants to sit there and listen. I’m going to be kind and attentive. But what about when I’m with my mother, my brothers, my sisters, those that I’ve known all my life. They want to tell me a story or something that is happening in their life, and I’ve got a book that I’m more interested in reading at the moment?

Are you kind in your own home? Are you kind to those that you know the best? It’s such an important thing—doing kind acts. This is one of the things that has always marked holy women of God. Do kind acts of service with hospitality, with cards, with notes, with being sensitive to the needs of others.

I have a friend whose neighbor was hit by a truck as she was crossing the street just outside her home. My friend had never had much of a relationship with that neighbor who was not a warm person, wasn’t really interested in spiritual matters. But my friend began for months to take meals to that woman and her family every single day. Acts of kindness.

Now it’s not like she didn’t have a family of her own to take care of. She did. My friends have told me what an incredible transformation has taken place in the life of that neighbor because she has seen the love of Christ demonstrated in acts of kindness and service.

It’s not only important to have kind acts, but also to have a kind spirit in the way we do those acts. And then to speak kind words. There’s that little verse in the Proverbs—I kind of wish it wasn’t there sometimes. Proverbs chapter 31, verse 26, says of the wise or virtuous woman that “on her tongue is the law of kindness.” When she opens her mouth to speak, the words that come out are kind words. 

Dannah: Your kindness to others is an extension of the kindness you have experienced from the Lord. As Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth just showed us, it’s God’s love and kindness at work in us that produces the fruit of kindness in our lives. 

God is kind, and you can trust His kindness. Today we’ve seen examples of that in His mercy and care for us. Are you experiencing, and even enjoying the kindness of Jesus? 

I hope so, and I hope this episode has been a good reminder for you, or even given you a new perspective of God’s kind heart. You may know Revive Our Hearts is a listener-supported ministry. That means we’re able to bring you Revive Our Hearts Weekend and other programs thanks to friends like you.

Right now, when you donate any amount, you can get Nancy’s Be Still piano album, either as a CD or a digital download. This album is a great way to calm your heart and seek Jesus, and it’s our way to say “thanks” for partnering with us as we help women thrive in Christ.

Just ask for the album or the digital download when you give by calling 1-800-569-5959, or go to ReviveOurHearts.com/weekend and click on today’s episode. 

Did you know God never changes? Next weekend we’ll see why that characteristic is important and why it matters for our trust in Him. I hope you’ll join me again.

Thanks for being with me today. I’m Dannah Gresh. We’ll see you next time for Revive Our Hearts Weekend.

This program is a listener-supported production of Revive Our Hearts in Niles, Michigan, calling women to freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ.

¹ CityAlight, “Jesus, Strong and Kind,” Jesus, Strong and Kind (feat. Colin Buchanan) – Single ℗ 2019 CityAlight Music.

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