Love Is kind

Sometimes what can look like weakness in marriage isn't weakness at all.

It's the opposite. Ann Wilson says she realized that as she watched her mom demonstrate patience and perseverance. I remember as a teenager thinking, come on mom, have some backbone. You need to stand up to dad.

You need to not do this. You're basically a slave. And as they continued in their relationship, I watched her and I realized, oh, she is strong. And where what I thought was weakness, it was strength, it was beauty, it was perseverance, it was patience, it was long suffering. She just used her strength and she served all of us. It wasn't just my dad.

It was all of us in a way that was, it would take your breath away. This is Family Life Today. Our hosts are Dave and Ann Wilson.

I'm Bob Lapeen. You can find us online at familylifetoday.com. Real love in marriage, love the way the Bible defines it, is a strength, not a weakness. We'll talk more about that today. Stay with us. And welcome to Family Life Today.

Thanks for joining us. I'm just sitting here wondering how far would we have to go if we ask people, describe Dave. So Ann, if we ask people, describe Dave. That's not. How far down the list would we have to go until kindness appeared as one of those descriptive words? I think that would be toward the top. Would that be near the top? Absolutely. Kind? Yes. Really?

Absolutely. I've been called many things. Kind doesn't... I don't think, I mean, I've been called competitive. Does that go along with kind?

No. Because not normally am I kind. You don't think of yourself as a kind person? I think of myself as wanting to be a kind person. That's a good thing. The only time you're not kind is when you're driving.

Oh yeah. We don't want to go there. I am not kind. The reason we're talking about kindness is because this is one of the attributes of love that the Apostle Paul lays out in 1st Corinthians chapter 13. And we know somebody wrote a book about this. This is the best book you will read all year.

This is an amazing book. I've just finished a book called Love Like You Mean It where we dive deep into 1st Corinthians 13 and think in marriage, what if these things were true about us? What if we were patient? What if we were kind? What if we did not insist on our own way? What if we were not resentful? What if we were not rude to one another? These are all of the things that Paul uses to describe what genuine love looks like in 1st Corinthians 13. And I'm convinced that husbands and wives, their marriages would thrive if they were saying, I want this to be true about me and in how I interact with you. I want to be this kind of person. If our biggest disagreement was, I want to be more kind than you are.

No, I want to be more kind than you are. If that's what you're fighting about, we'd have a pretty good marriage. And I gotta say, we've been poking fun at you, you know, because you wrote a book on marriage and you're sitting here with us. But I gotta be honest, as I read it, I thought this book can transform families.

Because think about it. I know it's your goal. If we could actually live out what God says love is, and there's such a great description in 1st Corinthians 13, that's why it's such a famous passage, and yet very few understand it. So now we're gonna say, okay, let's read a book that helps us go. This is more than a poetic reading at a wedding. This is a picture of godly, mature love. And if I started living that in our marriage, not only would our marriage be transformed, think about this. The neighbors would want our marriage.

They would. And so now the gospel's being spread through our neighborhood, the city, the world, because a couple lives out godly love. So I just wanted to frame that, because that's how powerful I think what you wrote is.

And yeah, we're having fun looking at these words. But this love is kind. How many marriages, how many pictures of love being kind do we have?

It's not what's being held up as a model. And I think some people mistake niceness for kindness. So a nice person is a person who's polite, a person who is gentle, a person who will be respectful of others. A kind person is somebody who proactively seeks to bless another person. So kindness is not how we respond to other people. Kindness is how we initiate with other people. It's where we step in and say, my goal in our interaction is for you to be blessed, for you to thrive, for you to flourish, and I'm going to proactively seek to do things that will make that happen. That's a kind person. What's an example of that, Bob? What did that look like for you and Marianne?

I'll give you a simple—this is just one of those simple little mundane things. But Marianne and I were at a weekend to remember Getaway. And our friend Tim Downs was speaking. And Tim said that he had early on in his marriage decided that one of the ways he could bless his wife was by making sure that her car was always full of gas, that she didn't have to worry about stopping to get gas. Now, I know some people are like, oh, so the man has to get the gas and the woman can't?

No, it wasn't that. He just wanted her not to have to worry about it. And so he would proactively try to make sure that her car was always full of gas. And I remember I turned to Marianne and said, like, would that matter to you? And she goes, well, yeah, that'd be nice. So I thought, okay, well, that's something simple I can do. That's just an act of simple service that says, I want your life to be easier. I want your life to be better.

And so I will do things that help make that happen. She does it for me all the time. I go to the closet every week, and there are clothes there that weren't clean that are now clean and hanging there, and I can put them on. I don't have to think about that.

I don't worry about that. And I've said to her, we try to acknowledge this to one another, I just say, you know, thanks for doing the laundry. And she goes, I don't mind doing the laundry. And I go, yeah, I know you don't mind, but thank you for doing it because it's an act of kindness toward me. It's something I don't have to think about. And you're loving me when you do these simple acts of kindness. Now, those are simple things.

I'm trying to think on a bigger level, how do we do the more profound things in each other's lives that demonstrate a kind of loving kindness? Think about that word. That's the word in the Old Testament that describes God more than any other term that's used.

His hesed is the Hebrew word. It's his loving kindness. And the Bible says his loving kindness is better than life. The Jewish people, if you went to them and said, you know, God is holy, they'd say, well, of course, God is holy. Well, you know, that God is perfect. Well, of course, God is perfect. You know, God is a God of loving kindness.

They go, wait, he's that? I mean, we expect God's to be high and lifted up, but a God who is full of loving kindness? This is God who says, I'm going to proactively seek to bring blessing to you, and I'm gonna pour that out. That's God's character, and it should be our profound character to say, I want you, I want you to be blessed.

So I'll give you an example. When the kids were little, Marianne wanted to go to Bible study fellowship in the evenings, and she found it was a great discipline for her to go through BSF and the structure and the notes and the lectures and the homework. She loved it, and it was really a profound time of spiritual growth, and that meant that on a particular night, I was home taking care of the kids. Now, that's what husbands do. In fact, my son tweeted out recently something. He said, I'm taking care of the kids. I'm not doing my wife's job. He said, I'm being a dad. This is what dads do. It's not mom's job, and I've taken it over for a few hours.

No, it's my job, too. So I didn't look at it and say, this is onerous, but I was taking care of the kids that night so that she could be free to grow, to thrive spiritually. And I think kindness is a way where we look at each other and say, I want that for you. I want you to be better. I want to bless you, so what can I do so that you're blessed?

Here's the hard thing about that. We hear that, and we think, instead of thinking, oh, I want to be kind to my husband or I want to do things for my husband that will bless him, here's what I can tend to do, and I think some other people can, too. I wish my husband would be like that. The gas story. My daughter-in-law. Yeah, Bob, you probably didn't notice this, but when you were telling about filling up your wife's car with gas, my wife looked at me.

My daughter-in-law. Thank you very much, Bob Lapine. Dad, the same thing happened. She said her dad, every Sunday, not only filled up his wife's car, but the kids, older kids that were driving, their cars, too. And I said, wait, so your dad fills up everybody's cars, and you never have to get gas? And she said, no. And I thought, that is so sweet.

Like, what? That's so amazing. So, the next time I get gas, it's the middle of winter. It's freezing cold. The wind is, and I don't even tell Dave about this thing, but I'm getting gas. I'm pumping it thinking, I wish my husband would be kind to me and pump my gas.

That's the trick, because we oftentimes think, what could my spouse be doing for me? But we're asking God, God, how can I be kind? So, you know what I did, Bob, to be kind?

I put a gas pump in our garage. We've got one there. No, but I think, you know, as we think about kindness, I think one of the things you've identified in the book, and we're talking about it, is you think kindness is these grand gestures, you know? And yet, that is true. Like, I keep my vow. I honor my commitment. That's being kind to my spouse.

But it is these little acts of service that really, you walk away from a person and go, they were so kind, because they took care of this little detail, like the gas. I was thinking, you know, again, I don't know what Ann would say, but when we had little boys, and she was fried, and it was chaos, one gift I gave her was once a month. Was it once a month? We called it a boy's day out, and it was take the three little guys and go away for the day, basically.

Where I could just stay home. Yeah, and I look back now and go, oh, that was a love moment. That was a kindness moment. Then I've got a thousand other stories, like the time, and Ann shared this, but don't go into details, but, you know, she's saying, I've got to drive just to Ohio five hours to speak at this woman's conference. Will you make sure you change the headlight in the car? Because she knew I'm not gonna let somebody else do it because it's gonna cost money, so I've got to do it myself. And, you know, this was six weeks out. Every week she said, did you change it? Oh, no.

Oh, no. We get to the day of and I still hadn't changed it. And in the meantime, I was doing all these kind acts today, trying to help him and make sure his time with the boys was great and cooking meals.

And so then when he didn't do that, I was so mad at him, thinking, wow, you can't even change the light in the car. This is what's interesting. Researchers have shown that the amount of kindness demonstrated in a marriage is the single greatest predictor of marital satisfaction and stability. If we look at each other and go, you know, my spouse is a kind person, who does not want to do forever with somebody who's kind? And if there's an absence of kindness, that's the other side of this. If there's a disregard, if we're unkind toward one another, if we're not proactively seeking the good of others, then that's the sandpaper that starts to rub holes in our marriage relationship and causes us to feel that low-level dissatisfaction that we go, this is no fun for me. Well, you even say in the book, you say that kindness acts like a marital disinfectant. What do you mean by that? It means that the germs that can build up in just the day-to-day interaction with one another, the little irritants that creep in to where you're sitting at the gas pump going, I wish my husband would do this, right?

And you feel that way. If you come home from the gas station after feeling that way and you walk in and Dave is in the kitchen and he's just finished sweeping the kitchen and it's cleaned up and he says, yeah, I had a few minutes and I thought I'd just straighten up around here because I know you've just been busy. All of a sudden, the grumbling you were doing at the gas station evaporates. It's not like you walk in and go, well, that's all well and good, but if you just filled up my, no, you start to go, okay, he really is kind, he really is thinking about me, he really does love me because that's how, again, kindness is the expression of I'm committed to your good, I want to see blessing happen in your life, and who does not want to do forever with a person like that? Yeah, how do we get that, especially like back in our marriage, because I know for many of us it's like I'm kind to the person that came to the door right after yelling at my kids and not being kind to my wife, and then the doorbell rings and immediately you're kind. That person will walk away from my front door and say, man, that guy was really kind. And I would say you were nice, you were polite. There you go.

And that's different. So kindness is an intentionality that says, but think about it this way, if you woke up tomorrow morning and you said, okay, what's one thing I could do today that would be a proactive way of blessing my spouse, something I could do that would serve or that would demonstrate love and care, that would say I want to bless you. If we just said I'll do one thing a day that would do that, and if we understand what blessing looks like for our spouse, that might be you send them an affectionate text, it might be that you do an active service, you know, we can get into love languages and how all of that manifests. But if you say my goal is to bless you today, what is one way that I can do that? And then I'm gonna do that whether you bless me back or not.

That's big right there. If you do it and you go, I blessed you for four days, you never did anything. No, you just have to say I want to be a loving person. The Bible says God's kindness leads us to what? Repentance. I believe that our perpetual kindness toward another person where we're actively seeking to bless them, God can use that to break through the hardness of their heart and to bring them to a point where they go, I do not deserve the blessing that you are to me and I need to change as a result.

I need to be a different person. Doesn't always work, it's not a magic formula, it's not like okay if I do this for a month then it'll fix my spouse. We're responding to God's kindness toward us by being kind toward others. So if you're asking the question how do I develop kindness, well you reflect on the fact that you are the recipient of amazing kindness. God has demonstrated his loving kindness, he blesses you. Now he says can you do this for others?

And you say yes Lord I can do this, look at how you have blessed me, I can be a blessing to others. What would you say is the opposite of kindness? And don't say unkind, you're not allowed to use that word. Later on in the passage it says love is not rude, it's not irritable, and it's not resentful. And I think the opposite of kindness is rudeness, irritability, and resentment.

And so I think Paul later in the passage is saying again be kind by not being rude, irritable, and resentful. And so we have to seek to identify am I rude and and how do I manifest rudeness toward my spouse? Am I irritable?

Am I resentful about things in my spouse? And how do I curb these? And this is where how do I get rid of these and replace them with proactive goodness toward another person? It's not just I'm gonna get rid of these and then I'll be kind? No, I get rid of these but I still have to cultivate proactive goodness toward another. Yeah, because one of the one of the thoughts came to my mind, tell me what you think Bob, is one of the opposites of kindness is selfish.

Oh yeah. Because the only way I'm gonna treat and kind or even my neighbor is if I get my eyes off of me and think I really want to honor them. What would honor her today?

I mean what you said earlier I think is a great action step. What if every listener said starting today, day one of 30 days if you want to do a month and I'm gonna take my eyes off me I'm gonna wake up tomorrow and say what what is one thing I can do to bless and be kind to my spouse? Well and the other thing I was thinking was if you don't get any response back from a spouse, if you do these acts of kindness and they'd have no response or say anything, here's what I would say to don't forget that this is like almost an act of worship to God. It's not doing something to get something back from your spouse. This is an act of worship and every single little thing you do, God sees it.

I was recently with four of our grandkids that range from age five to just four months and you talk about self-sacrificing. Their mom and dad boy they are just getting it done and it is a hard phase of life and I sit there and I remember as a young mom thinking I'm doing all these things and nobody sees nobody notices yet I remember one day praying and I said God do you see me and I felt like he said I see every act of kindness and serving that you're giving to your family and I feel like he's always applauding us do like he sees it it's an act of worship. I think you're exactly right and that's where we have to ask the question are we trying to cultivate love so that we can get something out of it or are we trying to cultivate love because God has demonstrated his love for us. This is what John says he says behold the manner of love God has given to us. That's an interesting verse this is 1st John 3 1.

Behold means look very carefully at this stare at this fix your eyes on this look deeply into this behold and when it says the manner of love it says behold a the kind of foreign love like you've never seen from anyplace else it's an uncommon love behold the uncommon love God has lavished on us that we should be called children of God. Okay so that's how God's loved us his loving kindness is better than life so for us to be kind and loving to other people is to say I'm the recipient of this if I'm the recipient of this I can now lavish love and kindness on you not so that I get something in return but because I'm a child of God he has lavished love on me and he's called me to lavish it on you. I mean Jesus loved us without an expectation of anything in return. Jesus loved us while we were still his enemies. Jesus loved us by giving himself up not saying well I'm gonna love you for 30 days and then if you don't turn around I'm not gonna keep loving you.

Okay that's our picture that's our model. Well it's also one of the fruit of the Spirit kindness right is a result of being filled with God's Spirit it pours out of us as a result. And it pours out if you have drunk in. Yes exactly. And that's where when we go I just don't have any kindness left in me then we go back to God and we drink it in we meditate on his kindness toward us and we go oh yeah I'm filled up with kindness because God has been kind to me I'm aware of this now now I can pour it out. What does that look like for you? Well it means that when I'm spiritually depleted with any of the spiritual fruit when I'm banging on empty because I'm tired or I'm drained or whatever else I have to take time to dig into God's Word I have to take time to worship I have to take time in prayer and to just stop and recalibrate my thinking about who God is who I am why I'm here what matters most in life what's my assignment and then just think about that and go okay that I needed that recalibration now I can get back I can get back in the game it can come out of me now more naturally because I've spent time with the Lord and he's poured it into me. And I know for me there is no one emphatically no one in my life kinder to me than this woman sitting right here to my left my wife she is beyond kind and it's amazing because you know your spouse can be the one that will not be kind because they see it all yeah you know other people that are kind to you they walk up and they're kind you're like that's nice they don't really know the flaws she knows it all and speaks life speaks kindness you do honey it's just amazing and I also Bob what you just said I know why cuz I'm an amazing guy no that is not why I walk down every day and I walk into the kitchen and there she is with the Word of God often on her knees hands raised singing praising God being filled up with the love and kindness of Christ in her life and then she overflows it to me and it's a it's beautiful it doesn't happen apart from Christ I was gonna say I suppose I'm desperate for him and I know that I can be mean well we all can and that's where the regular disciplines of the Christian life are how we go and make sure that we are perpetually filled up this is what it means to be filled with the Spirit to walk in the Spirit it means that you spend time with God filling you up your aware of his presence you're aware of his power in your life and when you are empty you go to him to get filled up you don't go to your spouse and say you need to fill me up so that I can pour some of this back on you know you go to the Lord and he fills you up with this you know my burden here as I wrote this book just continued to increase first for my own marriage the more we press into God's design for what love is supposed to look like the better your marriage becomes and all of us have room to grow in this area I mean anybody who's been married like we have more than four decades or you're just starting on the journey there's room to grow there's increased capacity for you to expand your love for one another in marriage and when you do when you start to align with what the Bible describes for real love your marriage gets better I promise it gets better even if it's good it gets better and if it's got some rough spots those start to get worked out as you start to do what the Bible says we're supposed to do and how we love each other my hope my prayer for this book is that this will help a lot of couples move to a new place in their marriage where love deepens where they move deeper into oneness with one another and they experience the kind of real joy that comes with doing marriage God's way loving each other God's way the book is called love like you mean it it has just released this week and it's available right now for order you can go online at family life today calm to get a copy of the book or you can call 1-800 FL today there's an e-book available there's an audiobook available again if you'd like information about how to order any version of the book love like you mean it go to family life today calm or call 1-800 3 5 8 6 3 2 9 that's 1-800 F as in family L as in life and then the word today I think any time we look carefully at 1st Corinthians 13 we all kind of flinch because we all fall short of the standard of love that's described here David Robbins who's the president of family life is with us and you felt that as you've read through this passage right yeah I came into the studio confessing to you that was really convicting for me and I love where you took us at the end Bob because so much transformation happens as we pursue kindness in our marriage and kindness is a fruit of the spirit yeah and I found myself listening being convicted about how much I'm not pursuing really intentional ruthless intentionality and being kind to Meg and I found myself praying and old spiritual breathing illustration and exercise I learned in college from from Bill Bright and it's that exercise of exhaling sin that God is convicting us of and acknowledging God's forgiveness of that sin and then moving to depend upon the power of the Holy Spirit to inhale by appropriating the fullness of God's Spirit by faith trusting him to control and empower me God has put his Holy Spirit inside of those of us who believe in Jesus so that we wouldn't have to depend upon our own strength and our own efforts and so that we can constantly and continually draw from his divine resources to live with supernatural kindness especially the relationships that matter most to us point it's never been lost on me the fact that right in that passage where Paul addresses marriage in Ephesians chapter 5 just before he gets to talking about marriage he says be filled with the spirit because we can't do marriage the way God wants us to unless we're filled with the spirit Thank You David for that now tomorrow we're gonna talk about really the opposite of what we've been talking about today we're gonna talk about abuse in a family situation Jennifer Michelle Greenberg is gonna join us to talk about the family she grew up in a churchgoing family with a dad who was an elder in their local church and who was coming home and abusing his daughter physically it's a sobering story she joins us tomorrow to share her experience with this I hope you can tune in for that I want to thank our engineer today Keith Lynch along with our entire broadcast production team on behalf of our hosts Dave and Ann Wilson I'm Bob Lapine we'll see you back tomorrow for another edition of family life today family life today is a production of family life of Little Rock Arkansas a crew ministry help for today hope for tomorrow