Kindness is a tender heart that moves you to help others
Memory Verse: "Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving each other,
just as God in Christ forgave you."
Ephesians 4:32
I was tremendously blessed reading one of John Piper's sermons, Be Kind to One Another, to prepare my own heart for a week of teaching my boys about kindness. He gave me the perfect metaphor for them:
"The idea behind 'tenderhearted' is that our insides are easily touched. When your skin is tender, it doesn't take a very hard touch to make it feel pain. When your heart is tender it is easily affected. It feels easily and quickly."We have "bo bo's" weekly, if not daily, and I explained that they do not want them touched because they are TENDER. This gave them a very concrete picture of what it feels like to have a tender heart. Your heart easily and quickly feels the touch of the Holy Spirit showing you someone in need. Kindness is then gentle and compassionate toward the one you seek to help.
Teaching the boys about the fruits of the Spirit has given me intentional opportunities to continually keep the gospel before them. Piper beautifully wrote:
"If the Spirit of God is to conquer unkindness in our hearts, we must believe... Christ died in our place. (Eph 4:2)...God has forgiven all our sins (4:32)...We are loved by God (4:1)... Believe this with all your heart and you will behold a miracle in your own life - the fruit of the Spirit, the gift of God!
Bible Stories
We read three different Bible stories and discussed how we saw kindness in each story. We discussed what it means to show kindness to those who are not kind to you, sacrificing to help another person, how people feel if they are left out and not included. I simply searched for free coloring pages to go along with the stories we were reading from The Child's Story Bible by Vos. My boys listen best when their hands are busy!
- The Good Samaritan
- The Four Friends
- Let the Little Children Come to Me
Showing Kindness at Home: Kindness Counts Chain
Kindness is contagious and often one kind act leads to another. Whenever someone did a kind act for another person in our family, I wrote it on a strip of paper and stapled it onto our kindness chain.
Showing Kindness to the World: Random Acts of Kindess
I made these cards to attach to some of our RAOK. We prayed over the cards and asked that God would use them to remind the people who found them of His lovingkindness.
There are tons of great ideas on the web for kids and RAOK but here are a few of the ones we came up with:
Each boy prayed God would help him pick just the right car on which to leave a special snack with the card, someone who needed to be reminded of God's love that day. I really wanted to make our RAOK teachable moments that though things take us by surprise and seem random, nothing is random to the sovereign hand of God. What a privilege that we might get to be a part of what He is doing in someone's life yet never know it this side of glory.
They made notes to hide in their library books that we returned.
I asked the boys to write something or draw a picture of what they thought would make somebody smile when they walked by our house.
Here are the boys hanging post it notes made for their grandmother to find when she came over that day. Kind words to encourage her heart.
Storytime
I try to find books, especially good stories, that display and bring alive what we're learning. As Jesus showed us through parables we remember stories more than lectures! I can say "remember how Elizabeth Fry's kindness changed the lives of the mean women who had lost hope," and immediately they see and feel more than they would if I simply had said "remember to be kind even when others are not."
I'm thankful for our time to intentionally think about and practice kindness as a family, but I will say it doesn't take long for us to all see that our hearts are not naturally bent toward kindness! I'm continually reminded that it is good to keep pointing my kids to the wisdom of God's word but the greatest thing I can do is remain fervent in prayer first that the eyes of their hearts are truly enlightened to the gospel of Jesus and then for all of us that the Holy Spirit nurtures in us tenderhearted kindness toward helping those around us!
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