When I was younger kindness was unfortunately not one of the things I saw displayed often by so called church people in my context. I’m not saying there weren’t kind people in the church, but often the message of God was preached by men who seemed quite angry about the whole thing. Of course I was a kid and now that I’m older I can see (and hope) that much of that was passion, but as a kid it built a perception in me that God was angry with me and with the rest of the world.

So when I heard about repentance and when I read it on the sides of roads, trees, hay bales etc. (yep, that happens here in Ireland) I pictured an angry God who was shouting REPENT at me. I didn’t know truly what it meant but I knew it was a serious process.

In a letter to the Romans Paul is talking to them about judgement in the second chapter. He is reminding them that God really is the only one who can judge and that if we choose to judge we are actually inviting Gods judgement into our lives because we are far from perfect. Then he adds this to the discussion;

Or do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, forbearance and patience, not realizing that God’s kindness is intended to lead you to repentance? Romans 2:4

Repentance, as we have talked about before, simply means to turn around and go the other way. It is talking about taking your thinking which is heading in one direction and turning it around 180 degrees to follow Jesus. What Paul is suggesting here is that God isn’t shouting angrily at us to repent as I might have seen when I was younger, but instead it’s His kindness that leads us to change our thinking.

I wish I had known this years ago.

Repentance can come through a number of different moments and emotions but when it is birthed in kindness and genuine discovery it’s a beautiful thing to watch. There is a guy in our community who is taking a journey like this with Jesus currently and to hear his story of God speaking to him and dealing with various aspects of his life is amazing. He describes that gentle leading of God in his life. We also have people in our community who ‘repented’ out of fear. They haven’t seemed like they were ‘lead’ into it but scared into it. Perhaps they heard some of the preaching I did. What I’ve found out is that those people, whilst they are truly following Jesus, have to do a lot of work to discover the relationship that God has for them. They do often discover His kindness but they have to get past the fear of the Lord (not the fear the Bible talks about) in order to discover this.

I’m so thankful that the Lord is so kind to us. I want to ensure that those of us who follow Jesus display that same kindness to the communities around us. God will lead them to change their thinking. In His kindness He will walk with them into a new reality.

Thank you Lord!