Invitation helps the Christian develop one of the fruits of the spirit, kindness.

It has hard to think that people not going to church might be afraid of even coming up the path of a church building. But many people who have been invited, and subsequently stay tell the same story over and over again. All they needed was an invitation, and perhaps for someone to walk in with them and show them the ropes. Invitation can be an incredible act of kindness. Kindness is such a rare quality these days that when someone is kind, it has a good chance of making the news!

We remember Jesus’ acts of kindness, in healing, in casting out demons, but sometimes we can fail to see the ordinary acts of kindness in that he invited people to follow him. Jesus said that he was the way the truth and the life. Therefore what better act of kindness could there be than to be invited into the way the truth and the life?

The Greek word for “kind” is chrestos. Part of its meaning makes it clear that biblical kindness involves action. “Dear children, let us stop just saying we love each other; let us really show it by our actions” (1 John 3:18, New Living Translation).
Action includes some kind of self-sacrifice and therefore generosity on our part, especially of our time.

In my Seminars throughout the world one reason we don’t invite our friends is because we are afraid our invitational kindness might be thrown back in our face. This stops us in our tracks and we stopping inviting our friends. The idea that we might have to sacrifice what others think about us in order to be kind is where the rubber hits the road with the fruit of kindness. Continued Invitational kindness helps us to go the extra mile. There is never a traffic jam on the extra mile
Invitation is an act of kindness, now

“May the loving kindness of God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ bless you”

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 26th, 2012 at 11:10 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.