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Author Archives: Giles


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30. Cultivating Christ Like Character, Gentleness – Part 2

Matthew 11:28-30

28 Then Jesus said, “Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle at heart, and you will find rest for your souls.30 For my yoke is easy to bear, and the burden I give you is light.”

As we think about the fruit of gentleness we are reminded of Jesus call in Matthew 11:28-30. It’s a call to come to Him and bring our heavy burdens and exchange them for rest because He is humble and gentle at heart. It’s here that Jesus reveals 8 powerful principles that He not only preached but modeled and called us to put into practice. When it comes to God’s gift of gentleness the first principle is:

  1. Rely on the Savior not Self

Jesus starts with an invitation, to stop trying and start trusting. To trade our weariness for His work. It’s what David discovered in Psalm 23 as he said the Lord is my Shepherd he leads me beside the still waters and restores my soul. So, let me ask you who or what are you relying on today, is it the Savior or self? Relying on self leads to self-effort and exhaustion. But relying on the Savior leads to rest and renewal. Our relationship with the Redeemer dictates how we relate to others. When we are relying on self it causes us to be short with others. In your interactions with others are you responding from a place of weariness or out of a place of rest? Why do we relying on self-strength, because we don’t trust Jesus. As a result we try to run on our limited strength instead of the Lords unlimited strength. The only one who can germinate the seed of gentleness in your life is Jesus. But before you can model gentleness you have to be molded by gentleness. That’s why Jesus invites us to come to Him and rest in Him. Have you responded to the invitation to rest or are you still running? Second:

  1. Be humble not hurtful

Jesus doesn’t just invite us to come and rest but to hand Him the hurts of our life, so He can heal our hearts. Why, so that we can not only serve out of a place strength from rest but wholeness as a result of healing. Many of us are working out of weakness and woundedness and instead of helping others we are hurting them. Jesus invites you to trade your burdens for blessings, but many of us are gruff instead of gentle because we are still carting around our baggage. We are living in the brokenness instead of the blessing. One of the key evidences that your heart has been touched by the hands of the healer is a humble heart. Humility is not thinking less of yourself, its thinking of yourself less because you are busy thinking more about others. Are you consumed with self or concerned with serving others? Have you responded to Jesus invitation to trade your burdens for His blessing? Don’t hold onto your hurts or you will get hung up on them and they will harden your heart. Jesus wants to teach us God’s Word, because only the truth of God’s Word can tenderize the tough areas of our lives and heal our hardened hearts so that instead of being gruff we can be gentle. What about you are you responding out of hurt or out of healing? Third:

  1. Give Grace not judgement

To be a person who is gentle is to be a person who gives grace to others. Grace is “unmerited favor,” which means we shouldn’t try to make people pay for or earn our gentleness. Ephesians 4:2 says, “Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love.”Why do we need to bear with one another, because only God is perfect. Your spouse will disappoint you, your family will fail you and your friends will let you down. Your church will disappoint you and drop the ball and your pastor isn’t going to meet all your expectations. The time will come when you will have a legitimate complaint, you will be right, and they will be wrong. This is the crossroads of gentleness. Which path will you take? Condemnation and the cold shoulder, or grace and gentleness? Before you make that decision, remind yourself how gentle Jesus is toward imperfect people just like you. We can choose to live our lives disappointed and angry with everyone around us, or we can be free to forgive because we are filled with the fruit of God’s Spirit. God can use us to heal hurting hearts when we share His gift of gentleness with others. When we see people stuck in the deceitful web of sin, the Bible challenges us to not talk about them but to go and talk to them. Even though we may be really upset about what they’re doing, we won’t win them over by harsh words. Galatians 6:1 instructs us to restore those who have slipped into sin gently,“Brothers, if someone is caught in a sin, you who are spiritual should restore him gently. But watch yourself or you also may be tempted.”Gentle words can penetrate a hard heart. When writing to Timothy about how to handle those who cause problems in the church, Paul gives some very practical advice in 2 Timothy 2:25: “Those who oppose him he must gently instruct, in the hope that God will grant them repentance leading them to a knowledge of the truth.”What about you, are you judgmental or gentle toward those who sin differently than you do? Sadly, some who call themselves Christians are about as gentle as a cheese grater.

  1. Be Accepting not Rejecting

When someone accepts Jesus as their Savior they don’t just become part of our fellowship they become part of God’s family, the body of Christ. As we just talked about none of us are perfect, but we need to accept one another. Nothing feels worst then being rejected and nothing feels better than being accepted. Romans 15:7 says: “Accept one another, just as Christ also accepted us to the glory of God.”Remember Christ invites us to partner with Him in His church, and He does this not when we have it all together but when we are weary from carrying the baggage of our brokenness. He accepts us where we are. This is not a call to like and tolerate sin but to love sinners. Whenever you feel temped to judge another Christian, just pause and reflect on how much Jesus has forgiven you. Are you relying on the Savior or on self? Are you being humble or hurtful? Are you giving Grace or judgement? Are you being accepting or rejecting?

 

 

 


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29. Cultivating Christ Like Character, Gentleness – Part 1

Matthew 11:28-30

28 Then Jesus said, “Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle at heart, and you will find rest for your souls.30 For my yoke is easy to bear, and the burden I give you is light.”

As we continue in Galatians 5 looking at cultivating Christ like character we come to the eight virtue in the fruit of the Spirit, Gentleness. Gentleness is something we all want but very few of us give, we want people around us to be understanding, kind, and gentle, but are we? And what really is gentleness? The dictionary defines it as being considerate, mild and soft. As a result, when we think of meek, we often think of weak, but the biblical definition is so much richer. In the Greek, the language in which this passage in Galatians 5 was originally written, words were extremely precise and expressive. When the Greeks developed a word, they not only gave it a careful definition, they almost always illustrated it. By painting a mental picture, people not only understood the meaning of the word but could gauge when they were missing the mark. Their definition of gentleness was “power under control,” The word was used to describe a wild stallion that had been tamed or broken. The tamed stallion still retained all of its power only now it was productive instead of destructive. God cultivated the fruit of gentleness in our lives so that instead of being wild animals who end up hurting and bruising others we can help and bless them. To be gentle does not mean to be weak and wimpy, it means to have strength, but to have it under control. Interestingly, only two people in the Bible are called gentle, Jesus and Moses, and neither of them were weak men. Both were very strong masculine men, but their power was in the hands of the Master. When God “gentles” us, we become powerful under His control. Whose hands are the reigns of your life in, is your strength controlled by self or the Savior? Meek is not weak, after all Jesus in the sermon on the mount said: “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.”Now the Bible is clear that those who call Christ their master will display gentleness. Philippians 4:5 challenges Christians to, “Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near.”As we walk closely with Him, His gentleness will rub off on us. In fact, that’s the only way that we can be gentle. When it comes to gentleness the Bible gives us two tasks:

  1. Pursue it.

We can’t just sit back and hope that we’ll become gentle. 1 Timothy 6:11 says, “But you, man of God, flee from all this, and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance and gentleness.” The word, “pursue” means to chase after it, to make gentleness a priority worth pursuing. Sadly, very few Christians make gentleness a priority. Instead of letting Christ cultivating God’s gift of gentleness in our lives we get caught up in being gruff. Then we turn around and blame our insensitivity on others, claiming that they make us angry. So, as we refuse to take responsibility for what is in our heart and the hurt it has caused we create deeper hurt.  The truth is other people don’t make us angry, the anger was already in us they just put pressure on us and what was in us came out of us. Like a skunk or a rose, when you put pressure on them they will give of a sent from within them. You don’t make the smell it was in them all along.  So what scent is coming out of your heart when the pressure is on, is it the fragrance of God’s gentleness or the stench of self?  Not only are we called to pursue gentleness but second we are called to:

  1. Put it on.

Once we find gentleness, we’re to clothe ourselves with it. Through an act of the will we decide to put it on, much like we put on our clothes. Colossians 3:12 says: “Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.”The problem is that many of us view the garments of gentleness as outdated and old fashioned. We want to be hip and cool. Because we care more about how we look than how we live. That is why when it comes to Gentleness today we could call this the forgotten or the forsaken fruit, because gentleness is something we see as a weakness instead of a strength. When we look at Gentleness through a worldly lens instead of the Word’s we will see it as a burden instead of a blessing. That’s because a worldly lens views life from the perspective of self instead of service. We reject gentleness because we don’t want to get used and abused and instead of us getting walked on we end up stepping on and hurting others instead of helping and serving them. That’s why today there are more hurtful horses than humble ones. So, what about you, do you see gentleness as a gift from God or a gag gift? Is your power under Christ’s control or out of control? Are you helping or hurting those around you?