The Fitting Room- Chapters 10 & 11

The Fitting Room – Chapters 10 & 11 from Bloom (in)courage on Vimeo.

The idea of kindness is so simple. It means that you open the door for someone or that you just smile when there was an opportunity to do something else, right?

Well, I guess so.

But as Kelly says on page 134, you can fuel it “by your flesh in the early stages,” but that won’t last. You eventually realize that in order to have “sustainable kindness” you have to have something more powerful-Jesus Christ Himself.

Any attempts that we make to be “kind” are scratching the surface of the virtue that the Lord wants us to display for the watching world. And I love that she talks about spending time with kind people, because I think that’s the best way to learn how to live a life of true kindness-by watching others do it well. Those who have tapped into the true source and are now living as extensions of Christ’s kindness. I wonder if, like me, you can imagine a few of these people now? Make it a point to connect with them and learn from them. I’m willing to bet that by spending your hours around people who live out kindness, you will be inspired to do the same.

One of my favorite sentences in this chapter is on page 137, and it says: “These characteristics are the result of a transformed heart, a heart the Holy Spirit has lovingly meddled with over the years.”

I don’t know about you, but I want to invite Him every day to do that beautiful meddling…

Intricately associated with all other virtues is humility.

We can’t begin to live a life that looks like the Lord’s until we have learned to humble ourselves and recognize what we really are. All the building up of self that this world wants to encourage is a lie intended to convince us that we have no need for a Savior. We have to push back on the world’s idea of what makes us worthy…the bottom line is that we aren’t worthy at all if we don’t have Him. We are praying for all of you this week-asking the Lord to grant you the beautiful gift of humility and the ability to live it out with genuine, God-breathed kindness.