What Is Lovingkindness?

   

” Lovingkindness is pure love from the heart, that is full of love and mercy toward other people.”
By Joan Jessalyn Cox

“The Lord has appeared of old unto me, saying, Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love: therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee.” Jeremiah 31:3

Lovingkindness is the holy love of God. When Christians express lovingkindness, there is no hardheartedness toward people, only their trustworthy, compassionate concern. They have read the manual to a good life, which is the Holy Bible, and with true faith in Jesus Christ, they leave the judging of another person’s life to God.

 Christians who have grown past their childish self-righteous need to condemn others and they accept their fellow human being as needing their love and comforting compassion, they can help instead of hurt people emotionally, by showing them lovingkindness. When God’s holy love comes from the heart in lovingkindness, that person can be a true minister to anyone in great need. That love of Jesus Christ the Son of God, is the Holy Spirit flowing through the believer with faith of God.

Lovingkindness is the amazing grace, the awesome love of God that produces mountain moving faith of God to rescue, restore and revive all the people who are hurting from sin. The sinner’s bruised and hurting heart responds to the urgent call of salvation from a sincere message preached from an honest minister. When that compelling call to a hungry heart to come to Jesus Christ and repent of their sins leads his people home tenderly, and gently to the loving arms of Jesus Christ their Savior they feel the lovingkindness to heal their hurting heart.

People who have lived a troubled life from making wrong choices need the honest lovingkindness that comes from spiritually mature Christians who give the wounded person uplifting love, prayer, and encouragement. Lovingkindness is given to troubled people to show them Jesus Christ loves them just as much as he loves every other Christian.

Lovingkindness is pure love from the heart, that is full of compassion and mercy toward other people. A beautiful attitude is like sunshine to the soul. It expresses lovingkindness to others.

Lovingkindness is an expression of one’s nature that is concerned with other’s welfare and the alleviation of suffering. Lovingkindness is the desire to help others above oneself. It creates goodwill toward others.

“Charity never fails.”  “And now abides faith, hope, charity, these three: but the greatest of these is charity.”  1 Corinthians 13:13

Charity is that kind loving nature that is interested in helping others above oneself. Charity is spiritual love because it comes from the heart, it’s holy love toward others.

A tender love toward others is that caring and concerned, generous nature that creates good will toward those whose life they touch.

It takes a heart full of love for others from people who want to help feed the needy food when they are hungry, and spiritual food when they feel empty, hopeless, and confused.  

When Christians add an even greater desire to feed people the gospel of a loving God, it will give them faith, hope and truth that will feed their soul, it can heal their troubled heart, and soul, that affects their mind, and body.

“For thy lovingkindness is before my eyes: and I have walked in thy truth.” Psalms 26:3

The commandment of Jesus was to “love your neighbor as yourself” and to provide them with divine care, which is through genuine love that you will feed a friend, neighbor, brother, or stranger. You will accept the calling of the holy heart of God to feed the poor.

People with God’s own lovingkindness within their heart become their best self when they want to feed their faith with sound truth. Faith will feed the hungry in spirit spiritual food from the Bible, which is the manual for an abundant life. It will help to liberate them from the entanglement of any interaction with evil intrusions into their life to rob them of a better way of living.

My husband and I were so blessed a few weeks back to have several of our family members to come to our home for a visit and dinner together. 

 The fellowship was extra sweet because we would see one of our great grandchildren for the first time.

Our grandson, and his precious wife and their two children were walking up to the door. As I watched them nearing the porch, I heard our grandson say to his three-year-old little boy.

“We are going to see Grandfather Cox.” His son piped up. “Grandfather clocks, I want to see grandfather clocks!”  That cute misunderstanding, really tickled us.

It was his little nearly two-year-old daughter that we had never seen before. I was told she had to get to know you before she would take up with you. We had bought four children’s storybooks, so hopefully I could get to hold her and read her a fun story. One book I selected was “Wonky Donkey”. I bought it because I saw the video of the grandmother reading it to her grandchild and laughing.

I already loved our great granddaughter just from her sweet smiles and antics I saw in the videos on my social media connection.

She was still shying away from me, so her precious mother pulled up a chair right in front of my recliner and held our little one on her lap. She read Wonky Donkey to both of us. I was already laughing as the baby girl stared at the pictures in the book as her mother flipped the page. It showed the picture of the donkey with one eye closed; he was a wonky donkey because he only had one eye.

I was laughing, but the baby with a tiny finger touched the closed eye and uttered aww.. and you could feel the empathy in that baby’s voice for the donkey with one eye.

Her mother, with a nurturing warm and tender voice, said to her baby girl, “It’s alright, the donkey will be alright.” The mother’s lovingkindness for her child immediately comforted that tiny babies caring heart for the animal that she saw was hurt.

I’m giving you illustrations of lovingkindness, because like the word of an old soft drink ad from many years ago said, “What the world needs now, is love, sweet love that’s the only thing we have just too little of…” (If I didn’t recall the words just right, it’s been many years ago since I heard the jingle.)

Through all the pain, sorrow and evil activity in the world, God still has people who have lovingkindness that will help others.

Authors down through time have usually written poems, songs and stories that depicted the mother’s heart of love for their children with the tenderness of lovingkindness, but what in the world happened that changed that tender, warm mother’s love so drastically? Only God knows!

Lovingkindness is not dead, nor has it gone away completely and aren’t you happy, that there are still people in this world that love, purely and peacefully, from a heart full of God’s holy lovingkindness.

There are more stories of lovingkindness generosity than you might know, and you won’t see them until you look for them.

Our daughter and her husband were passing by a car dealership last evening and since they needed a new pickup, they looked first at the pickups, but soon they shifted to looking at the SUV’s because of the very high prices on the pickups.

A young car salesman came out and talked to them about buying the SUV they were looking at.

They found a vehicle they liked but could only afford if their payment remained the same as the one they were currently paying on.

The young man told them the following story as they waited to complete the sale.

A woman came into the car dealership a few days before, and she told him she had to have a car, her car would no longer run. She was a single mother; she had a special needs child and no way to go to her doctor’s appointments.

The young car salesman had told my daughter and son-in-law about his wife being transferred to their area with her work and his being thankful to start work at this dealership.

The young salesman went to the manager and said, we need to get this woman into a car, and he explained the circumstances. He told him I will forego my commission if you can get her into a car.

They got her into a car, and the young salesman didn’t get his commission. He said you know why I wanted to help her so badly? I have a special needs child as well.

No good deed goes unnoticed by God. Good deeds are usually greatly appreciated by the recipient.

“Then she fell on her face, and bowed herself to the ground, and said unto him, Why have I found grace in thy eyes, that thou shouldest take knowledge of me, seeing I am a stranger?”   Ruth 2:10

(this scripture applies to a different incident in biblical times, but the grateful attitude remains the same for current reactions within a grateful person for an expression of lovingkindness.)

I told my daughter; I like what happened.  The Lord brought you along at the right time so that young man would make a sale and get his commission added for that week.

I believe in divine appointments, where God in heaven sees one’s need, and hears the prayers regarding that need, and causes people and places to be rearranged, and prayers answered beyond our awareness.

“Great in counsel, and mighty in work: for thine eyes are open upon all the ways of the sons of men: to give every one according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings:”   Jeremiah 32:17-19

By Joan Jessalyn Cox