Depending on your translation of the Bible , you
may have stumbled across the word
lovingkindness . The word itself seems to have a
bounty of meanings. It can signify mercy,
kindness, goodness, and love.
The word (chacadh in the original language) can
also mean to incline oneself or have mercy
toward one person. This can mean that whoever
exercises chacadh shows favor to a person,
whether they have merited that favor or not.
In the case of the relationship between God and
man, God extends lovingkindness to us. He gives
us mercy, favor, and kindness when we least
deserve it.
And better yet, he does so every day. In this
article, we’ll explore 10 ways we see God’s
lovingkindess on a daily basis.
- God Gives Us New Chances everyday
Lamentations 3:22-23 , “The steadfast love of the
Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an
end; they are new every morning; great is your
faithfulness.”
Have you ever considered how every day is a
blessing? God gives us a chance each day to live
for him and choose to dedicate that day to him.
A new day may not seem like much. But
considering we can’t count that tomorrow will
happen, when we arise every day, we should see
it as a kindness and a blessing. - God Gives Us Opportunities to Love Others
When we experience the lovingkindness of the
Lord, we cannot help but extend the same to
others. When we receive mercy, we ought to
want to give mercy ( Matthew 18:21-35 ).
Not only does God give us a new day to celebrate
his goodness, but we have an opportunity each
day to show others the same goodness we have
experienced.
Others can mean a number of people in our lives,
as we discover in the parable of the Good
Samaritan ( Luke 10 ).
This can mean friends, family members, foes, or
a combination of those things.
No matter how we feel about a particular person,
we can choose to show them the lovingkindness
of the Lord. - God Loves Us No Matter What We Do
As Christians, we can often take advantage of
this. We may choose to sin so that grace may
abound (Romans 6:23 ). When we do this, we
often forget about how much grace has extended
to us in the gap between God’s holiness and our
sin.
Nevertheless, as we seek to pursue the path of
righteousness, many times we fail and fall into
temptation or sin.
That’s where God’s lovingkindness steps in .
Similar to the parable of the prodigal son, God
loves us like a Father, no matter what we’ve
done.
What an amazing God we have who still loves us
no matter what we have done. That we can walk
in his new mercies every morning! - God Is Lovingkindness
We can often overlook how God is love in
Scripture. How he is the embodiment of mercy,
of forgiveness, of kindness, and of love.
Galatians 5:22 calls the nine fruit listed the fruit
of the Spirit for the reason. Because the Holy
Spirit (God) embodies all of those attributes. God
is love, patience, kindness, goodness, etc.
He perfectly exercises lovingkindness because he
embodies it.
1 John 4:7-8 says, “Beloved, let us love one
another, for love is from God, and whoever loves
has been born of God and knows God. Anyone
who does not love does not know God, because
God is love.” - God Keeps His Promises
Lovingkindness also has ties with biblical
covenants . For those unfamiliar with the Old
Testament covenant, what would happen is two
parties would walk through an animal they’d
sawed in half. What they essentially said, by
doing this, was, “If I fail to keep my end of the
bargain, may what happened to this animal
happen to me.”
Yikes. They really meant their promises.
And God does the same. He has given us, as
believers, a new covenant. Not only does he
promise us eternal and new life in him, but he
also promises to return. And if we know God, we
know that he doesn’t forsake an oath.
In our own personal lives, we can know that God
has a plan for us and can see it unfold on a daily
basis. Even when we don’t seem to witness him
working, he works nonetheless.
Photo Credit: ©Unsplash/phaeton_vision - God Delights in Showing Lovingkindness
Does anyone ever begrudgingly give you a gift?
Maybe they felt like they had to get you a
Christmas gift, and you can feel the annoyance
they have when they hand you the present.
Doesn’t that cheapen the experience ? Even if
they give you something you desired, knowing
that they did so in a grumbling manner makes
you feel guilty for the gift.
Fortunately for us, we have a God who delights in
giving us lovingkindness. He does so willingly
without expectation of a reward of some kind. No
strings attached. He gives us mercy and grace
whether we want him to or not, because he loves
it and because he loves us.
On a daily basis, he delights in showing us acts
of lovingkindness. Look closely enough, and
you’ll see them. - God’s Lovingkindness Never Fails
What’s my biggest fear of getting into a
relationship? That one day he’ll wake up and say,
“I don’t love you anymore.”
Amazingly, God’s lovingkindness does not work
that way. Lovingkindness means a steadfast
mercy, grace, and kindness. That means on a
day to day basis, we don’t have to fear that his
love for us will disappear or wither. Because he
loves without ceasing.
This may seem like a given for those of us who
have been in the church for a long time and have
heard that God loves us every Sunday. But we
cannot discount the magnitude of the everlasting,
unstoppable love of God. - God’s Lovingkindness Requires No Good Deeds on Our Part
Often, in the church, a sneaky idea has pervaded
throughout church history that we somehow have
to earn the love of God. If we experience the love
of God, it should involuntarily show through our
actions.
But nothing voluntary that we do can earn us
more favor from him.
This means, on a daily basis, that even if we
pray, read Scripture, and help others, this doesn’t
somehow make God love us anymore. We should
do those things as we want to grow in closer
relationship and to be more like God. But if we
wane in our Bible studies or in our prayers, this
doesn’t make our Lord love us any less. - God’s Lovingkindness Makes Us Want to Grant Mercy to Others
As mentioned in our second point, there’s a
particularly interesting parable on an unforgiving
servant. When a master pardons him from way
more than a lifetime’s worth of debt, he is
exuberant. It would’ve taken multiple lifetimes to
eradicate that dearth of funds, perhaps even an
eternity.
But then, moments later, he turns around and
throws his own servant in jail for a minor debt.
Jesus preaches on this because there was a
massive cognitive dissonance that the first
servant experienced. He had experienced so
much mercy and forgiveness that he ought to
have done the same to those around him.
If we are believers and we have experienced the
incredible lovingkindness of the Lord, we cannot
help but show the same to others. - God Reveals Himself to Us Through Lovingkindness
If you want to know what a person is like, see
how they act.
The same applies to our Lord. If you want to
know his character, see what he does.
Throughout Scripture, and in our own lives on a
daily basis, we see God, time and time again,
give mercy, forgiveness, and kindness to sinners
who don’t seem to deserve it. Us.
We have the opportunity to know more about our
Savior through his acts of love.
This matters because we can often overlook
God’s mercies every day. When we wait for him
to move for us in big ways (job promotions, a
new child, finding our spouse), we can miss the
lovingkindness he bestows to us on a daily basis.
When we fully grasp that a God who is holy and
perfect wants to come into communion with us
and wants to exercise mercy and kindness to us,
even though we have not earned it, this changes
our hearts. Or at least, it should.
We cannot help but want to extend the same
lovingkindness to others once we have
experienced it ourselves.
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