The Kindness That Turns You

Most of us assume that what finally breaks a habit is a hard enough scare, a low enough bottom, a shame sharp enough to jolt us awake. So we try to frighten ourselves into change, and we are puzzled when the fear wears off and we are back where we started. Paul asks a question that turns that whole method over. He writes, do you not know that God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance? He is saying the thing that actually moves a man to turn is not the lash but the mercy.

Think about what that means for you after a relapse. You brace for God to be cold, to make you earn your way back into his good graces, and instead he is kind, and it is precisely his kindness that loosens your grip on the sin. A man will fight and hide from a God he thinks is only angry. He will finally come home to a God he discovers is patient.

The enemy wants you to read God's slowness to punish as indifference, or to read his kindness as permission. It is neither. It is a hand extended, waiting for you to take it and walk in a new direction.

Lord, thank you that your kindness is real. Let it be what turns me today, not fear, but the gentleness of a Father who has not given up.