Kindness comes with staying the Course
Some messages aren’t planned.
They don’t begin with an outline, a sermon, or a carefully crafted script. Sometimes they begin with a feeling—one that won’t leave you alone until you sit with it long enough to understand why it’s there.
That’s what happened to me recently.
I found myself reaching for an old devotional that once belonged to my grandmother. After she passed away, it found its way to my mother. After losing my mom, it eventually found its way to me. Every crease in its pages tells the story of hands that searched for God before mine ever did.
When I opened the book, I landed on a chapter about kindness.
At first, I thought that seemed almost too simple. Kindness is one of those words we’ve heard so many times that it risks losing its weight. But as I sat with the Scripture, I realized kindness isn’t really about being nice.
It’s about resisting the temptation to become someone pain is trying to make you become.
Life has a way of inviting us into retaliation.
Not always in obvious ways.
Sometimes retaliation looks like proving someone wrong. Sometimes it looks like replaying conversations in our minds until resentment feels justified. Sometimes it’s withdrawing our compassion because someone else refused to extend theirs.
The world tells us that strength is getting even.
The Kingdom often teaches that strength is remaining whole.
That doesn’t mean allowing people to mistreat you. Boundaries are healthy. Walking away is sometimes necessary. But there’s a difference between protecting your peace and poisoning your own heart.
I’ve been thinking about how often growth arrives disguised as disruption.
The seasons that shape us rarely announce themselves. They usually arrive looking like unanswered prayers, unexpected endings, uncomfortable conversations, or circumstances we never would’ve chosen for ourselves.
Our first instinct is to fix everything.
To regain control.
To force the story back into something familiar.
But what if some seasons aren’t meant to be controlled?
What if they’re meant to be endured?
Maybe faith isn’t always about changing your circumstances.
Maybe it’s about allowing your circumstances to change you—without letting them harden you.
That’s a much more difficult assignment.
Anyone can love when life is easy.
Anyone can be patient when nothing is testing their patience.
Character isn’t revealed in comfort.
It’s revealed in conflict.
The older I get, the more I wonder if God’s greatest work isn’t simply changing our situations, but changing the people walking through them.
Maybe every difficult person becomes an invitation to practice grace.
Maybe every delay becomes an invitation to trust.
Maybe every disappointment reveals where we’ve placed our hope.
Maybe the blessing isn’t waiting on the other side of the trial.
Maybe part of the blessing is the person we’re becoming while we’re still in it.
I don’t believe we accidentally encounter the moments that stretch us.
I believe they reveal us.
They expose our fears, our insecurities, our need for control, and our desire to protect ourselves at all costs. But they also reveal something else: our capacity to become more loving, more patient, more compassionate, and more like the God we’re trying to follow.
Kindness, then, isn’t weakness.
It’s courage.
It’s choosing not to let someone else’s actions dictate the condition of your spirit.
It’s refusing to trade your peace for the temporary satisfaction of revenge.
It’s trusting that justice doesn’t always require your participation.
Sometimes it only requires your surrender.
That doesn’t make the journey easier.
But it does make it meaningful.
So wherever you find yourself today—whether you’re walking through uncertainty, disappointment, or a season that seems to make no sense—I hope you remember this:
Stay the course.
Not because it’s easy.
Not because every question has an answer.
But because who you’re becoming may be far more important than where you’re trying to arrive.
And maybe, just maybe, that’s where God has been working all along.
— PsstolSpeaks
Watch this week’s video, here.
