SALT WATER

My Dad. Neil Delamater. He is 78 years old and has surfed for 63 years. He taught me when I was 12 years old. I have now surfed for 37 years.

CLEAN WATER

Sompopo. He and his family have a beautiful home where they have a church and host the water project that helps their community.

CALIFORNIA : 1,211 LITERS

EL SALVADOR : 10,000+ LITERS (replacing old system with new system this year)

INDONESIA : 61,471 LITERS

TOTAL : 72,682 LITERS

LIVING WATER

My brotha Curtis. He is moving to Sweden in 12 days to start the Oasis Project . Make sure and check out their heart and follow along at www.curtishunnicutt.com/oasis AMAZING human beings

4 DESCRIPTIONS OF KINDNESS

I want to talk to you today about kindness out of Galatians 5, verse 22 and 23, continuing about the fruit of the Spirit. Now, I don't know if you've been out lately, but you've probably noticed that people aren't expressing a lot of kindness. In fact, it seems to be a quality that's missing. So as followers of Jesus, we are called, of course, to a life of kindness. That's our standard, and so we want to talk about that today. So there's a couple things that we need to point out when we're talking about kindness, and this is again very counter-cultural. It's very counter-intuitive.

We live in a me first, I'm first, you first society. So kindness is really the antithesis of that as we're going to learn. So the first thing that we're talking about when we talk about kindness, this word actually, if you look it up and study it, it actually means a sense of what is right. And so what we're talking about there is this, of course, has to do with how we treat other people. And so when we're talking about a sense of what is right, the question becomes right

for who?

Well, as followers of Jesus, the teachings of Jesus show us to love others. Really the teachings of Jesus encourage us, admonish us to put other people's needs ahead of our needs. So when we're talking about a sense of what is right, we're talking about thinking about what is best for others instead of what is best for, of course, us. So the first thing I want to point out is that kindness is a sense of what is right for other people.

Another way to think of this is being unselfish. Being kind is being unselfish. Being kind is doing what's best for others. Being kind is putting others' needs ahead of our needs. See to talk about hard to put into practice. So first of all, it's a sense of what is right for other people and how our actions, as we're going to learn here, too, action as it relates to others.

So this isn't kindness is not a passive word. Kindness is an action word. It's not a descriptive word. It's an action word. So it's an action as it relates to others. So it's doing what is right in regards to how our actions impact other people. So it's taking someone else's interests and putting them first.

This is the heart of Philippians chapter two, the Knossos passage, where it talks about

Jesus became flesh. He put his own needs ahead of ours. He did not consider equality something to be grasped. Now at the heart of that was this word here, kindness. A sense of what is right action as it relates to others.

Now the third thing I want to point out is that it's rooted in moral goodness. So really kindness is the reference. Kindness means what is morally good. Now you'll notice if you look around, not a lot of people practicing kindness. For the most part, people talking themselves out of kindness, people not practicing kindness.

So again, God's goal in our life is to make us like who? You guessed it, Jesus. So the heart of following Jesus is this word kindness, moral goodness, action as it relates to others. Another way to think of the word kindness is this word gracious. Gracious. Wow.

Very hard to practice kindness. Very hard to practice being gracious, being good to others, being kind to others.

This is the opposite of forcing your opinion on other people.

It's almost goes without saying now that for the most part, people just simply go through

the day and mostly just force their opinions on others. So kindness is listening, kindness is having empathy, kindness is being gracious. Kindness could be thought of as actually listening to other people instead of forcing what you want to say on them.

The source of most conflict happens when we try to force our opinion, our ideas on others instead of making it our goal to be kind, which most often includes the skills of listening and the skills of empathy.

So Jesus following requires us to engage in large amounts of listening, large amounts

of empathy versus what's sort of popular now, which is large amounts of talking and no empathy. So really to follow Jesus, it means that we're to do large amounts of listening, large amounts of empathy, large amounts of trying to understand where other people are coming from. This word is kindness here, really trying to get at and empathize with people and where they're coming from.

Let's go ahead and pray together. Now, Lord, thank you for this explanation of kindness. Help us to understand, help us to listen, help us to have empathy, help us to practice kindness today in Jesus' name. Amen.

Thank you so much for watching today. I'll put a link at the bottom of this video to the other teachings I've done on the other fruit of the spirit. Until next time, have a beautiful day.

TITHING

My biggest mistake since in the 56 months since I have started O C N W T R is that I have done a poor job teaching generosity. I have always practiced tithing (giving 10% of my income to the church) and generosity in my life. God has blessed me immensely through this practice. If you believe in the ministry of Ocean Water please consider tithing your money to the church. Above is a link to our next water project we are going to install at Sompopo’s House. I work full time as a special education teacher. I do not receive a salary from the church. I cover OCNWTR’s expenses with my own tithe and I direct the remaining amount to our water projects.

Have a beautiful day and if you need anything please text me 562-553-2024. Ryan