Called to kindness

October 19, 2006

By Gary Rogers

Kelly Yeomans was 13 years old and lived in northern England. She was an overweight teenager who became the target of terrible harassment from her peers. For three years she endured taunts and other abusive behavior in the Allenton neighborhood of Derby, 130 miles northwest of London.

To avoid being seen in exercise clothes she would always be the last student to leave her gym class. At one point approximately 15 teenagers gathered outside her family’s house and shouted abuse.

One evening before she went to bed Kelly told her parents, “It has nothing to do with you, but I can’t stand it.” While they slept that Sunday night, Kelly took a fatal overdose of painkillers.

This type of harassment is so widespread in Britain that according to Pauline Hasler, director of the Anti-Bullying Campaign, 10 people die every year as a result of bullying.

Christians should be known as the kindest, most gentle, sensitive and caring people on the planet. We should never target someone’s weakness. We should never allow ourselves to be used by the enemy to target someone’s low self-esteem or shattered self-image.

It is our responsibility to encourage one another. We are to be the ones building people up, not demolishing them. For our words and actions to be pleasing to the Lord, they should be seasoned with exhortation and encouragement that spurs others to go on for God and be their best.

“Let your speech always be with grace, seasoned with salt, that you may know how you ought to answer each one” (Colossians 4:6, NKJV).

“Pleasant words are like a honeycomb, sweetness to the soul and health to the bones” (Proverbs 16:24).

“A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in settings of silver” (Proverbs 25:11).

“A wholesome tongue is a tree of life, but perverseness in it breaks the spirit” (Proverbs 15:4).

“Let no corrupt word proceed out of your mouth, but what is good for necessary edification, that it may impart grace to the hearers” (Ephesians 4:29).

“Do not speak evil of one another” (James 4:11).

Gary Rogers is senior pastor of First Assembly of God in Coweta, Okla.