Live The Golden Rule And Pay It Forward With Random Acts Of Kindness

Hello and welcome to Social Media Ministries. Thank you so much for making this a part of your day. My name is Spencer Coffman. Today we have a great message, something that you pretty much already know about, but you need to start doing more of.

So, if this is your first time here I encourage you to check out the links below in the description, or if you’re listening somewhere, find the source, track it back, go to the YouTube channel. You can check out all of our videos there. You can check out the descriptions. You can click on links. You can have all kinds of sermons.

You can also follow us on social media. Instagram is good there. You can see all of our thumbnail images and then click directly to each of the messages that you can listen to and conveniently share with others on your social media.

Why do I ask you to do that? Well, it’s because the purpose of Social Media Ministries is to spread the living Word of God to as many people as possible through – guess what? – the use of social media. How can we do that? Well, I can’t simply share a message onto a thousand different social media accounts. That’s where you come in. We need your support to help spread the living Word of God, the Bible, the reason we are all alive on this earth, to share God with others.

So, let’s get started. What is one way you can share God without intentionally doing so or without really realizing it, without having to preach, without having to get things in front of people other than sharing or clicking on a link? The one way or one of the ways is by doing acts of kindness, random acts of kindness, or acts of random kindness – ARK, Acts of Random Kindness. This is something that you can do, and it’s riddled in our society.

You have been taught to do this from a very young age. How have you been taught? Well, were you a Boy Scout, were you a Cub Ccout, were you a Girl Scout, were you in 4-H or any of those clubs? If you were, a lot of those clubs really hit home.

For example, Boy Scouts, one of their mottos is, “Do a good turn daily.” What is a good turn? That means, “Oh, we’re going to do a good turn, make sure that I signal, make sure I look both ways and turn the car, boom. That’s a good turn.” No, a good turn is doing a good deed. What is a deed? “Oh, a contract, let me write up a contract. Here you go, sign it. We are gonna deed a title over.” No, no, no, this means doing something good, helping out your neighbor.

Maybe you’re walking by the street, there’s an old man raking his lawn. Stop, help him out. Rake the lawn. He says, “Oh, let me pay you.” “No, no, it’s okay. Keep your money.” Just do something good for someone else. Take the money you were going to pay me, buy the – give it to the next person’s groceries or the gas or wherever. Encourage them to keep doing good turns. That’s the point. That’s how we can share the love of Christ.

All of these clubs, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, 4-H, they all have one thing in common. Boy Scouts even had reverence as a part of their oath, their laws – duty to God, duty to country, duty to self, be reverent. A lot of these clubs have that in them. They’ve simply forgotten. Man, mankind, humankind has corrupted it.

Well, really, let’s get down to the heart of the matter. The men, the fathers, have fallen out. They’ve fallen away, they’ve dropped the baton and slacked on their duty. They aren’t leading Boy Scouts anymore. Some troops have them, but most don’t. So what happened?

Well, the women said, “Hey, this is not right. We need to make sure our kids still have this.” And, they picked up the baton and went in and really did a great job making sure that our kids still have something to do. They’ve taken over a lot of these clubs, they’ve kept it going, and in the process what has happened? Men neglected their duties, and, and women have picked it up. And, now we don’t know what’s going on anymore in there, and there’s no communication.

They used to work together. We used to have scout masters, used to have den mothers, and they would work together. But, just like so many marriages, it came apart, and now you have two different things going on and it’s all kinds of chaos and confusion. And, in chaos and confusion, certain things get forgotten, and a lot of times that is God.

So, let’s do something different. Do those random acts of kindness daily. The Golden Rule – do unto others as you want them to do unto you. Do that every day and when someone says, “Why do you do this?” Use that opportunity to share Jesus.

So, let’s look at where the golden rule came from. What is the Golden Rule, first of all? Most people say treat others as you want to be treated, do unto others as you want done unto yourself, some variation of that. Well, if we go to Matthew, if you have your Bible, turn to Matthew, the Book of Matthew, and if you don’t know where that is, it’s about in the middle of your Bible, so go there. If you don’t have your Bible, don’t worry, I’m going to read you the Verse.

Matthew Chapter 7, Verse 12, 7:12, so let’s go there, 7:12, it says, “Ask…” – wait a minute, 7:12, it says, “So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law of the Prophets.”

Alright, do to others what you would have them do to you, sounds pretty much like the Golden Rule to me. That came straight from the Bible. This is Jesus speaking. So, if Jesus says do to others what you would have them do to you, and all of these clubs modeled that behavior, they were – originated from the Words of Jesus Christ. Somehow they forgot that. Bring it back, you can remind people, we can bring it on and start paying it forward again.

So, why are the people of this world so selfish and self-centered? If all of these clubs, 4-H, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, Cub Scouts, a lot of these different church groups, programs, school programs, encourage people to be kind, to pay it forward, to do a random act of kindness, to model the Golden Rule, why are so many people so self-centered and selfish and downright evil?

Well, the answer is because Satan has dominion over the Earth. Yes, this is not the world of God, here. This is Satan’s domain. Satan is the king of this kingdom. God is the King of a heavenly Kingdom.

Let’s go to 2 Corinthians 4:4. So, turn with me, please. This is an important Verse that has a lot of misinterpretations, 2 Corinthians 4:4 reads, “The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so they cannot see the light of the Gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.” Alright, we’re going to unpack this here. Start writing this down.

The god of this age – okay, in the Bible here, if you read it with me and you are looking at those words, it doesn’t say the God capital “G.” It is god with a lowercase “g.” Now, if you’re familiar with how biblical writings are, any time you see the word God with a capital “G” it is referring to Yahweh, God, Jesus, our God, okay, holy. If you see it with a lowercase “g,” it’s a false god, it’s an idol, it’s something else. When people say, “Oh, the Greek and Roman gods…,” they put a lower “g,” okay?

The god of this age, who’s the god of this – and what is this age? What does this age mean? Well, this age is the age of time that we’re in – this earth, this realm, this area. The god of this space, of this world, has blinded the minds of the unbelievers. What is an unbeliever? Someone who doesn’t know Christ. So, the god of this world has blinded them.

Pretty much it means that if you see someone out there who is sinning and who is doing wrong and who really doesn’t seem to care, it’s because they don’t have Christ in them. They literally do not know any better. They don’t know what they’re doing is wrong. You might say, “Oh, everyone has a conscience.” Okay, they do but only if someone gives it to them, only if the Holy Spirit convicts them. How do they get that? You!

You can give it to them by sharing Jesus with them, showing them right from wrong, teaching them, and taking the blinders off so that now they will be filled with light and they will see. The god of this age, Satan, has blinded unbelievers.

Now, some people may say, “No, no, no, this is in the future. This is something that hasn’t happened yet, and it’s going to happen later where everyone will become blinded by the god of this age when the Antichrist comes down and the end times happen.” Okay, well, this was in Corinthians. It’s a letter to the Corinthians written at that time. Therefore, it applied then, it applies now, it applies in the future, it applies all time.

Satan has dominion of this Earth. Unbelievers are cold. If you remember that, we talked about that weeks ago. You can click on – if you’re watching on YouTube, you can click on a card up here to check out that message. Otherwise, I encourage you to find it. It’s called Be Hot, on our YouTube channel, on our social media. Find that. Unbelievers are cold. They don’t know any better. They don’t have Christ in them. It’s your job to help that happen.

Now, Satan rules this earth, so unbelievers are unknowingly succumbing to his way of life. They are his robots really. They think like he wants them to think, and they do what he wants them to do. And, they don’t know any better. Satan has the unbelievers. That’s why he attacks the Christians. He doesn’t need to attack someone who’s already on his team. They are succumbing to evil.

We’re going to go to John 8:44, so turn with me there, 8:44, John 8:44, “You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desire. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies.”

This is Jesus talking. This continues on with some great, great words, some good Verses. Read it. If you don’t have your Bible, come back, check out the description. All of these Verses will be referenced in there. Read them, talk about them with others, study them – do everything you can.

But, what does this whole Verse mean? Well, it says you belong to your father the devil. Who is He talking to? He’s speaking to people on this earth. This is when Jesus was on the Earth speaking to others. He’s telling them, “You belong to your father, the devil.” How do you not belong to him? Well, you become a Christian. Now you belong to your heavenly Father.

Okay, right there, why is God called our heavenly Father? “Oh, it’s because our mom and our dad are here on Earth, humans.” Uh-uh. Uh, yes it is. It’s because the devil is the father of this Earth. Whoa, wait a minute. Right here, “You belong to your father, the devil,…you want to carry out your father’s desire.”

Isn’t that true? So, we have a father here, the devil, we have our earthly mother and father, biological parents or adopted human, human parents, and then we have our heavenly Father. Now, what children don’t want to make their parents proud, whether it’s their adopted – whatever, their human parents – however it may be?

Okay, you could hate your parents, but deep down there’s still something in you that if your dad came up to you and said, “Son, daughter, I am so proud of you.” That would make you feel good.

Now, inherently we want to please our fathers, so if your father is the Devil here on earth, whether you know it or not, you want to please him. Don’t make the Devil your father. Break free from that, get rid of him, and accept your heavenly Father.

Okay, now, why don’t you want the Devil to be your earthly father? Well, he was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him, none, okay? When he lies he speaks his native language.

I mean that is some significant stuff right there. Lying is his native language. That’s not good. There is no truth in him. He is incapable of telling the truth. It is – he has become so evil, so corrupt, that it is no longer in him, and now he is a poison that corrupts everyone else around him. Get yourself as far away as possible.

Accept your heavenly Father by accepting Jesus Christ as your Savior and become a child of Jesus rather than a child of the Devil. You need to be different. How do you display that you are a child of God? Random acts of kindness is a great way to do it. Put those ideals in motion, start doing random acts of kindness each day! Do it humbly, though.

Don’t go out there and see someone that needs help, “Oh, I got it, I got it,” and help this person and then make sure, “Okay, everybody, I helped him.” No, look around, this person needs help. Alright, I’ll help him.

Just like someone – I, I heard this story one time about a man in line to pay his power bill or something like that. This is a Dave Ramsey story. It’s a friend of his. He talks about it all the time on how there was a single mom or something like that struggling to pay her bill, and he was in line behind her and noticed it. And then, later on, he went down and paid her power bill a year in advance. Whether this is a true story or not, I don’t know, but the point is is it’s a cool story.

He did it at a later time. He didn’t just walk up and say, “Hey, excuse me, let me pay your bill a year in advance.” No, he did his business, she went home, he went home. He didn’t even know her. He didn’t even say “hi” to her probably, but he then later went back, paid it secretly a year in advance – random act of kindness. He was humble about it, and he didn’t brag about it.

Now, you also want to make sure that these acts don’t go unnoticed. Do you think that lady noticed when her power bill was paid a year in advance? Of course, she noticed! But, she didn’t know who did it, so there is a missed opportunity right there. If you perform these random acts of kindness and people notice, they should notice you are the one who did it. Why? Because you have the opportunity then to share Jesus.

So, your goal in performing the act of kindness is to not only get someone else to pass it on, that’s really what you can do if you don’t want to say, “Oh, I’m doing this because I’m a Christian, and I really just want to pass and share the love of Jesus with other people.”

If that’s not your calling or something you’re uncomfortable with – number one, you could get out of your comfort zone, but if you don’t want to do that, that’s fine. Just say you know what? My goal in doing this is that you will reciprocate this kindness to another and just keep going. Tell them if you have to. Tell them to get the act of random kindness or the pay it forward movement rolling. But, if you can, don’t leave it at that. Share Christ, take the opportunity.

Paul talks about this a lot, or the Apostle Paul. Saul says, use every opportunity you can. When people question you, it’s kind of like apologetics. If people say, “Why are you doing this? Why are you so full of hope and joy?” Take that opportunity to share the joy that is within you. Why is there joy within you? It is because you have a heavenly Father. You are no longer a father [child] of the Devil who rules this Earth.

Your Kingdom is somewhere else. You are here on a foreign assignment to do as much good as you can and to share as much as possible. So, start doing one good turn daily, and if someone notices and if someone asks, take that opportunity to share Christ.

Let’s pray:

Lord Jesus, thank you for this simple yet powerful message that you have given us today. I ask that each and every person out there would be touched, that they would be inspired to go home or to go out there and do something for others. And, whether they use that opportunity to share you or not, the act of doing something good, the act of being kind, is sharing you because in doing that, they are being more like you, and through time people will notice.

Lord, I ask that for those of – those people out there who are more outgoing and confident that they would be called, that when they do an act of kindness, that someone would notice and ask them why and that they would share you.

And, for those out there who aren’t as confident, Lord I ask that they would also be asked and that when they get asked that you would give them the opportunity and the courage to speak, just like you did with Moses and Aaron way back when when they said, “Hey, I stutter. I can’t talk well.” And, you will speak for them. You will put the words in their mouth.

Lord, speak for these people, have them do the random acts of kindness each day, give them opportunities to do so, and if they miss the opportunity give them a little bit of a conviction so that they find and act on the next opportunity.

In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Thank you so much again for being here today. I really hope that you will go out there and start consciously making an effort to be kind and to help others and do and live the Golden Rule.

Thank you.