Have you ever looked at a situation — maybe something heartbreaking or just plain unfair — and found yourself questioning God? You’re not alone. In this episode, Kimberly and John look at one of the most common questions people wrestle with: Is God actually fair? And the answer might just flip everything you thought you knew completely upside down.
Starting with God’s own Word, they discuss what the Bible actually says about God’s nature — that he is infinitely righteous, just, and loving — and why that matters when we’re tempted to judge God by our own limited, human perspective. Here’s the twist though: when you really look at what God has done for us, the only one who hasn’t been treated fairly in this whole story… is God himself. He paid a debt he didn’t owe, for people who didn’t deserve it, and then on top of that, he offers us eternal life, rewards, and the fruit of his Spirit. That’s not fair — it’s lavish, extravagant grace. And honestly? We wouldn’t have it any other way.
Key Takeaways:
Jacob Paul: Welcome to the truth and love podcast with your hosts Kimberly Faith and John Mack. The truth and love podcast seeks to present God’s timeless truth through the lens of his remarkable love.
Kimberly Faith: That I think today we’re gonna talk about a subject that lots of people talk about.
John McLarty: A lot of confusion.
Kimberly Faith: A lot of confusion. And this podcast was actually inspired by a message I heard in church and a comment. It wasn’t even the main point of the message. A comment by the the pastor, and it was the lead pastor in a church I was visiting.
John McLarty: Mhmm.
Kimberly Faith: And he he said he said, God is fair. And I thought about that. I thought, how many people really judge God to not be fair?
John McLarty: To not be fair. Yeah. And how many or that’s yeah. How often do we hear that’s not fair?
Kimberly Faith: Yeah, absolutely. And I think, especially when we see suffering and it seems very undeserved, or we see people who get more than they deserve, or they win the lottery or something that we just go, well, that person didn’t deserve that. You know? And I and I’ll tell you, I’ve heard I’ve heard people and I think we all, to some degree, question whether God is fair Because our human nature and our limited perception, I think, give us a limited perspective on God.
John McLarty: Right. It’s without a doubt, things happen all over the world and often
Kimberly Faith: that actually aren’t fair. Exactly.
John McLarty: All the
Kimberly Faith: time. All the time. I think that
John McLarty: The question is, is that God’s fault?
Kimberly Faith: Right. And and I think I think more what I really wanted to know, and this was kind of his statement kinda piqued my curiosity. I thought, well, I’m gonna see what the Bible says about whether God is fair. Mhmm. And what does that even mean?
And I think
John McLarty: It’s good to go to the Bible.
Kimberly Faith: I mean the word.
John McLarty: That’s when
Kimberly Faith: we teach these basic Bible There’s
John McLarty: an answer there.
Kimberly Faith: There’s a the first place is where do you get your truth from. Right? And Exactly. And so, I think rather than judging situations by what our culture tells us right, by what we feel is right, let’s just look at God’s Word and see what he says. Because you look at different cultures.
In some cultures, justice looks very different from our culture here in The US. For example, if you look at justice in one culture might be a woman accused of adultery means she gets stoned to death, but the man gets off light. Well, in in our culture, we would say, oh, there’s a spider on your neck, dad. Here, let me grab it.
John McLarty: Better get it, Ken.
Kimberly Faith: Lean forward. Alright. Got it. Okay. That was a nice little interruption for our podcast.
Spider was crawling on dad’s neck. I know where he came from.
John McLarty: Oh, is that not gonna be on
Kimberly Faith: our podcast? Podcast, so we’ll just have to go with it. Okay. Because I’m not smart enough to figure out how to shut this thing down and then turn it back in.
John McLarty: Glad you got the spider.
Kimberly Faith: I don’t wanna get lost in your hair.
John McLarty: Well, that would have been hard to do. It’s a good
Kimberly Faith: thing it wasn’t my hair.
John McLarty: That’s for sure.
Kimberly Faith: And actually, this idea of fairness comes back to what do we think is right and wrong. And and honestly, it it’s probably the reason we have a lot of wars because we we talk about what is what is right and fair
John McLarty: Right.
Kimberly Faith: And what is wrong. If if this is based on humanistic ideologies of fairness, then it’s always going to become all kinds of shifting sand. So, what we think is fair and what God thinks is fair is often very different. Very different. Yeah.
Because idea of fairness is shaped on our, like I said earlier, the limited perception, our finite experiences, our emotions, our incomplete understanding of the truth. Well, God is rooted it’s his rooted his is rooted in his perfect unchanging nature as a creator of all things. I love what J. Vernon McGee said, and I don’t know if we’ve used this quote before or not, but I love this quote.
John McLarty: I I love what Jake Vernon McGee used to be on KOFC Christian Radio.
Kimberly Faith: I remember that.
John McLarty: Heard a lot of Jake Vernon McGee.
Kimberly Faith: Well, I don’t know if you ever heard him say this, but he said, quote, this is God’s universe, and God does things his way. You may have a better way, but you don’t have a universe.
John McLarty: That’s perfect.
Kimberly Faith: That’s such a good quote. And I think that we often put ourselves in the place of God and imagine that we have a fairer way of of of doing things or perceiving things, you know, from our little narrow viewpoint, then we don’t have the authority to make that decision, but God does. He has the the right to do that. So this kind
John McLarty: of
Kimberly Faith: goes back to the second concept that we teach, which is
John McLarty: Basic Bible concept.
Kimberly Faith: That’s right. Nature of God. The nature of God. Which, you know, he has three basic components that define his nature, and they’re
John McLarty: Well, they’re right. He’s righteous. He’s just, and he’s loving. Right. And here’s a verse that sums those up.
Kimberly Faith: I was waiting for you to One say verse.
Jacob Paul: Summary
Kimberly Faith: verse. You teach it all the time, and you’re better at
John McLarty: it than I Jeremiah nine twenty three and twenty four. Oh, look. Here’s another one of those jewels in Jeremiah.
Kimberly Faith: We’re gonna call it the jewels from Jeremiah.
John McLarty: Jewel from Jeremiah. Thus says the lord. Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom. That’s that’s kind of a good comment on this.
Kimberly Faith: What’s fair?
John McLarty: Yeah. What’s fair. Right. Let not the mighty man glory in his might, not let the rich man glory in his riches, but let him who glories glory in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the lord, exercising loving kindness, judgment, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, saith the lord.
Jeremiah nine twenty three twenty four. So that verse covers his three nature qualities. Mhmm. He’s righteous, just, and loving. You know, a key to that, though, just to follow-up on that, is he’s infinite.
He’s infinitely righteous. Infinitely just, infinitely loving, which means God cannot be the opposite of that. God cannot be unrighteous, unjust, or unloving.
Kimberly Faith: Or he’s no longer God. Right. Yeah. Yeah. That’s You
John McLarty: know, he he he can’t violate his own nature.
Kimberly Faith: Right. Right.
John McLarty: Or because if you’re infinitely righteous, you can’t do some occasionally unrighteous things.
Kimberly Faith: Right. Well and and that’s that’s the basis of really our entire belief system. When we talk about what’s fair, k, where do we start? If we claim to be Bible believing Christians, born again believers, we have to start with God because it’s his universe, you know, and he gets to make the rules. And I think God’s nature, you know, when when people are saying, that’s not fair.
That this you know, this how is it fair that this baby died? Right? That’s who is this God that allowed this to happen? Right? Because that’s really what we’re saying.
And, you know, I mean, of course, if it’s that person who’s going through that, I’m not gonna give them a big, you know, theology dissertation on why it’s fair that their baby died because that’s not the appropriate time to do that typically. But for someone who’s just discussing this as somebody else’s pain, right? I think it’s very appropriate to ask this question, Why isn’t it fair? And then see where they’re getting their belief that it’s unfair because and they’ll say things like, well, that was an innocent child. Well, how do you know that?
You know, what where are you drawing this truth from that gives you the opinion and the authority to say that’s not fair? And the it it always goes back to we all have a foundation of truth that we that we believe in, and why wouldn’t we want to know what God’s foundation of truth is, and therefore to know as much as we can about why things are the way they are, and what God’s fairness looked like? Because I’m going to give you the bottom line up front, or the bluff on this, as my son would say.
John McLarty: Give me the bluff, Kim.
Kimberly Faith: The fact is God is very fair to every human. The only person God isn’t fair to is himself.
John McLarty: That’s an interesting twist.
Kimberly Faith: But
John McLarty: yeah, it’s the, how was it fair that God himself came in the flesh and paid for our sins?
Kimberly Faith: That’s right. He paid a debt he did not owe.
John McLarty: A debt we could not pay.
Kimberly Faith: We could not pay. We could be reconciled to him. By any standard of fairness, I don’t care who you are, that’s not fair. That doesn’t seem to be a just. Well, it is just.
It satisfies his justice and his love satisfied his justice so we could be reconciled to his righteousness. Right.
John McLarty: That’s motivated by his love.
Kimberly Faith: That’s right.
John McLarty: Satisfies his justice and fulfills righteousness.
Kimberly Faith: That’s right. And so as we kind of go forward in this podcast, I I I really want this theme to be, you know, God is fair. He’s more than fair to us. The only one he’s not fair to is himself because he did pay this debt he did not owe, and that’s not fair.
John McLarty: And he he did it through love.
Kimberly Faith: That’s right. He did it because of
John McLarty: his love. And what a what a twist on, you know, humans
Kimberly Faith: Right.
John McLarty: Accusations wagging our finger at God
Kimberly Faith: Right.
John McLarty: When actually he’s the one that took the penalty for our sins.
Kimberly Faith: Yeah. And and most of most of the time, you know, you hear I mean, when I I hear the the accusations against God. Right? It’s, well, how could God send anybody to hell? And I always flip that and say, wait a minute.
What makes you think God’s sending anybody to hell? What tell me where you get that from the Bible. And, you know, most people don’t even know where they they heard that except probably just some twisted
John McLarty: Yeah.
Kimberly Faith: TikTok video or something. But I I just tell them, look. Let me let’s just back up and ask a couple of questions. Number one, who is God and what is his general what is the basis of his nature? Well, who is he?
And, you know, most people just have no idea. You just read out of Jeremiah, that his nature is love, justice, righteousness. Okay. He’s loving, just, and righteous. That is the foundation.
He is all three of those things infinitely. Alright? And if he’s not those things, he’s no longer God. And
John McLarty: And just let me kinda stop you right there because that’s in that summed up in Jeremiah. Mhmm. But this is not a cherry picked idea that God is righteous, just, and loving.
Kimberly Faith: Thank you for bringing that up.
John McLarty: It is just it permeates the scripture.
Kimberly Faith: Yes. I really appreciate you bringing that up because I when I teach this study, it it and I often think I’m I’m trying to get through this and give this encapsulating verse that describes God’s nature. But you if you read God’s word throughout the Old Testament and New Testament, these themes are just permeate is a good word.
John McLarty: Right. If you’re of it and looking for it, it it just it’s it’s everywhere.
Kimberly Faith: Right. So Psalms 89, says, Righteousness, this is an example of you’re talking about. Righteousness and justice are the foundation Mercy, of your which is love, and truth go before your face.
John McLarty: There they all are right there. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that as one verse that sums up that has the three. Righteousness and justice are the foundation of your throne. Mercy and truth go before your face.
Kimberly Faith: Yeah. And, you know, even Deuteronomy even back in the book of the law, Deuteronomy, he is the rock, his work is perfect, all his ways are justice, a God of truth without injustice, righteous and upright is he. You know? Mhmm. There’s so many verses that you I mean, we could we could spend the whole we could spend many podcasts talking about all the verses that describe God’s righteousness, his justice, and his love.
And, you know, just to kind of I don’t wanna, you know, make this a concept study, but really it’s worth noting in this discussion of fairness that because God is perfectly righteous, then sin must receive the punishment due, and we call this the law of sin and death, and we actually have a video on that our website. But in our limited perception, we say, well, that’s not fair. I don’t feel like imperfect people should be held to a perfect standard. But God’s justice, if God is just, that means it’s his nature and sin cannot be compromised to match our feelings. If he did do that, he would not be, again, who he says he is and thus would not be God.
God can’t lower his standard, the standard of his nature, the very essence of who he is, to match our feelings. Instead, what he did, he didn’t lower his standard, he paid the price to meet the standard.
John McLarty: That’s the amazing the amazing grace.
Kimberly Faith: The amazing grace. He he so to to engage the you know, to to meet the standard of righteousness and justice, he engaged that third pillar of his nature, his love.
John McLarty: He cared for us while we were yet sinners. Right. For us died for the ungodly.
Kimberly Faith: I love that one John four:eight just puts it out there, He who does not love does not know God, for God is love.
John McLarty: God is love. Right. And God loves. He does love, but he is love. Yes.
That’s the nature quality.
Kimberly Faith: Yes. Just to be clear, if you read any of the accounts of the resurrection of Christ I mean, the death and the burial of Christ, the death of Christ, I should say, you will quickly realize that love is not some weakness. It is absolutely it was the most terrible thing that’s ever happened to any human, what happened to Jesus, what he went through.
John McLarty: It sacrifice. It was enduring the death of the cross.
Kimberly Faith: That’s right. It’s Which
John McLarty: is yeah. It’s Not a cakewalk.
Kimberly Faith: That’s right. And, you know, God again, God’s love provided all of us with a rescue plan that goes so far beyond human fairness is really mind blowing. It’s mind blowing. I mean, we would think if you know, I wouldn’t even think about dying for somebody who had done terrible things to my family. Right.
Never. I would, you know, I mean, if some It’s
John McLarty: a love we can’t comprehend.
Kimberly Faith: We can’t comprehend it. If someone hurt one of my children, I wouldn’t die
John McLarty: for them. No way I’d want to shoot them,
Kimberly Faith: you know, and we can’t wrap our mind around that. I mean, not that I’m going shoot people, but, you know,
John McLarty: it’s And Jesus looked down on those that were crucifying him and said, forgive them, father, for they know not what they do.
Kimberly Faith: Right. I mean, they pierced Yeah. His
John McLarty: The very act.
Kimberly Faith: Right. They were in the very act. Right. And and so I think it’s it’s worth noting that God is very his fairness is so far beyond what we consider fairness. It’s his generosity his generosity to us is not even fair by our own human standards.
The fact that I would not love love someone enough to die for them when they were my enemy and God did that for me is so unfair to him that I can’t even wrap my mind around it.
John McLarty: That’s quite a turn of the tables that any unfairness was actually put upon God’s own son by himself came in the flesh.
Kimberly Faith: And kind of going back to the earlier thing we talked about, how God doesn’t send anybody to hell, we make the choice. I like to walk that back with people who say, Well, God sends people to hell even if they just commit one sin. How is that fair? You know, eternal punishment. And without going into the reason for that, you know, that’s a whole another discussion.
One of the questions I like to just ask people is, could there have ever been the choice to love without also the choice not to?
John McLarty: Free will.
Kimberly Faith: Free will. Right? So, if there was to be a choice, and it sounds like, you know, based on what we know about the Bible, even the angels were given a choice because Satan chose to to take on him you know, to fawn himself Mhmm. And then fall from heaven. If there was never a choice to experience love, then what would our life even be like without that?
But God is love. That’s the essence of who he is.
John McLarty: Right.
Kimberly Faith: And and, you know, so it’s it’s it’s very clear. The Bible I mean, the Bible says, you
John McLarty: know,
Kimberly Faith: God’s love to us is so not fair by human standards. It’s lavish. It’s undeserved. And because every one of us deserves the wages of our sin, which we know from Romans six twenty three is death.
John McLarty: Yep. The wages of sin is death. But the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our
Kimberly Faith: That’s right. So the the penalty, the just penalty, the fair penalty by God’s standard for even one sin that we’ve committed, because he is also perfectly righteous, is eternal justice because of who he is. And and just a side note, this was something that came up in one of my bible studies recently. The difference between eternal and infinite is eternal had a beginning, we have a beginning, but God doesn’t.
John McLarty: God doesn’t.
Kimberly Faith: Yeah. So that’s free.
John McLarty: Well, another little side note, because people, it’s like in politics, people bring up the most extreme of both positions and try to call it unfair. This idea that one sin condemns, you know, is worthy of eternal separation from God, which it is.
Kimberly Faith: It is. Because of who God is.
John McLarty: Yeah. If you violate the law, at one point, you’re guilty of all. But let’s be honest. If you truly understand what sin is, that sin is just selfishness, who could ever what human could ever claim, well, in my entire 80 years of life, I’ve I sinned once. And I’m going to hell for it.
That’s not fair. That is that’s a ridiculous claim Right. That any human Right. It’s laughable, actually, would just have a one sin. Right.
Yeah. Because we sin continually. We do. And just, you know, in our body, soul, and spirit, soul is born again, as we explained, and doesn’t sin because of God’s nature. But we’re very familiar with our flesh.
Yes. And it’s in selfishness continually. Right. And it never gives up. So the idea that somebody lived their whole life and only sinned once, it’s just laughable.
Kimberly Faith: It is laughable. It’s like saying the ocean doesn’t have salt in it. I mean, it’s so interesting when people try to gerrymander away around God’s grace by saying, well, I think when I die, God’s going to weigh my good and my bad, and he’s going to find that I was good enough. That’s called the the great white throne judgment.
John McLarty: Yeah.
Kimberly Faith: And the criteria isn’t how good you were because one sin was enough to condemn you. It’s whether you’re written in the Lamb’s Book of Life.
John McLarty: Right.
Kimberly Faith: And that’s when we get saved. That’s when we’re born again. We’re written in the Lamb’s Book of Life.
John McLarty: If we’re And That’s by grace through faith.
Kimberly Faith: That’s right. If you wanna be judged by your sins, then don’t accept Jesus Christ’s gift of salvation. You’re condemned already, the Bible says. And what’s so amazing though is that going back to the fairness, what is God’s fairness? Well, he he tells us in Psalms one zero three, the Bible says, he has not dealt with us according to our sins, nor punished us according to our iniquities.
For as high as the heaven is above the earth, so great is his mercy toward those who fear him. As far as the East is from the West, so far has he removed our transgressions from us. You know, that’s Yeah. That’s talking about somebody when it says fear him, that means that we have we have come to him in full surrender and said, Lord, I accept your gift of salvation. You know, that’s not talking about being afraid of God.
It’s talking about, hey. You know, I respect you and I respect the gift that you’re offering and I’m going to respect that gift by accepting it. Does that make sense?
John McLarty: Yeah. Yeah. And then Jesus gives us
Kimberly Faith: mercy. Doesn’t Instead
John McLarty: of justice alone, Jesus gives us mercy through the cross.
Kimberly Faith: Right. Right. It’s it’s just so amazing how how much human religions have diluted this. Mhmm. This beautiful gift of grace.
Even like churches that have had a history of preaching, for example, eternal security, you know, but then the people are like questioning, well, what if I go out and murder somebody, you know, and those are and those are legitimate questions, but they’re not from the viewpoint, the vantage point of God’s system of fairness. It’s from humans, a human perspective on what is fair. Right? But it ignores what happens at salvation. Because we have just like when I was born when I was conceived in my mother’s womb, I had the genetics of my dad and my mom.
Unchangeable. When we are conceived in Christ let’s read first first John
John McLarty: Three nine.
Kimberly Faith: Three nine. Yes. Let’s read that.
John McLarty: I’ll drink that pretty quick.
Kimberly Faith: Because this is pretty important. You know, that what happens, a transaction that happens at salvation that guarantees our salvation is like what happens at conception physically, that guarantees that we are always genetically connected to our parents.
John McLarty: And this is very full of genetic implications. First John three:nine, Whosoever is born of God does not commit sin, for his seed, God’s seed, remaineth in him and he cannot sin because he is born of God.
Kimberly Faith: That, you know, that verse talks about the seed. That’s conception. That’s spiritual conception.
John McLarty: That’s the born again.
Kimberly Faith: That’s the born again.
John McLarty: Which is not and by the way, that’s not the flesh. Right. When we were saved, when anybody was saved, your flesh wasn’t born again.
Kimberly Faith: That’s Your
John McLarty: flesh wasn’t changed. So that’s the spiritual, that’s your soul and spirit, born again, and now has the nature of Christ, the righteousness of God Right. And cannot sin. It’s it’s It’s a child of it’s we’re not a child of God. That’s right.
Example of genetics. Once you’re a child of God, you can’t be an unchild. You can be unborn.
Kimberly Faith: Unchilded. Unchilded. I like that. That’s gonna be our new word. Unchilded.
Yeah. With the with the Texas accent. Unchilded. There you go.
John McLarty: Starting a new new dictionary.
Kimberly Faith: Well, yeah, exactly. It’s gonna be there, our truth and love, you know, random dictionary. But
John McLarty: How to interpret.
Kimberly Faith: How to interpret first Timothy or first John three:nine.
John McLarty: But that is so powerful. And just to kind of follow-up on that, you cannot understand that verse. A listener cannot understand that verse unless they understand the distinction between our inner man, soul and spirit
Kimberly Faith: Right.
John McLarty: And our outer man. Right. Because even a, you know, born again believer would think, well, I sin. I have selfish thoughts.
Kimberly Faith: Well, yes, in the flesh, but not in the soul. Right. And we have so and I like that you brought that up because we have the choice as born again believers. We have we’re in Christ, so we have the power to have the mind of Christ, to have the attitudes of Christ that are manifested in our flesh, but we also have this flesh that has a mind of its own and a heart of its own.
John McLarty: And that’s the spiritual battle.
Kimberly Faith: That’s the spiritual battle.
John McLarty: Who do we allow to control
Kimberly Faith: Exactly. At any given And that’s what Paul talked about in Romans chapter seven, that they struggle. When I would do good, evil is present with me. So but it has nothing to do with our salvation because once we have we have god’s genetics, that doesn’t change. So back to this question of fairness, you know, you know, instead of just giving a justice, Jesus took the full penalty Mhmm.
Of our crimes against the love of God. That’s what sin is. It’s a crime against the love of God. He, the righteous judge, became our perfect substitute, and that’s not fair to God.
John McLarty: Yeah. And think about this. He gave us eternal life. So he didn’t just pick pick us up out of the miry clay and put us on a balancing beam. Right.
Where we have to, you know, oh my goodness, I’m gonna, you know, fall off. Right. You know, I thought of, I think a bad thought and I’ve fallen off Right. My salvation.
Kimberly Faith: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it’s
John McLarty: But that is a common misconception that humans put back into the Christian life. Right. And it’s kind of a control thing.
Kimberly Faith: It is. It’s a fear and control thing by religion that seeks to really circumvent the true the true source of our salvation, Jesus Christ. I mean, it takes Jesus off the throne of our heart and puts in its place fear. And I love that the Bible says, again, in first John, perfect love casts
John McLarty: Yeah. Out
Kimberly Faith: And so so God’s extravagant love is more than fair towards this this human race that has chosen to violate his love, violate his law, which is his manifestation. I mean, we were given the law because we chose in the garden to reject Right. His his ways. Mhmm. And God’s like, well, you’re gonna have to have some laws or you’ll kill each other.
Right? And, you know, one of the the I think the upsides you talked about, not just eternal life, but we also have this amazing opportunity to earn rewards, eternal rewards. You know, we talked about this in the last podcast a little bit. We’re gonna stand before the judgment seat of Christ, and, you know, we’re gonna have a much different judgment than those standing in the great white throne judgment. That’s a judgment for the unsaved, that is who are people who are not written in the lamb’s book of life, because they’ve not been born again.
But we’re gonna be have an opportunity to be rewarded when we stand before Christ. And if we have used our time on this earth to live in loving obedience, we’re gonna receive many rewards. And we actually spent Christmas, I think December, talking about all in the podcast. All those rewards. And it was very exciting.
John McLarty: Mhmm.
Kimberly Faith: So talk about not fair. Again, not only did Jesus give us eternal life, he paid the full penalty of our sin, but then he says, oh, and by the way, you can have these eternal rewards. That’s not fair either. Not to him.
John McLarty: It’d be like you see someone drowning in a river, you pull them out and you save them. Mhmm. But instead of just setting them on the bank and leaving them, you bring them home and kind of make them part of your family.
Kimberly Faith: Right. That’s a And, really good
John McLarty: know, have the rewards of, you know, being in this family and sit at the dinner table and enjoy the benefits.
Kimberly Faith: Right. Well, or even worse, that person who was drowning was somebody who had, you know, bombed your family home.
John McLarty: Yeah.
Kimberly Faith: That’s And then you you take them home and you make them part of your family, and then you say, and guess what? You have the opportunity to have a life that’s gonna be remembered forever. It’s it’s just so absurdly unfair to God, but so lovingly generous to us. I I it it really this this podcast, this topic has been, so good for me because I think when we start thinking about just how unfair God was to himself in giving us everything he gives us and how beyond fair it is to us, how generous, how lavish it is, we start becoming more thankful. And that’s huge.
Really huge.
John McLarty: We have a lot to be thankful for.
Kimberly Faith: Yes, yes.
John McLarty: And in this life, I mean, think how rewarding this life is.
Kimberly Faith: Yeah, you’re thinking about Galatians, aren’t you?
John McLarty: I’ll go ahead and read that. So, we’ve been given the fruits of God’s spirit. And so just our the unregenerate person, these things cannot flow out from them. Once we’re born again and that nature of Christ is in us, these things can flow out. We make them up.
Kimberly Faith: We can’t fake them. It’s not a discipline. Yeah, you can’t fake
John McLarty: the fruit
Kimberly Faith: of the spirit.
John McLarty: But the fruits of the spirit, love, joy, peace, long suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control. Who doesn’t want that? Those are blessings from God. Think about it. It’s the fruit of the spirit.
That’s not the fruit of the human nature.
Kimberly Faith: It’s something we enjoy It’s
John McLarty: the spirit of God.
Kimberly Faith: Yeah. We can enjoy it now. It’s like, who doesn’t want more peace in their lives?
John McLarty: Yeah.
Kimberly Faith: And and Kindness. That’s right. And what’s funny about the the fruit of this the spirit, you know, we often, because we’re very human, tend to think, oh, yeah. I want more of those things. But the fact is the fruit of God’s spirit is not just directed to us.
Matter of fact, it’s not even primarily directed to us, it’s directed for us to do to others. Right. Because love is not love unless you’re giving it to somebody. True. Joy is very empty if celebrated alone.
You’re receiving joy in some circumstance. You don’t want to just keep it to yourself.
John McLarty: Exactly.
Kimberly Faith: Or it’s even better when you’re creating it for someone else. There’s foster kids boutique that we have, when I’ve mentioned this before, but when especially some of the teenage boys come up and they’ve been in foster care their entire life, and our executive director, her name is Joy, which is so appropriate. Yeah. They come up and they you know, this store that we’ve created is they shop for free and it’s like it’s like an American Eagle store. It’s so beautiful.
And that’s all Joy, not me. And they come up and Joy is like, welcome to the boutique. Let’s go shopping. And these boys who have been kinda kicked to the curb most of their life, sullen, depressed, just sad, they’re like looking around like, we get to shop here. Like, I get to shop here for free?
For real? And she hands them a shopping cart and she says, let’s go to the boys department. I mean, they’ll
John McLarty: spend I’ve met her. She is full of joy.
Kimberly Faith: She is. But she’ll often say, and I’ve observed it a few times. I don’t get to be interacting with them as much because I’m not there as much, but she’ll say so many times, she goes, I cannot believe I get to do this job. Mhmm. Because the joy is received by giving, and that’s the way God works.
The fruit of God’s spirit come from him. Patience. Being patient with somebody is not always easy, but it’s very rewarding. Being long suffering, sometimes you don’t see that immediate rewards of long suffering being long suffering, but down the road, when you do see that, you’re like, oh, wow. That was so worth it.
You know? And I I I I just say that because, you know, when you manage people, like in a business, sometimes there’s there’s times when you just have to step away. And I’ll tell you that my business mind often says, no. Address this address every one of these issues right now. And and God says, no.
Just take a step back. And then let me do my work. That’s with any kind of relationship, not just your business or whatever. This is over 30 of doing business. Of course, I’m not talking about my current staff.
Of course, they’re amazing.
John McLarty: They truly are. They are. Well, think about this, what a gift the fruits of the spirit are to us. And even though it does shine out toward others, and that’s the main purpose. But think about we are in a culture that is so full of anxiety.
Right. And I’ve just heard that just therapy and counseling and all this
Kimberly Faith: Self help.
John McLarty: Self help and all the anxiety created by social media for our poor teenagers that just grow
Kimberly Faith: up And craziness.
John McLarty: Not getting enough likes. But that really is impacting the mind and just depression and anxiety. And think about the value of these gifts. In this world full of depression and anxiety, we have peace and joy and love, kindness just handed to us through salvation.
Kimberly Faith: Through salvation.
John McLarty: Through the born again nature. And what a loving God. What a loving God. That’s the unfairness. We don’t deserve that.
Kimberly Faith: Yeah. We don’t deserve it. And what’s you know, you think about being unfair. Why would we keep that to ourselves? Why would we not engage in that?
Really, that that’s when we’re becoming almost reprobate, but not really letting the fruit of the spirit flow through us. We can’t you know, we’ve talked about unforgiveness a lot, and and that’s one of the big big things in our life that shut down the fruit of the spirit. Pride shuts it down. And why would we do that? We’ve been forgiven so much.
We’ve been given so much. Our lives should be manifesting, again, this abundance of God’s spirit. And that’s how people will know that we have Jesus, really. Mean, that’s the big way, really.
John McLarty: I’d rather see Jesus than us.
Kimberly Faith: I think
John McLarty: They’ll know you’re Christians about your love.
Kimberly Faith: That’s right. So kind of just wrapping this up, I just wanna you know, if you’ve questioned why god? Why god? Why did you allow this? Why why didn’t you do this?
Why didn’t you act differently here? Why didn’t you know? Bottom line is, you know, remembering who God says he is. He is righteous. He is loving.
He is just. He’s gonna make all the wrongs right someday. You know? He’s going to he’s going to turn evil against itself. Sometimes he even does that while we’re here watching.
But there’s only one person who is not fair to himself, and that’s God.
John McLarty: It’s God.
Kimberly Faith: Yeah. And you and I, we’ve got that more than we deserve. Don’t know, dad, did you have any more thoughts? I want to wrap up with a couple verses, and I just
John McLarty: No, this verse we’re about to read sums it all up.
Kimberly Faith: You want to read those verses? Sure. Out of Ephesians?
John McLarty: Yeah, and these are really good. Let’s just get the reference for people. Ephesians two, four through 10. But God who is rich in mercy because of his great love, he has loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive with Christ. By grace, you have been saved and raised us up together and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.
And this is so rich that in the ages to come, he might show the exceeding riches of his grace and his kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.
Kimberly Faith: So good.
John McLarty: For by grace are you saved through faith and not of of yourself. It’s the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast. For we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.
Kimberly Faith: That’s so good. You know, I think about that. We’re we’re created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. Oh, yeah. I again, we’ve talked a lot about God just his lavish grace.
Not only does he give us the fruit of his spirit, not only does he give us this opportunity to do things that we’ll be rewarded for in before the in the that the judgment seat of Christ, But he also has thought about all the good works and he’s prepared them for us. And this kind of reminds me why I kind of like to say, I don’t want to miss a thing. I want to be so tuned in to who God is and what he has for me that I don’t miss any of those things he’s prepared for us beforehand.
John McLarty: How many times have you come up to a Christian brother or sister and say, how you doing? And the reply is, well, better than I deserve.
Kimberly Faith: That’s a great comment.
John McLarty: Have you heard that a lot? Yeah. Yeah. And that’s, I mean, that’s God’s abundant grace and mercy. His loving kindness.
Kimberly Faith: Yeah. Yeah.
John McLarty: He is So if there’s anything unfair, it’s God’s abundant love toward us. We don’t deserve it.
Kimberly Faith: That’s right. He has paid far more to capture just the not only the relationship for us with him, but then this abundant life that we’ve talked about so much. And I I remember podcast number two, the very second podcast we did, where you and mom sat down and talked about the abundant life. And, man, it’s just more than like Paul in the book of Ephesians prayed for. It’s more than we could ask for or imagine.
And the only person that’s not fair to is God. So, wow, what a God we serve.
John McLarty: Amen.
Kimberly Faith: Are you looking for a place to recharge your faith, refocus your mind, and reignite your passion for Christ? Head over to gofaithstrong.com, your one stop hub for powerful devotionals, life giving podcasts, uplifting worship music, and real stories from real people walking their faith out just like you. We know life gets busy and it’s easy to feel spiritually drained. That’s why everything we create at Go Faith Strong is designed to be clear, Christ centered, and easy to plug into. Whether you’ve got just five minutes or you have a whole hour.
From bible based blog post to worship music, it’s all there to help you stay connected to truth throughout your week. So take a moment today, visit us at gofaithstrong.com and dive into the resources that were made just for you. Because faith isn’t meant to be passive, it’s meant to be lived, and we’re here to help you live it strong. Again, that is gofaithstrong.com. And don’t forget, hit that like, follow, and share button for the podcast.
John McLarty: Hallelujah. He rescued me.
