The Fruit of the Spirit isn’t edible, but it tastes so good! 🍏🍎🍐🍊🍋🍌🍉🍇🍓
“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.” – Galatians 5:22-23
We’ve been working with the children to help them understand what it means to have the Holy Spirit living in you; what the fruit of the Spirit produces in our lives. Ultimately finding the characteristics of Christ lived out in us.
Just as physical fruit takes time to grow, the fruit of the Spirit also takes time to grow; it doesn’t grow over night. A patient and successful gardener waits for his crop to grow. He must battle against weeds and bad weather to one day enjoy the hard work of his labor – the sweet fruit he waits for. Teaching toddlers to be patient is not easy. I remember one time when one of my sons told me, “It’s sooooo hard to wait, but I want to be patient…but it’s soooo hard.” At that moment, I took the time to sit and pray with him and ask Jesus to help him experience the fruit called patience.
Getting to see Fruit takes work
We must constantly work to get rid of the “weeds” of our old sin nature in our lives that want to choke out the work of the Spirit. Thankfully, we have the power of the Holy Spirit to help us reject these sinful desires. By the Spirit’s leading, God faithfully provides a way out as we say “no” to sin.
“No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to mankind. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it.” – 1 Corinthians 10:13
As we allow the Holy Spirit to transform us in only the way He can do, He will shape and grow us to become more and more like Jesus and this is called sanctification (becoming more and more like Jesus).
“Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.” – 2 Corinthians 3:17-18
God wants for all of His children to be like Jesus. The Holy Spirit is constantly working in our lives to help us get rid of our sinful nature and instead make way for the Fruit of the Spirit. I’d even argue that this kind of fruit is better than watermelon 🙂
Continue to pray for the Lord to work on your heart and what fruit of the Spirit He wants you to work on.
Journeying with you,
David and Maxine
Extra Fruit of the Spirit Materials!
I’ve included the Fruits of the Spirit lessons from the following website that we use at home to teach the kids the fruit of the Spirit and how to make it applicable for them:
It’s been great tool:
This is the chart we use for when we see them display a fruit of the Spirit and we mark it down. Our son gets so excited about it and has helped him be more aware of his actions to those around him.
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