by Sharla Guenther
Today we are going to talk about fruit. Do you like fruit? Whatis your favorite fruit? All fruit is different. It tastes different,it looks different and it feels different in your mouth (sometimes fruit iscrunchy, sometimes soft, sometimes juicy, etc.)
The Bible talks about fruit but its a different kind of fruit, it's calledthe fruit of the Spirit. The fruit of the Spirit is a little like realfruit because they are each special and different too.
It's really neat because when we ask Jesus to live in us his Spirit stayswith us and He will give us some of this special fruit. As we grow andlearn more about Jesus, the Spirit will give us more and more fruit and becomemore Christ-like.
I will tell you in a minute what this special fruit is but first I want toexplain how God can be God, Jesus (His son) and the Spirit all at the same time.
The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness,faithfulness, gentleness and self control.All of these fruits aregood to have and the Spirit wants to give them to us.
God wants us to try to be good and have thefruit of the spirit inus. We can try to have love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness,faithfulness, gentleness, and self control but the Spirit will give us the kind ofgifts he wants us to have. It's hard to do it on our own, weneed the Spirit to help us with each of these things.
Just in case you don't know what each of the fruit of the spirit means I'mgoing to try to explain them. I think the easiest fruit of thespirit to explain is love. Think of someone that loves you no matter what. Youcan make mistakes and it doesn't matter what you look like, but they still loveyou. God loves us too, no matter what, he even loves you more than yourparents! He can help us love others the way we should.
The next fruit is joy. Joy is like being very, very happy, it'sbeing happy inside even when things aren't going great. Again, we can try to bejoyful but onlyGod can give us the kind of happiness that makes us joyful, we can't just bejoyful on our own.
When we think of peace, we usually think of no more fighting or war.That is right, but the peace of the spirit is a bit different. This is thepeace we get when we get to know God really well (by reading the Bible, praying,asking questions, etc). If we have this peace we will feel acalmness inside and know that all our sins are confessed and that God forgives us.
Patience is the next one and I'm sure we know what this means. Have youever been told to have patience? The patience God is talking about is forthose little things like waiting to open your Christmas presents or beingpatient to go to the park. But it also means to be patient for answers toprayer that might take years to be answered.
Next is kindness and it should be easy although sometimes it's not. Isit easy to be kind to someone who has been mean to you or to a beggar on thestreet? When God gives us this gift, its more than just being kind toothers. He might help us be kind to someone who really needs it and we'renot even aware of it. For example, maybe you feel like you should write aletter or call a grandparent. God might be urging you to do that becausethey are having a bad day and that's exactly what they need to cheer them up.Sometimes your kind deed to someone else is all they need to remember that someone special loves them.
Being good or goodness is the next fruit of the spirit. Having the giftof goodness means God can depend on me to be honest, repent of my sins, and turnaway from bad things. We also need to try to act this way towards othersthrough our actions so they can see the fruit in us. The only true goodness we have is thegoodness of God living in us.
Faithfulness is next and this one might be a little trickier tounderstand. Being faithful is keeping your promises, being a loyal friendeven when times get tough, being trustworthy and doing the things you said youwould do. When I think of faithfulness I think of my grandma who prayedfor me every single day of her life. She was faithful in praying for me,which also meant that she prayed everyday.
When I think of gentleness I think of holding a brand new baby.Forsome reason we think they might break if we don't hold them so carefully.The kind of gentleness God is talking about is similar to this. No matterwhat situation comes up we are supposed to be gentle. That doesn't mean weshouldn't stick up for ourselves, if someone is doing something you know iswrong you should still tell an adult or tell them to stop. Just do it in agentle way like Jesus would do it.
The last fruit is self control and is a very important one, it means to be incontrol of what we say and do. Without self control we can't do the thingswe should. To be able to live the way God wants we have to be in controlof the things we do. Just like when a brother or sister bugs you so muchyou just want to hit them, we know that we have to control ourselves and not hitthem. We know we just can't do whatever we feel like sometimes because itsnot right and we'd be punished.
Just remember that with all these gifts we need help from God to be able to usethegifts properly. We need to remember that God made us and he isperfect.If you want the fruit of the spirit first you need to askGod to live in you, and then the more you get to know him the more fruit orgifts he will help you have.
Printable version of this story
