I’ve been working on teaching the kids Galatians 5:22: “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.” It’s the verse about the fruit of the Holy Spirit. The boys have almost committed it to memory. When we talked about it a few weeks ago, I asked them to think about which fruit they thought they needed more of. Timmy, the youngest, answered without hesitation (and correctly, I might add). “I know what I need,” he said. “Self-control.”
Then he blurted out what fruit everyone else in the family needed more of. He pointed to Jack and said, “You need more kindness because sometimes when I ask you to play you say “no” in a mean voice.” He looked at Sam and said, “You need to work on patience. You’re really impatient and you get frustrated…especially when I take your Legos or you practice your trumpet.” Then he told Rich and me that we needed more kindness, more patience and more self-control.
Of course, we all wanted to tell Timmy that blurting out everyone else’s weaknesses actually demonstrated a lack of self-control. But the truth of the matter was that Timmy was right. Our lack of fruit impacted him. We impact the people around us every single day with our fruit of the Spirit. Sometimes we make a world of difference in another person’s life when we show love or kindness. But we can also make a difference in somebody else’s day when we demonstrate harshness (lack of gentleness) or a sour, dour outlook (lack of joy) on life.
Yes, it’s easy to see what fruit is missing from the people around us…but before we dig into them…let’s have some self-control and start with us. What fruit would you like to see increased in your life this week, this month, this year? Remember, it’s fruit of the Spirit, so the only way to have more of it in our lives is to ask God for it. We can’t simply try harder to obtain it in our lives. Instead, God gives it to us as a gift. The Christian life is a life of transformation. When we enter into a relationship with God, he changes us. Let’s see what he does with us as we pray for an increase of fruit in our lives.