Teaching kids -- Inspiring teachers
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Teaching kids -- Inspiring teachers |
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The Fruit of the Spirit … Another Take on a Great, Familiar Subject
By Patricia Meyers The fruit of the Spirit … how many times have we read them, taught them, sung songs about them, referred to them, pondered them, or even philosophized about them? Dozens? Hundreds? Thousands? More? It is an interesting list, I think: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self control. Very interesting. Some of them sound like what we would think the fruit of the Spirit would be. Like love, for instance. We are told that God IS love. Therefore, it just makes sense that one of the fruits borne from His Spirit dwelling in us would be love. It’s logical. He IS love, therefore He breeds love. We would definitely have that on our Fruit of the Spirit list, if we were making one. The second on the list is joy. Another easy one to understand. The joy of the Lord will be our strength, Nehemiah tells us. What about peace? “My peace I give you.” Sure … that would make our list. Then we come to patience, also referred to as long-suffering. How many verses in the Bible refer to Him suffering long with us? The reason we exist is because of His patience and long suffering. The reason we can access His throne is because He didn’t just extinguish us in our sin and stupidity. He was patient with us. So, we should definitely be bearing the fruit of patience, it is so much a part of Him. How about kindness? Oh how many times I have been touched by the kindness of the Lord. How about you? Do you remember Jeremiah 31:3? “I have loved you with an everlasting love, I have drawn you loving-kindness.” How about this one: Titus 3:4-5 “But when the kindness and love of God our savior appeared, he saved us.” He is so kind. And so He would bear kind fruit, true? Of course. It makes sense. Goodness doesn’t need an explanation. The goodness of God overwhelms us daily. Psalm 116:12 says it all: “How can I repay the Lord for all his goodness to me?” How indeed? The same can be said of gentleness. He is gentle. In Matthew 11:29 Jesus says “Take my yoke upon you, for I am gentle …” He is gentle, so He bears gentle fruit. Faithfulness? Do we need to discuss faithfulness? “The faithfulness of the Lord endures forever.” How well we know that. “He remains faithful when we are faithless.” “He will remember his faithfulness to all generations.” “His faithfulness reaches to the skies.” And on and on we could go. We know that He is faithful, therefore His seed would produce the fruit of faithfulness. Now we are at the final fruit on the list. Self control. Self control? It strikes me as odd in the list. It doesn’t seem to fit. The others are such heart attitudes, things we would definitely think of in connection with God Himself. Yet self-control made the list and we know it is not a mistake. The Bible is God-inspired. So self-control is supposed to be on the list. Self-control. Just ponder that a moment in light of the other eight fruits listed. Self-control. I know that 2 Peter chapter 1 tells us to “add to your knowledge self-control.” I think that is interesting. We are supposed to add self-control to what we are learning as we grow in Christ. The little, bitty book of Titus tells us to be self-controlled four (4) times! Sounds like a theme there. 2 Timothy 3 tells us about the “terrible times in the last days.” In the list of “terrible things” is the attribute of being “without self-control.” That is powerful. How do we bear fruit? Fruit is harvested after: seed planting, yearling tending, watering, pruning, growing, soaking in the light, more watering and pruning, much maturing and then fruit. So, in our spirits and souls we need to plant seeds, tend them, water them, weed and prune, and soak in the light of the Son. Then, as we mature, we bear fruit. For instance, we plant the seed of patience and then we prune it and help it mature by watching our actions and stopping ourselves when we feel impatience rearing its ugly head. We pray, we work at it, we pray some more, we ask forgiveness, we ask for help, and so on. The same is true of all nine fruit. Including self-control. We plant the seed. We pray the prayers. We watch ourselves. And we weed. Lots of weeding I think with this particular fruit bearing tree. And much of the work at maturing this particularly thorny bush into a fruit bearing one is done by us. It DOES NOT just happen. It occurs through effort. Controlled effort. Self-controlled effort. And this is true for the children as well. If there is one thing I think is lacking today, it is instruction in self-control. Pardon me if it sounds as if I have jumped up on my soap box, but I feel so strongly about this. Not that I am perfected in this area, oh my no … No, I am one who believes that children are not being taught to be “self-controlled and alert.” And I would like to stir you up in this good work. Use the time that you have with them to plant seeds of righteousness, all the seeds of righteousness. I Corinthians 7:5 tells us that “Satan will tempt us because of our lack of self-control.” Let’s help raise the next generation to be a generation that is ready for battle. Let’s make sure they are armed with faith, and hope, and love, and strength, and discernment, and self-control. (To name just a few.) It is our time. The time we have with them in the classroom we should do our very best to fulfill the mission of training them in righteousness, encouraging them to grow in the stature and admonition of the Lord, equipping them to pursue godliness and be found faithful in the day of Christ. Each one builds or waters or plants … we are not expected to do it all … we are only required to do our part when we have the chance to do it. Let us do it well. The end. |
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