Fruit of the Spirit

I am not perfect. Surprise, Surprise! All too often I learn from my mistakes instead of preparing for the trial ahead of time. But I earnestly desire to teach my children to love and fear God now while they are young and there is time. I grieve over the things that I have done to discourage them or that have been a bad example for them.

"But thou, O Lord, art a God full of compassion, and gracious, longsuffering, and plenteous in mercy and truth." Psalm 86:15

God definitely shows me plenty of mercy and is loooongsuffering. He is also very "plenteous in...truth". He knows my areas of weakness and is faithful to direct my paths through his Word and through the counsel of others. Today he gave me an opportunity to put into practice what he has been trying to teach me, and gave me wisdom for instructing my children.

My daughter has a tendency to pout and have a bad attitude. I've tried and tried to change this behavior in her; sometimes patiently, other times not so patiently. We won't get into all the wrong methods I've chosen. I love what one of my preachers once said, "If we fail when God is testing us then we will have to keep retaking that test until we finally pass." Well, I have retaken this test more times than I can remember. Today I took it again.... and I think I passed. Praise the LORD!

The bad attitude reared its ugly head and the Lord gave me patience and wisdom to deal with it the right way. We sat together and opened up the concordance to the word 'joy'. There are many occasions in the Bible where this word is used, so I chose a few for my daughter to look up and read. The last one we looked up was Gal. 5:22-23 about the Fruit of the Spirit. I explained to her that each of us, as Christians, are like a plant. We all produce fruit and as Jesus said, "... every tree is known by his own fruit." If a tree brings forth an apple, we know it's an apple tree. If a plant produces a pea pod; we know it's a pea plant. If a little girl is grumpy, with a frown on her face... will people think she's a Christian? Her fruit doesn't say so. We went over what each of the fruits of the Spirit meant, and I encouraged her to let people see these fruits in her so that all would know what kind of "tree" she is. I love object lessons, I think they stay in your mind so much better than just words alone, so I added this project.
We drew an empty tree... this represents her. Each color stands for one of the fruits of the Spirit and the black is for any 'bad' fruit. Each time she displays a good fruit, she gets to add that color fruit to her tree. Whenever she shows bad fruit, she adds a black piece. You would not believe how excited she is about this! She decided that she should add one black for the way she acted this morning. But now she is going out of her way to produce good fruit and fill up her tree with beautiful colors. We'll keep this going for a week or so and then see what kind of fruit becomes obvious. Will we see the right kind of fruit? I think so. Now, I'm not naive enough to think that this will motivate her long term, but it's definitely a lesson that will stay in her heart and mind.

"Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against thee." Psalm 119:11