Fruit of the Spirit: Galatians 5:22-23: “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.” 

My girls and I love talking about The Fruits. We wrote it on our chalkboard in our hallway.  We also love singing the song too. Whether we are eating a snack, taking a bath, on a walk, or getting ready for the day we can sing and talk about it.  If you are not familiar with the song you can click here: Fruit of the Spirit Song.

As a busy mom, it can be hard to be in the word daily.  When we can incorporate our children into our daily study we both can learn and grow together.

Each day as we sit down to eat breakfast we talk about one of the fruits for the day.   Sometimes we repeat the same one over the next few days to get more practice and a deeper understanding.  Some questions I would ask:  

Love

• What is love?
• How can we show love?
• Who can we show love to today?
• Who displayed the greatest love for us?
• Did you know daddy and mommy love you very much (grandparents, etc)?
• This is what we do to show you we love you…,
• How will you show your sister you love her?
• What does God say about love?

Actions may be: with our words, writing a card, drawing a picture, cleaning up after ourselves, or helping someone else clean up, the list goes on.  

Joy

• What is joy?
• Who tells us to have joy?
• How can we show joy?
• What does God say about joy?  

Peace

• What is peace?
• How can we show peace in our home, at school, work?
• What does God say about peace?

Continue the questions for each one.  As the weeks and months go on, and you see one of these traits demonstrated by your child or anyone in your family, state it aloud!  Let everyone know that 5 years old, Johnny showed love by checking in on his little sister who just fell down and then is helping her up.  Or 1 year old, Mary displayed self-control when she really wanted to dump her crackers on the floor but chose to pick them up out of the box one by one and eat them instead.  Or when the lines are really long at a local drive-through you say, “We ALL had to practice our patience today while waiting for our food, it got hard but we did it!”. It’s good for them to hear actual current events and how they are relevant in their lives.

It’s also good to hear when we, ourselves did not succeed in portraying these characteristics.  We too, as adults are not perfect but we keep trying.  As I have far too many real-life examples, there is one I wanted to share with you.  The other night I was making dinner in the kitchen and my husband had to step outside for a minute.  I thought, “my girls are playing so nicely in the living room- they should be fine”. 

Of course, those are the times, when you let your guard down the children feel the freedom and test their surroundings.  My 2 year old decided to climb and up on my desk to get to the floating shelf.   She got into sharpies, markers, and my lavender essential oil all within a couple of minutes.  She’s tiny and this is a huge feat for her, although not at all surprising.  She’s a very determined little girl.   Can you relate?    

After those few minutes, she tried to get down and fell.  That’s when I ran in and got upset that I wasn’t there to watch her. Side note- I think my frustration of her getting hurt goes deeper than just not being there.  She’s a preemie and we had a rough NICU journey, but that is a story for another day.  I reacted loud and frustrated.  As I picked her up I pushed toys out of my path so I wouldn’t trip, but I definitely lacked finesse.  I needed to calm down.  I needed to apologize to my 4-year-old.  So, after I checked my toddler, I apologized. “Mommy had a hard time displaying peace and self-control when sister got hurt.  Please forgive me. I am going to try to take a deep breath before I respond next time”.

The next day my 4-year-old got frustrated, and you know what she did?  She pushed a toy that lacked finesse.  We talked about her frustrations, we talked about how she reacted and how one can respond differently.  Mainly we talked about my actions and how I shouldn’t have pushed the toys like that the day before.  I apologized again. We decided to be each other’s helpers in calming down when we get frustrated.  

Children are mirrors.  They are a reality check to our own behaviors and what a blessing it is to have that self-check. If we are modeling and striving to have the fruits of the Spirit then they will learn how to also embody the fruits.  Our trees will grow and produce fruit when we are planted by the living water and our roots are in the word. 

Now that we put them into real-life situations for the children, let’s hit the sensory fulfillment.

• Books 
• Puppets
• Storytelling- This could be one you made up yourself or a story from the Bible.
• Acting out- Create a skit for showing fruit of the Spirit.  Act out a scenario where someone did not show self-control and how they learned to change their behavior.
• Sensory bins- These can be filled with rice, beans, shredded or tissue paper, beads, water, ice, etc.  That may contain a heart for love, smile for joy, peace sign for peace, picture of someone with their hand up saying “wait”.  Be creative, have fun!
• Fruit of the Spirit Necklace- free printable below!

Have you had any mirror situations? Do you talk with your children about the fruits of the Spirit? Or do you have a climber story too?  Please leave them in the comment section below. We’d love to hear from you!