Are you modeling the fruit of the spirit for your children? The fruits of the spirit consist of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. The two most important ‘fruits’ are the first and the last. The fruits of love and self-control are two of the most important character traits that we as adults can model for our children and serve as filters for all other fruits. That is, if we don’t show love and self-control, then we can’t effectively show all the other fruits because we must build on love and self-control for everything else. Without having love in your heart, how can you show joy, kindness, or kindness?
It is the same with self-control. If you do not have self-control it is very difficult to show the fruits of fidelity, peace, patience and meekness. As someone who has tried on his own to gain self-control and show love to those who don’t love, believe me, it’s almost impossible to gain them on your own. If you need help, humble yourself before God and ask him to help you show love and/or self-control in your life. He will ANSWER your prayers if you are desperately serious in your request.
In all aspects of life we need to approach people with an attitude of love. If we approach situations and people without love, we are harming our children. Children learn best by observing and modeling us. This is why we need to have genuine love in our hearts, not just an act that we put on in front of certain people. This is also the reason why we need to ask for God’s help here. Not many of us have a naturally loving spirit, so we must continually seek God’s help to get us to this point. Once we get a spirit of love towards others, we very easily pick up the characteristics of cheerfulness, kindness and kindness because these are all buds of love. Self-control may not be so easy to model for children because how many times do we parents lose our temper with our children?
Children see us at our worst because they tend to drive us crazy sometimes and they are always by our side constantly watching us. Consciously keeping the fruit of self-control in our minds helps us be less likely to lose our temper or act out in situations we can’t control. What kind of reaction do you think a child would have if we were dealt a bad card in life and just laughed saying, “Well, I guess I’ll be glad because being angry isn’t going to help me at all!” Children who are beginning to frame their world will see the appropriate response. So the next time they find themselves in a difficult or uncontrollable situation, they will know that they can make lemonade with the lemons they have.
Modeling self-control and love are two of the most important traits that we as parents can demonstrate to our children. If you are interested in accessing free ‘fruit of the spirit’ lessons and stories for kids, feel free to visit my site at the link below and click on the tab titled ‘fruit of the spirit’.