Devotions

Fruit of the Spirit | Intro Week 3

Each Friday you get a taste of what we are doing in in Children's ministry in your daily devotion. We are re-imagining what Children's Sunday School looks like when we are not able to physically gather together.  

Dear Parents,

We have created a fun, interactive Fruit of the Spirit Sunday School program for this school year for our children who are age 2 through those in sixth grade. This program will run digitally with videos hosted on our Children's Ministry YouTube and Instagram channels. As soon as we can meet in person, we can use these lessons together. Even when we are meeting in person, we will continue to share the weekly videos online for anyone who is unable to join us in person. 

Video Lesson: Fruit of the Spirit | Intro Week 3 (~7 min)

Scripture: Colossians 1:10

Live a life worthy of the Lord and please Him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God.

Last week, we talked about Jesus teaching the disciples by saying that He is the Vine and We are the Branches, if we abide in Him, we will bear much fruit! When we stay connected to God through worship, prayer, reading God’s Word, and staying connected to friends in Christian community, the Fruit of the Spirit that He has planted in us will grow!

Picking strawberries is a fun summertime activity that many people do with family and friends. After you pick a bucket full of berries, you get to take them home to enjoy. One thing that makes strawberries different from other fruits is that their seeds are on the outside. Can you think of any other fruits that have seeds on the outside? Watermelons, apples, oranges, peaches, and cherries all have seeds on the inside. The fruit covers the seed and protects it until is ready to grow into a new plant.

The Fruit that is in us, through the Holy Spirit, is like the seeds of most types of fruits. When fruit is growing on a plant, we cannot see the seeds, but we know that they are there because the fruit is there. We cannot see the seeds of the Fruit of the Spirit inside of us, but others can see them in the things we do and say. With God’s love and the Holy Spirit working in your heart, the Fruit of the Spirit will grow in your life. As they continue to grow, they will begin to overflow into good works so that others can experience God’s goodness and love through you.

How do you know if you are growing good Fruit? If you are helping others, living more like Jesus every day, and helping others to live like Jesus. Beginning next week, we will spend a month learning about each Fruit. We will read a different Bible story each week and look for how we can see the Fruit of the month throughout the stories.

You will need: Fruit gummies

Standing a distance away from your child, ask the following questions. Give them a chance to think about their answer. Once they have answer, toss a fruit gummy to see if they can try to catch it using their mouth. Before you toss the gummy, make sure they are ready! Once the gummy is in the air, see if they can tell you their answer before they catch the gummy.

Questions:

Did you help someone today?
How have you helped someone today?
Where have you seen the Fruit of the Spirit today?

The Indwelling God

“O Lord, you have searched me and known me.” Psalm 139:1 

Picture David in your mind. What image do you get first? The harp-playing shepherd boy or the conquering king? Perhaps some other well-known story of David comes to mind. One thing that we know of David is that he was a prolific writer of psalms. Maybe these texts were even set to music. The Biblical character of David embodies many contradictions. The Lord’s anointed King of Israel. A man after God’s own heart. A musician who brought peace to Saul’s court with his music. For all of his good qualities and actions, he certainly had his downfalls. He was so…human. Psalm 139 is a beautiful portrayal of the turmoil David felt in his relationship with God, and one that is likely familiar to all of us. It seemed that David lived out this struggle in his daily life, sometimes succeeding in finding inner communion with God, but many times failing. There was wickedness in him, but this wickedness was not from God.  

Read Psalm 139 a few times today. I don’t know how many times I’ve read this Psalm, but when I read it the other day, God’s Spirit breathed new life into these words for me. Verses 19-24 have always been troublesome for me. Truthfully, there are parts of many Psalms I’ve often avoided confronting because of their violent nature. But, this day, they formed into the conclusion of a prayer for me, a prayer that goes like this –  

“O Divine Presence, I am not separate from you. You are within me as I am within you. My ways are your own. My words are your own. You embrace me both from within and outside myself. Will I ever know myself fully the way you have known me? There is nowhere I can go that you are not with me, for you are within me and also within all that I meet. At my best you see me completely, and at my worst you see me completely. Your ways are good and true. You are my intuition, the deepest desires of my heart, underneath the fear. You are well acquainted with the dark, because you were there in the darkness, and from the darkness, light was born. There is no light without darkness. I am an act of your own creation, from the time my parents conceived me and I began to grow inside my mother’s body. How intricate are your ways, that made both the vast galaxies and me. When I was unknown to anyone other than you, you saw what I could be. Your story is my story - I am connected to all that has come before me and all that will come after me. How strange it must be for you to know all of creation the way you know me. You do not leave my body in order to know another. Seek out those parts in me that harm others, the parts of me that would rise up against all that is good for my own self-interest. These parts of me are not of you. They are not what you saw when you created me. Help me descend beyond the persona I project, and travel down through my selfish ego, to the original goodness inside me - the indwelling of you in me that is also the indwelling of you in every other person. Amen.”