The Holy Spirit helps us have the determination to finish what we started.
When Jesus went back up to Heaven, God sent us a helper, the Holy Spirit. The Spirit helps us and is with us every day, especially when we get stuck. Some of us have met people who have lived through really hard things. Many of those people will say things like, ‘I couldn’t have made it without God’s help.’ So, when things get really hard in your life, or when you find yourself up against a real challenge, trust Jesus! If you believe in Jesus, you don’t have to do it alone. You have the Holy Spirit to help you!
God gives us what we need to keep going.
God can give us the determination to get UNstuck from any kind of sticky situation. Whenever we’re in a sticky situation, we usually try to do everything ourselves, and when we do that, we stay stuck. God gives us everything we need to keep going when things get sticky. When we lean on God and ask him for help, he will help us get UNstuck.
We can keep going because God is with us.
Sometimes when things seem impossible and it gets hard to keep going, we can feel alone. It can feel like we’re the only person on Earth that is struggling in school, or sports, or with friends. When we feel that way, we can remember that God is always with us. God loves us and wants us to keep going. When things seem impossible, we can turn to God and he will give us the strength to keep going. God is always there for you.
Keep going, even when it seems impossible.
We all have things in our life that feel impossible. Maybe it might feel impossible to get all your schoolwork done this week. Or maybe you’ve had an argument with a friend, or your brother or sister and it feels impossible that you’ll ever make up. God is powerful and can do things that seem impossible to us. So, when we’re going through things that seem impossible, we can pray to God and ask him for help. God is always there for us and helps us to keep going, even when things seem impossible.
Determination is deciding it’s worth it to finish what you started.
Sometimes in life we might feel a little stuck. Determination is what helps us get UNstuck. Just like Jesus sent the disciples to do big jobs like baptizing people in all nations, God sends us to big jobs as well. The job that Jesus gave the disciples seemed impossible. Sometimes things seem impossible for us, too. When things get hard, we can remember that Jesus is always with us and that God gave us determination to finish what we started.
Bad Fruit vs. Good Fruit.
Have you ever taken a bite of fruit that has gone bad? Yuck, I have and it’s nasty! I think we can all agree that good fruit taste way better than bad fruit. We’ve been spending the last 2 weeks talking about good fruit (not actual fruit) but the fruit that comes from staying connected with Jesus. Well, let’s spend a minute talking about bad fruit, the fruit that comes from our flesh. Our flesh is the part of us that doesn’t want to listen or do what’s right. When we listen to that part of us we will bear bad fruit. Unfortunately, bad fruit will affect everyone around us not just you. Pray and ask God to help you to lean on him so that the fruit you bear is good!
The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
The Spirit we are talking about in today’s verse is Jesus. Now, we all know Jesus isn’t with us physically but we do know that His Spirit is with us. When we ask Jesus into our hearts His Spirit comes to live inside of us and it’s His Spirit that helps us make good decisions. When we listen to the Holy Spirit we produce good fruit!
The fruit of the Spirit is self-control.
We can experience a lot of feelings and emotions in one day. Happy, sad, mad, excited, the list goes on and on. All of these feelings are perfectly normally, even getting mad. BUT it’s how we respond to each situation that matters especially the ones that upset us. It’s not okay to get mad and then hurt someone with our words. Even when we are mad or upset we need to have self-control. We need to be calm, patient, and think about what we are saying. This can take practice. Luckily, we have God to help us with this.
The fruit of the Spirit is gentleness.
Have you ever held a brand new baby? They are so small and fragile that we have to be really gentle with them, don’t we? That is one way we have to be gentle. The other type of gentleness is being kind with our words. For example, if someone hurts your feelings or messes up something that belongs to you it can be frustrating, right? A lot of times our response can be harsh but God tells us to be gentle with our actions and words. If we are struggling with being harsh, we can stop and pause, even pray before we respond to the situation.
The fruit of the spirit is faithfulness.
Faithfulness is probably not something we think about a whole lot. We think about being kind and putting others first but we don’t think a lot about being faithful. What does faithfulness even mean? It means to be constant, reliable, loyal. For example, I’m a faithful friend. I’m always there for there for my friends, no matter what. I love them unconditionally, I’m there for them when things are good and when things are hard. They know they can count on me. Can your friends and family count on you? Pray and ask God to help you to be faithful.
