The fruit of the spirit is goodness.
What is the opposite of good? Bad. When we stay close to Jesus through reading the bible and prayer, He helps us to make good decisions. Good choices honor Jesus just like obedience honors our parents. If you feel like you haven’t been making good choices lately, that’s okay. Just ask God to forgive you and He will! The second we ask for forgiveness, we get to start fresh. I don’t know about you, but I’m really thankful for a new beginning and that with Jesus I can make good choices.
Oh man, patience can be a doozy! Patience is one of those things we have to practice every day. We have to patiently wait in line, wait for dinner, wait for our friends to come over. The waiting never seems to end. But I’ve learned that the more I practice patience, the easier it gets. It is like riding a bike without training wheels. It can be really hard at first, but the more you do it, the better you get!
The fruit of the Spirit is peace.
Have you ever had a water balloon fight? If so, things can get a little chaotic. That’s a perfect example of when chaos is okay! Other times God calls us to be peaceful. Peaceful means that we don’t stir up trouble with our siblings or friends. It can also mean we are calm and kind with our words. Are you a peaceful person? Pray and ask God to help you be peaceful with your actions and your words.
The fruit of the spirit is joy.
It is easy to be joyful when things go our way. The challenge is to be joyful when things do not go as planned. Lately, a lot of things haven’t gone the way that I had hoped. When my plans are interrupted by something unexpected, I can be tempted to feel sad and down. In moments like these I have to choose to be joyful. That’s because my joy is in Jesus and everything He has done for me, not in my silly plans!
The fruit of the spirit is love.
We love our parents, family, football, dance, vacations, and the list goes on and on. However, nothing compares to God’s love for you! He loves you when you make good choices and when you make bad choices. He loves you when you have a good attitude and when you don’t…when you are choosing obedience and when you are being disobedient. Now, it makes God sad when we act in a way that doesn’t honor him, but it doesn’t change how He feels about you. God’s love is unconditional which means he loves us no matter what! We too can love unconditionally because of Jesus.
When we follow Jesus’ example and put others first, we are showing others what Jesus is like. When we love others and show that they’re important, we are showing others what Jesus is like. Not everyone knows who Jesus is and what he did for the world. It’s because of Jesus’ humility that we can show humility to others. When we follow Jesus’ example, the world can see that Jesus put everyone first and loves everyone.
Humility is NOT thinking less of yourself. God says that you are important, loved, and made in his image. Humility IS thinking of yourself less. This means instead of putting yourself first all the time, you should put others first. Jesus thinks that we are important, and he loves us because of this, he put us first. Since we are important and we are loved, we should let others know that they are important, and they are loved. We do this by putting them first.
Sometimes the world tells us that we should only focus on ourselves. What is wrong with that? Well, Jesus tells us that we should not be like the world. When Jesus died on the cross and came back, He changed everything. He flipped the world upside down and made everything different. He made us different than the world so we shouldn’t focus on ourselves, but instead we should put others first, just like Jesus did for us.
Putting others first isn’t always easy. Let’s face it: sometimes we want to be first. We like things our way. God tells us that our way is not the best way, God’s way is the best. God tells us to love others and put others first, especially when it’s the hard thing to do. You know what the best part is? When we’re having a hard time putting others first, we can always pray to God and ask for His help.
Jesus lived his life in humility and so should we. What does it mean to be humble? It says in Philippians 2:3 that being humble means valuing others above yourself, or in other words put others first! Jesus put us first when He died on the cross for our sins. Our goal is to follow Jesus’ example. Since Jesus put us first, we should put others first!
