9 A Day

During a slightly stressful moment in our house, I sent a text to a couple of friends. Slightly tongue in cheek I asked "What are the fruit of the Spirit again and do I really have to try and show them all at the same time?" Their wonderful responses ranged from "I'm about to boil over myself" to "It's about dwelling in the Spirit, which enables us to show such fruit, it's not about 'trying harder'." In short, go and pray, rather than try harder and end up losing it at the boys!

I asked my eldest if he could remind me of the fruit of the Spirit and he did. It's one of the verses the husband has taught him. 

"But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law."

Galations 5v22-23

We often ask him what the second part of the verse means, "And against such things there is no law". And because we often ask him, he was able to respond (in that way a child responds when his parents try to drum in a lesson) by saying that there is no limit to how kind and loving he can be to his brothers. Some of the lessons we teach our boys, seem so easy when we are teaching them to grasp something. But when I'm reminded to put that verse into practice, I can so easily forget this part. I tend to think that I have already been long suffering about something for long enough, or I have already showed that person kindness or gentleness. Or I was self controlled yesterday. Or my patience has run out. But I need to remember that there is no law (and no amount of reasoning, however good they seem) against such things.

My second son asked me what we were talking about, so I grabbed the teaching opportunity. I said that when we plant an apple seed in soil and water it and look after it, after time an apple tree grows and produces healthy apples. And likewise if we plant ourselves in Jesus then as we grow, we will produce fruit like kindness and gentleness. On asking him if he understood, he replied, "I am an apple!" Not put off, by his silly answer in a silly voice, I showed great patience by explaining it once more, in a very gentle, self controlled tone. I even acted out a seed being planted and growing healthy fruit and likened this to planting ourselves in the Holy Spirit, and us growing good fruit. I asked again if he had understood, and he replied, "Can I show you my Nanny McPhee impression by sticking pieces of Lego in my teeth?"

I gave up and accepted that maybe the best way to teach him about the Fruit of the Spirit, was to model it to him, which is often a bigger challenge than teaching it!