Fruit of the Spirit

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

Galatians 5:22

When I was a kid, my sister and I were Vacation Bible School junkies. We would go to three and sometimes four different churches in the area to attended their Vacation Bible School. We loved the songs, the crafts and making new friends. There was a small church by my house that had one of my favorite VBS programs. The church was small. The parking lot probably only held about 50 cars. When you walked into the church, you would either go upstairs to the sanctuary or downstairs to a multipurpose room with small classrooms on one side. There was a tiny kitchen at the far, back wall. The church did not have any air conditioning and was hot as all get out, but I loved this small church. It felt cozy to me. Today, most churches buy curriculum for the week of Vacation Bible School, but when I was young, many churches came up with their own themes for the week. One year, this little church's VBS theme was the Fruit of the Spirit. There was a song that we sang everyday to help us remember all the attributes and to this day whenever I read about the Fruits of the Spirit, I hear that song in my head.

In the past, I have used my blog as a creative outlet for my writing. I never really had anything important to say; I generally just babbled on about things I can't live without (Chap Stick), fond memories of being a kid (Goggles), or ridiculous things that randomly go through my mind (Blinking Sound Effects). But since getting pregnant the second time around, I have felt a gentle nudge to use this blog more as an encouragement to readers and more specifically to moms. I changed the name of the blog from Nonsense to A Spoonful of Sugar because I felt like some of the posts I have written about are not "nonsense" but hopefully a bit of sweet inspiration of which I also need a reminder. As parents, we have a great responsibility to raise our beautiful babies in truth and grace. 3 John 1:4 says, "I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth." That is my prayer daily, but I need a lot of help because we all know that raising children is tireless, hard work. 

Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control are characters that are produced by the Holy Spirit, not by self-effort. This means that if we believe and confess that Jesus Christ is our Savior then the Holy Spirit lives within us (Acts 2:17-21) and if the Holy Spirit lives within us, then we possess these attributes too (Galatians 2:20).  I felt another gentle nudging to write about the Fruit of the Spirit and to break down each of the characters and talk about how they relate to us rearing our children. The next nine blogs are going to be devoted to diving into each of the fruits of the spirit. The vision for these blogs will be to be read as a weekly devotional. Each blog will have:

- Background information about what the Bible says about each attribute,
- Ways to intentionally use each character within parenting during the week,
- Activities to do with children to teach them about each fruit of the Spirit,
- A blessing to pray over children for the week in relation to the character being studied,
- A verse of the week to study and memorize

I want to be very clear in stating that I am by no means an expert in parenting or theology. I am a humble student at both, but I am hoping that those who read this might also want to take part in this study. I have prayed that the Lord would use these posts to speak to those who need to hear this. I would love to hear how the Lord is moving through you as we study the fruits of the Spirit. Please feel free to comment about your experiences or ideas that might add to our growth.