Fruit of the Spirit: Self-control
Kids at home 1st November
The Bible talks about fruit but it’s a different kind of fruit to apples and bananas! It's called the Fruit of the Spirit.
The fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control and the Holy Spirit wants to give each of them to us and grow them in our lives to help us become more like Jesus. When we look at the life of Jesus, we can see that He shows all of these characteristics perfectly! Today we are going to look at self-control and how God helps us to choose our actions and words carefully and to follow His perfect example!
Let’s start with some worship! Feel free to sing and dance or just watch and listen, Jesus doesn’t mind HOW we worship, he just loves it when we spend time with him and sing his praises!
Fruit of the Spirit – Starskills
Alive – Hillsong Young & Free
This is Amazing Grace – Bethel Kids
Good Good Father – Chapelhill Kids
Story time
David and Saul – Saddleback Kids!
Some things to talk to your family about…
- Why did David decide not to hurt Saul?
- How do you think David felt?
- How do you think Saul felt when he found out that David could have but didn’t hurt him?
- Have you ever had to stop yourself from doing something that you really wanted to do? Maybe you had to share something you didn’t want to or stay calm when you felt angry? Can you think of an example?
- What do you think it means to have self-control?
- What do you think we can learn about self-control from Jesus? How could He help us with self-control?
Some important points to remember…
- King Saul wanted to hurt David because he was jealous of him and angry with him.
- Saul had just heard that David was hiding with some of his friends out in the hills and so Saul chose 3,000 of his best fighting men to help him capture David.
- David ended up having the opportunity to really hurt Saul (who was trying to hurt him!) as Saul was alone at the opening of the cave!
- David decided to keep control of his feelings despite the awful way Saul had been treating him and he didn’t hurt him, instead he let him go!
- God promises us that if we ask Him, He will help us to have self-control, like David did, He will help us to treat others as He wants us to.
- Self-Control is saying no to the things that aren’t good for us and saying yes to the things that are good for us. It means listening to God and acting how He wants us to rather than reacting or doing what we might to do.
- Self-Control isn’t always easy. It means fighting against the temptation to do the wrong thing and keeping our emotions, thoughts, and actions in control.
- Our words, thoughts, and actions are powerful and can be used for so much good but they can hurt others if we aren’t careful.
- Like David, we don’t have to do this on our own! The Holy Spirit working in our hearts helps us and when we are tempted we can stop, think, and pray for God to help us!
Memory Verse
For God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control. Timothy 1:7
Why don’t you try writing this memory verse out at home and hiding the words behind post-it notes (or similar) you could have family members take it in turns to guess the words. Try and keep going until you’ve learnt the memory verse ☺
Prayer time
Can you think of something that God has helped you to deal with? Maybe He has helped you to stay calm when you were feeling angry with a friend or a sibling? Maybe He has shown you when to be generous and share something that you love or really wanted with someone else? Maybe He has helped you to be more patient and kind with your family, friends or teachers? Let’s thank Him now in prayer!
Why don’t you also ask Him to show you the things that you need to say no to and the things that you need to say yes to this week? Remember, if you are feeling tempted to do something or say something that you don’t think God wants for you, you can stop, think and pray to Him and he will help you!
Dear God,
Thank you for the fruit of self-control, thank you that we can think about what you say is best for us before we act or make a decision. Thank you for helping us to have self-control with others and with ourselves and we ask you to keep helping us with this! Help us to stop, think and pray to you instead of reacting in a way that isn’t good for us or for others. Thank you that we can ask you for your help whenever we need it and thank you for always loving us and caring for us!
Amen
Why don’t you have a think about the different Fruit of the Spirit that we’ve talked about over the last few weeks? Can you remember what God has taught you? Which memory verses can you remember? Why don’t you talk about this as a family today?