Guest blogger - Kristi McInnis

In UpStreet we’ve been teaching our kids on the fruits of the spirit. Last
week we talked about self-control. There are so many directions you could
take this fruit, but we thought we better take the time just to explain to
the kids what self-control actually is. We told them self-control is when we
think of what God wants us to do before we act. Our small group leaders
began to ask the kids “how can we practice self-control in our lives?”
without any hesitation one little boy replied.” My dad say’s I don’t have
any, so I can’t practice self-control until I get some.”
Our first response was to laugh… but then if we really think about it, isn’t
that true for all of us. How can we practice self-control if we don’t have
any to begin with. When we have self-control it could protect us from so
many things. Self-control could help us with all the other fruits as well:
patience, goodness, faithfulness, etc… Self-control is our protection, when
we start to lose self-control it brings more trouble.
I sat with one little girl at the end as we were eating our snacks and she
simply said to me, “so I won’t get into so much trouble if I have more
self-control? Boy, my mom is going to be so happy!” That’s just one of the
thousands of reasons I love working in children’s ministry because more
often than none the kids end up teaching me.