It’s nigh on impossible to avoid something by focusing on not thinking about it - that’s why I always found the passage in Galatians on the fruit of the spirit (5:13-25) such an empowering and helpful encouragement. Sadly most of the Sunday school sessions I was part of reduced this passage to a religious list of things I wasn’t full of, and that just piled more pressure on my shoulders. However, this is one of the best passages in the Bible for mentoring sessions, because it provides such fantastic scope for personal spiritual development. It tackles relevant, emotive issues that all young people face and has practical guidance for how to tackle it.
The whole chapter could be a mandate for those formative years, with wisdom that amounts to: ‘if you want to achieve an increasingly Christ-like life then instead of trying not to sin, just fill yourself with him and the natural consequence will be a life that has less room for unhealthy stuff because of all the healthy stuff in there already.’ Or to more directly quote the Bible: “Let the Holy Spirit guide your lives. Then you won’t be doing what your sinful nature craves.” Galatians 5:16 (NLT).
Clearly, January is an important time to take stock and set out positively into the new year. To that end, we’re going to look at all nine ‘fruit’ over the next nine months. Follow along with your mentee or just pick out things to use as and when, if that serves you better. The central image in my mind is that the Holy Spirit is growing a tree in your heart and if you feed it (by enjoying Jesus) then all the exciting fruit that will grow will be overflowing and sweet… but there is another tree in your heart vying for attention and if you feed it’s desires you will produce bad ‘fruit’ - sin - stuff that doesn’t please God. Doing more of a sin will increase its grip on you; doing it less will weaken its hold.
Activity 1
Draw a tree with big apples on it and ask them to list on the apples all the things they think are good fruit from their lives.
Activity 2
Try to come up with some alternative metaphors together for when putting something good in creates something great - it may be worth thinking up some examples to suit your mentee:
Children: Baking - put great ingredients in get a tasty cake out; put nasty things in and you’ll get a horrible mess.
Young people: If you go into Poundland for perfume you’ll smell dodgy but shop at House of Fraser and chances are you’ll smell fantastic!
Can they think of any more?
Over the coming months we’ll get into what it means to allow the Holy Spirit to bear fruit - as well as specifics of those fruit themselves.
