Wed. Night Impact

Last night, I feel we had a great night. Gideon led worship and started with Gorilla/Man/Gun, which the kids always have fun doing. He did a couple of new songs, but the energy seemed to be good during the praise time.

I finished my series on the Fruits of the Spirit by talking about faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

Faithfulness means that people see you as trustworthy and when you say you are going to do something, then you are going to do it. Nobody questions you. This should be done in school, chores, sports, or whatever you do. Anything you do, you are going to be honest and you are going to finish, and you are going to give it your best.

Gentleness means that you are gentle. I gave some examples of this, like the mom who kisses a boo-boo and makes it feel better. A dad who gets down and helps his son build a birdhouse or something. People who comfort the sad. And my grandpa, who I really learned a lot about gentleness from last week, who took care of my grandma. (She passed away on Sunday morning and her funeral is going on right now as I type this. Unfortunately I wasn't able to go back for it.) When they brought the hospital bed in for her to basically die in, he told the nurse that it wasn't big enough. The nurse didn't understand since my grandma had gone down to about 85 pounds. My grandpa said to the nurse, "But we're both not going to be able to fit in it." It didn't even cross his mind that she was going to sleep alone. He had a bed in another room about 10 feet away, but instead he pulled up a recliner and slept next to her every night, holding her hand. He's 91, and has aches and pains all over his body, but whenever grandma said anything, he was up and helping her and giving her whatever she needed. He never got frustrated, he was just so gentle with her. I guess I never really saw gentleness as tangible as I did with how my grandpa treated his wife. It was awesome.

Self-Control is staying away from one's desires. Self-control is taught by practice and by discipline. My 2 year old son has no self-control. Whatever he sees he goes for. This kid runs from one thing to the next non-stop. I don't know where he gets the energy. He screams, just for the fun of it, especially when we are out to dinner or at church. He doesn't have the concept of controlling his behavior. So, we have to discipline him, usually time-out or in real bad cases a spanking. He will learn to control himself and that there are some things you can and can't do. Older kids have to discipline themselves. By staying away from something that is wrong, they are developing self-control.

I think it was a good lesson, and I feel the kids understood what I was talking about. I mentioned that living these out is not what makes somebody a Christian, it's your faith in Jesus, but if you have faith in Jesus, these should be evident in our lives.