Passing Faith to My Grandsons . . .

2017 is before us and while we do not know what all it holds, you are likely similar to me; I have hope for 2017 to be a year filled with opportunities to pass faith to my grandchildren and build solid, wonderful, joy-filled memories with them as well! While I have plans for fun – trips to the museum, since my grandsons are young I will probably bury “treasure” in my sandbox again this summer for them to discover, another candy cane hunt next December and many more opportunities for “fun” – the things I’m most focusing upon, are two ways to build their faith over the coming year.

The first thing my husband and I are doing is to focus upon the Fruit of the Spirit. We want our grandsons to be boys, teens and then men who love, know and walk with God throughout their lives. We want them to know what it, “looks like” to “walk” with God, and again, since they are young (eight, five and three), we think focusing upon the Fruit of the Spirit and what it looks like lived out in their lives is a great way to do this . . . and honestly, no matter their age, it is a great way to help us all better understand what it means to walk with God! 

So, we are beginning our focus upon the Fruit of the Spirit in the following ways . . .

·         We read Galatians 5:22-25 and talked about what these verses are saying.

·         We made these verses our “blessing” . . . we say it at meals and bedtime when they have sleepovers – or a slightly “simplified” version of these verses . . . “Today (or tomorrow at bedtime) let’s live the Fruit of the Spirit . . . love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. There is no law against these things and since we belong to Jesus, let’s live like we do!”

·         We are taking the Fruit – one portion at a time – and are making it our focus. For example, we are beginning with “love”. We talked about the two greatest commands loving God with our all and loving all others - talked about how when we love others, we will actually find we are also living the remaining portions of the Fruit and we are going to be doing several service projects for neighbors and family to show our love to others. When we see our grandsons talk and/or respond to someone with love, we identify what they did/said, then thank them for showing love and living the Fruit of the Spirit! These are just a few things we are doing to help our grandsons learn to walk with God by living the Fruit of the Spirit in their lives this coming year.

Tomorrow I'll share with you the second thing we are doing in the coming year to help our grandsons love, know and walk with God.