Living Out the Fruit of the Spirit: For Kids + FamiliesНамуна

What do you think it means to be faithful? A good strategy we can use when we want to better understand what a word in the Bible means is to see what the different translations, or versions, of the Bible say. Try it out: look up today’s verses in different translations of the Bible and take note of what other words are used instead of “faithful”.

Some of the words we’ll find are trustworthy and dependable. To be faithful means that people can count on you to be there for them, to do the right thing and to be steady.

Like all of the fruit of the Spirit, we can see that God is the ultimate example for us: God is faithful. He is always there for us and His love for us is steady.

And He wants us to be faithful, too. In Luke 19, Jesus tells a story about a king who entrusted his servant with some money. The servant was faithful and trustworthy in taking care of the king’s money, and the king rewarded the servant because of his faithfulness.

In Kenya, a graduate of Compassion’s program named Miriam is practicing faithfulness in her job as a police officer.

Sadly, in Kenya, the police force is known to not treat people fairly, especially people living in poverty. But Miriam is trying to change that by practicing faithfulness. She wants to be trustworthy and dependable to the people and communities she serves. These are values she learned while growing up as a Compassion sponsored child.

What Miriam shows us is that faithfulness can be hard, especially when not everyone around you is being faithful. But those are the times when faithfulness is the most important. When we can be trustworthy with even the smallest things, that helps us practice being trustworthy when big things come our way, too.

Live it out: 

What’s a responsibility that you have? How can you use it to practice faithfulness? Maybe it’s something as simple as faithfully making your bed every morning or being dependable to help with a chore at your house. Faithfulness starts with the small, everyday things in our life!

Prayer: 

Dear God, thank you for your faithful love for us and for always being with me. Help me to be faithful, even when it’s hard, like Miriam, the police officer in Kenya. Thank you for giving me the strength, by your Spirit, to practice faithfulness. Amen.