Self-Control

Ahhh, self-control. I'd like to believe that I am a self-controlled person, but anyone who knows me really well could tell you the truth. I am amazingly undisciplined at times and with certain things. But this last-mentioned fruit of the spirit is vitally important to our spiritual lives!

According to Scripture, there are many reasons why self-control is important. Here are a few:

- It prevents us from being surprised by the Lord's return. I Thes. 5:6
- It enables us to pray with effectiveness. I Peter 4:7
- It helps us to avoid the devil. I Peter 5:8
- It identifies us as belonging to the day (good) rather than the night (evil). I Thes. 5:8
- If we lack self-control, we are "like a city whose walls are broken down..." Proverbs 25:28
- It is part of what "will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ."

This all seems really good, right? I want to have these things and I want to have self-control, along with all the things listed above that self-control brings. I want to be joyful at my Lord's return, not caught in some disobedience or surprised. I want to pray with power. I want to avoid the devil. I want to be associated with the light. I want to be a secure city with unbroken walls. And I most certainly want to be effective and productive in Christ. It's really an obvious choice. But what is not so obvious is how to get it. I try to be self-controlled and it doesn't always work out so well for me. Thank goodness that God has a plan that is greater than me! 2 Peter 1:3-8 tells us that God has given us all we need to lead a righteous life, including self-control. Yeah!!

We need to start believing - I mean really truly believing in our heart of hearts - that we can be self-controlled. So often we face challenges, like bad habits and certain everyday struggles, fully believing that we cannot really make the right choice. We look ahead and have already decided for ourselves that we cannot overcome a particular obstacle. For example, I know that I need to get up a little earlier every day to spend time with God and His Word, but I have a mantra going in my head that says something like, "you aren't a morning person and you won't really be able to pull yourself out of bed." Perhaps your struggle is with food and you are telling yourself, "you will always have that cookie/cake/chip and won't ever really stick to a healthy eating plan." We need to change these attitudes because they do nothing for us except set us up for failure.

Let's replace these negative mantras with the promises of God from the Bible. First, Phil. 4:13, "I can do everything through Him who gives me strength." In 2 Peter 1:3-8, God promises to give us all we need to lead a righteous life. And there are many more. Assignment #1: find a verse to cling to when you face challenges, then memorize it and repeat that to yourself whenever you think that you cannot be self-controlled. Then tell me if it helps!

Self-control has an enemy and that is temptation. Think about that a second and tell me if that rings true. If we were never tempted, wouldn't self-control be easy? And I believe we each have our own areas of temptation that we struggle with the most. For me right now, it is getting up early as I mentioned above, food, and exercise. I have daily fights with myself over these particular things. I have never, though, really seen these as spiritual struggles until now. If temptation is a spiritual thing, and we know it is from Scripture, and I recognize that my particular struggles are with temptation and my feeble attempts to be self-controlled, then shouldn't I also recognize that these struggles are spiritual in nature? I think God wants us to recognize these battles as spiritual and invite Him into the fight with us.

We must rely on God's strength for our self-control instead of our own. When we try to do it ourselves, we set ourselves up for failure. Phil. 4:13. As Paul says in Gal. 3:3, "Are you so foolish? After beginning with the Spirit, are you now trying to attain your goal by human effort?" God promises to fight alongside us and it is only through His strength that we can win these battles or make any progress with them at all. I Cor. 10:13. We should come to Him with our failures and weakness, for in our weakness He is made strong! 2 Cor. 12:9-10.

That said, we also need to be proactive about being self-controlled, always with God alongside us and relying on His strength. We can train ourselves to rely on God and be self-controlled. In I Cor. 9:24-27, Paul compares this to training to run a race. We need to train for self-control like a runner trains to not only run but to win a race. Paul says, "I beat my body and make it my slave so that ... I myself will not be disqualified for the prize." There are things we can do to train ourselves in the areas particular to our personal struggles.

Here is a list of practical steps towards self-control.
(1) Be in the Word. I keep coming back to this because it is vitally important! We need to be able to recognize God's voice leading us towards self-control and away from temptation. How can we hear Him if we don't know his voice? We learn to recognize God's voice by reading and studying His Word.
(2) Recognize your own personal struggles. Think and pray about it, then write them down as God reveals them to you. For some of us this is easy; for others this may be a bit more difficult.
(3) Take on one challenge at a time. This is especially important if you are feeling overwhelmed by your list!
(4)Make a game plan. Ask yourself, what one or two things can you do today to move towards greater self-control? Some examples might be: if your struggle is with food, your one thing could be to rid your house of the food that tempts you the most so you just don't have it around anymore; if your struggle is with exercise, commit to go on one short walk today; if your struggle is with organization, tackle one small area today. You get the idea, don't you?
(5) When faced with something that challenges your self-control, in the words of my good friend and teacher, "stop, drop and pray"! It's okay (and a good idea) to pause and wait for God's direction. Ask God in that moment to give you strength and to help you stand up under the temptation you face. He will do it! We know and can believe this 100% because He specifically promises to do this in His word. So claim this promise as your own today! Also, sometimes just waiting and putting off the temptation can make it face. For example, sometimes if I tell myself I can have the cookie or cake that I crave after I do a work out, by the time I'm done with the work out I don't want the treat as much anymore.

See if you can come up with more practical steps to add to my list. Practice these things, go into training. Share you progress with all of us and let's see if these things can really make a difference!