Self-Control

We have learned that when the Holy Spirit takes control of our lives, He manifests the fruit of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, and gentleness.

The last characteristic of His fruit is "self-control."

This term translates ekrates, someone who controls his or her desires.

The word originally meant to grip something, to control it.

Plato and Aristotle used the word for a man who had powerful passions and desires he controlled. He was always their master, never their servant.

The word was typically used with regard to sexual desires but was also applied to food, love, and ego. Someone who controls his desires, no matter how tempted he or she is, manifests ekrates.

Where do you need self-control today? Scripture calls you to choose this character trait:

• "A man without self-control is like a city broken into and left without walls" (Proverbs 25:28).
• "Make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control" (2 Peter 1:5–6).
• We are to be "hospitable, a lover of good, self-controlled, upright, holy, and disciplined" (Titus 1:8).

But know that your Father does not expect you to manifest self-control in your ability.

The Bible assures us that "God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control" (2 Timothy 1:7).

"Give up your self"

God’s word calls us to submit to and depend on God because our Creator knows what is best for His creation.

He knows that He can guide us more omnisciently than we can guide ourselves. He can meet our needs more omnipotently than we can. He can protect us from enemies we cannot see and provide infinite hope that transcends and redeems our finite world.

That’s why Jesus said, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me” (Luke 9:23).

It’s why our Lord calls us to submit to him “as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God” (Romans 12:1).

It’s because God can do so much more with us and for us than we can do with and for ourselves.

In Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis assures us: “Give up your self, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favorite wishes every day and death of your whole body in the end: submit with every fiber of your being, and you will find eternal life.

Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will ever be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find him, and with him everything else thrown in.”

The Holy Spirit is ready to empower you with the self-control you need, if you will ask Him for such grace today.

Apply the lesson

• Where have you exercised self-control lately? Where has self-control escaped you?
• Why might self-control be one of the more difficult manifestations of the fruit of the Spirit to see come alive in us?
• Why is self-control one quality of a civil person? Put another way: How does self-control cause an uncivil person to react?
• Pray that God would cause you to pause and pray before the next time you lose self-control. Abdicate the throne of your life and allow your true King to reign.

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