Add to Your Faith: Self Control

Add to Your Faith:  Self-Control 

Make every effort to add to your faith goodness;

and to goodness, knowledge;

and to knowledge, self-control.

2 Peter 1:5-6a

In many Christian communities, people regularly "give up" something for Lent - something that they really like as opposed to giving up something they don't care for in the first place.  Friends of mine have given up chocolate, pastries, desserts, red meat, sports, shopping, and watching TV, to name a few.   When an acquaintance proposed giving up reading for forty days, I just had to laugh.  I would never be able to do that! 

Giving up anything that is a regular habit or an ingrained part of your life is very difficult to do and requires a tremendous amount of self-control.  Without it, we will be slaves to what controls us. Food, lust, money, our words - we can find ourselves overwhelmed with the consequences of not having self control in many areas of life.   Proverbs 25:28 says, Like a city whose walls are broken through is a person who lacks self-control”

The good news here?  According to the Apostle Paul, self-control is one of the fruits of a relationship with the Holy Spirit (Galatians 5;22).  As we daily ask for the Holy Spirit to live in our hearts (Luke 11:13), He takes the helm of every aspect of our lives, including our self-control.

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Take my will and make it Thine

It shall be no longer mine.

Take myself, and I will be

Ever, only, all for Thee.

The United Methodist Hymnal, No. 399