Welcome back to Cultivating Growth. I want to thank you all for joining us this week. We're going to be talking about the idea of self control in our conversation. We're going to talk about what the Bible has to say about self control and the importance of us growing in that area. It's something that specifically, It is talked about quite frequently and brought up many times in both the Old and New Testament.

And so it certainly demands our attention and our study. And so with that, let's get to it. 

Well John, this week we're going to spend some time talking about self control. As you made mention in the intro, It is something that comes up biblically a lot, and whether it's specifically by name, which certainly happens, but alluded to  from the very beginning, you know, certainly to the very end. It is something that God is looking for within his people to be able to control self.

And so, you know, we'll kind of start here at the beginning of kind of defining that, and I don't think there's any If there's any reason to get too fancy about it or to get complicated when you're talking about self control, it is that simple idea of controlling yourself, making yourself be what it needs to be, certainly what God would have it to be.

The decisions that we make, the things that we say, the places that we go, the things that we look at, the things that we, you know, will be around, all of those things will come into being. Well, when it comes to self control, yeah, I was, I looked up the definition just out of curiosity to see how, you know, the scholars would define self control and you're right.

It's actually very simply defined, you know, the ability to control oneself. I mean, it's pretty, pretty self evident in its description, but you know, it did go a little bit deeper. Deeper into that idea of control, it's controlling your emotions, desires, and how they're expressed. And I thought that's an interesting part of it is recognizing that all of these desires that we have, the, maybe the anger that we may feel, maybe the Some of these things we feel internally, but self control is really pointing us to how those feelings are then going to be expressed.

Are we going to feel anger and then lash out at someone? Or are we going to feel anger, but be able to control that? Are we going to feel desire in some area of life and then act on that desire? Or are we going to be able to feel that desire, but control it? And so that's really what this is talking about.

It's, it's not necessarily that we're training ourselves not to feel anger or not to have desires of some sort. But we're training ourselves to control them. And so when we talk about this from a biblical perspective, that's what many of the biblical authors are pointing to is when you're confronted with all of these different realities of life, are you able to control yourself or are you going to be unruly?

Are you going to live based on your emotions and your impulses? And that's really what. Our conversation today is going to be about is how is it that we can train ourselves not to be impulsive, not to be ruled by our emotions, but instead to exercise a level of control in those situations, no matter how difficult the situation may be.

Are we able to exercise a level of control that still allows us to live godly and righteously, even in the face of those difficult circumstances? Yeah, and certainly for the sake of our conversation, as we're diving into God's word and talking about self control in the spiritual realm, it, it, it, it comes down to the understanding of what God has outlined for us, and then kind of, Making my life fit that right controlling those desires.

And so we see it used that way a couple of times There's a couple of passages One that will probably spend a little bit more time and kind of talking about than the others But to me, they're very similar. Well, you have towards the end of the book of Acts, you know, Paul Talking to Felix He's kind of ping pong back and forth a little bit and he's talking to several different people and he's talking to Felix in Acts chapter 24 And Felix is listening, and, you know, we won't dive into the entirety of that whole conversation, but we do get this, this picture given to us there in in Acts chapter specifically 24 and verse 25, where he says he reasoned with them about right, three things, righteousness, self control, and the judgment that is to come.

And I have written in my Bible the what, the how, and the when. And so it's following that word righteousness. Now that's an idea that we've talked about on this podcast recently. And so the point that he's making is, once we are able to see what it is that God says is right, we then have to mold our life to fit that.

And that's where the self control comes in. So over in 2 Peter chapter 1, a very similar kind of way this word is used, where Peter kind of begins this epistle with this picture of the maturing Christian, the one that is growing with that kind of very visual, you know, picture of adding. So you're adding these things, and a lot of times one is built upon the other.

So, for instance, you're building everything upon faith, and he says there you have faith. to build upon that faith, your virtue, which is just a desire to be right. You got to have a desire to be right. And then you add to that virtue knowledge. I need to know what the right thing is. If I have a desire to be right, I need to know what the right thing is.

So I'm going to add knowledge to that. And then he says to that knowledge and that virtue, you add self control. And so once I have that desire to be right, and I know what the right thing is, I'm going I'm now controlling myself to fit that virtue and to fit that knowledge, to fit that righteousness, per where we were in Acts 24.

You know, it's really interesting. You brought up 2 Peter, and that's, that's an important passage of scripture for a lot of reasons. It was one that I had circled as well.  Peter himself is a very interesting case study in self control and maybe more specifically the growing in self control that we're talking about here.

If you go back to Matthew chapter 26, really, I mean, throughout the Gospels, Peter's known as somebody who is a bit impulsive. He tends to be Very emotional in a lot of ways. But in Matthew chapter 26, for instance, when Jesus is pointing out to his apostles that you're going to stumble, all are going to stumble.

And Peter says, not me, I'm not going to. He just heard Jesus, the Messiah, the son of God say, this is going to happen. And Peter's reaction is nope. Not, maybe to everybody else, but you're wrong about me. It's just not going to happen. And then we see in John, John chapter 18, when Jesus is in the garden and he's been praying, and the soldiers come to arrest him, even though he had spent hours and days, and even, in this case, years with his apostles, talking to them about this very day coming, and what was going to happen. 

On, in that moment. Peter reaches for his sword and he's ready to fight and he cuts off the ear of one of the The roman servants there. He is someone who is impulsive In in a lot of ways. It's that peter that writes those words that you just referenced In 2 Peter chapter 1, where you can clearly see, as time has gone by, this is a man who grew in the area of self control, and he recognized just how important it was to grow in that area, because he had struggled with it for different parts of his life.

It was an area where he was weak, he was weak in the area of self control, and he recognized how important it was, as you pointed out, to build these good qualities on one another, and one of those important building blocks, just like Paul pointed out, is self control, and it was something that he had struggled with, and so I think when we think about our own struggles with self control in what area, whatever areas of our life we may be considering,  It's okay to recognize I struggled with this in the past.

I need to work on it because I see the value of self control and it's going to make me better in the longterm. If I focus on this and put the effort in to grow in this area, I think Peter's a great example of someone who apparently did just that. Yeah, being a master over some desire that we have within ourselves is not always an easy thing to do.

And we have our own various strengths and weaknesses, and hopefully we understand what those weaknesses are and what those weaknesses are all about, and an understanding of here is something, or some specific area that I can work on. And with the acknowledgement that that isn't always an easy thing, that it takes effort, that it takes diligence, that it takes patience.

I mean, we don't have to leave, you know, second Peter chapter one, even as we've talked about, you know, virtue and then adding to that knowledge, knowing what the right thing is and to that self control, then, then doing what the right thing is, the very next thing is adding to it. I think perseverance. I mean, so Peter is acknowledging that, you know, this takes effort.

It takes time. It takes patience, you know, to be able to do this. And, you know, in a lot of ways it goes back to, you know, Jesus and, you know, so many times he'll make the point  about when it comes to being a follower of his, the important piece of denying yourself, you've got to put self away. You've got to push your own self will aside. 

At times, a lot of times, really, that is easier said than done. And so when we are talking about cultivating our growth of self control, each and every one of us has at least one area, if not multiple areas of our life, that we're able to see very quickly to say, this is an area where my self control needs to be built up.

And I think very poignantly. Practically speaking, self control is something that can translate from one area of life to another. And so we can gradually become a very self controlled person by starting that focus in one small area of our life. And learning what it takes to truly control yourself in that situation.

Whether it is, it could be something very small and everybody just, you know, pick whatever speaks to them in the moment. But something that is relatively small, but you're able to exercise self control in that area. You're now learning the skills that it takes.  It's a discipline yourself and control yourself and whatever challenging circumstance you've picked out for yourself.

Well, now you're learning those skills that can then be translated to other areas of your life. And when those are translated to other areas of your life, now you're learning even more. About how to handle yourself in those areas. And so you're able to, to multiply those skills over time, because at the end of the day, the ability to control urges and desires, it manifests itself differently in each aspect of life, but the skillsets are very similar and what we need to do in order to.

To, to really be a self controlled person actually is, is very translatable across many areas of life. And so it's important that we learn those skill sets. We teach our children those skill sets, because if, if children grow up, for instance, and they aren't taught the importance of self control, well, then you get teenagers that don't know how to control themselves.

And.  Uncontrolled teenagers lead to uncontrolled adults. And so we have to train our children about how important that is. And make sure that we're talking about the skills that we're learning and how those can be applied in each of these different areas. I think each and every one of us we can acknowledge the importance of surrounding yourself or even being led by others.

by someone who is controlled or, you know, versus someone who's out of control, right? We understand what being out of control is. We understand the dangers of that. We understand the destructive nature of that, you know, certainly we don't want to be that. We don't want to be around people like that. And I think certainly when, even when we dig biblically, you start to see the importance of, you know, God acknowledging that the leaders that he has outlined It has got to be self controlled.

And so we can see that as a husband, you know, for, you know, the case where you and I are,  there's an importance of being under control, being self controlled, certainly as a parent, being self controlled. We've talked recently, you know, here at Trader's Point, a lot about elders and we've done lessons on it.

And we've had classes on it, and there's been a lot of discussion. Well, you know, Titus chapter 1, very specific. One of the qualifications of an elder is to be self controlled. And we can see all of those things, and let's not confuse ourselves to say, that makes good sense. That we understand someone who is self controlled, under control, versus someone who has no control over their desires and their wants, that they just live life, Lots of people do that. 

Lots of people live that way. God is looking for his people to live different. Yeah, and godly leadership, really leadership of any kind, cannot be  so controlled by their desires that they're unable to apply reason and control in those situations. One of my favorite passages that 25. In verse 28, where it says whoever has no rule over his own spirit, or in the ESV it says self control, whoever has no rule over his own spirit is like a city broken down without walls.

And you think about especially ancient cities, If it was broken down without walls, that means it's completely vulnerable to attack. Anyone can come in and desolate the city. It's chaotic. It's at risk all the time. And that's what we are if we lack self control. We're constantly vulnerable. Our spirit is at risk all the time because everything around us can set us off at any given moment, can have an incredible impact on us, swing us in wild directions at any moment.

If we're, if we're not governed by self control, that's what our lives are going to look like. And I think that passage is a really important warning to us as to how important self control is because in its absence, it's chaos. It's vulnerability, and that's not a life that anybody's going to want to leave.

Yep. Well, let's close there with, and let's do so with one final passage. In Galatians chapter 5, the Apostle Paul is writing, you know, towards the end of that epistle, and he's making the point of contrasting walking according to the flesh versus walking according to the spirit. And he says there in Galatians chapter 5, verses 16 through 18, that you need to walk by the spirit, you need to be led by the spirit.

And then he gives two lists, which he commonly does, about working  This is what walking according to the flesh looks like, followed up by what we commonly refer to as the fruit of the spirit. This is what walking according to the spirit looks like. And certainly self control is found there. And other words that we've used, even in these few minutes, is found in that text.

So let's close with that.  Galatians chapter 5, beginning in verse 22, where he says the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, long suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, and patience. Gentleness, self-control against such. There is no law, and those who are Christ have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.

If we live in the spirit, let us also walk in the spirit. 

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