So this is me welcoming you to the beautiful month of July, another opportunity to continue our journey towards living the balanced life. Our focus is still on:
2 Peter 1:5-8
For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, mutual affection; and to mutual affection, love. For if you posses these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus.
Have you ever tried controlling yourself? Yes, I have too. Some time ago we were told to determine that we wouldn’t do so and so and resolve to do so and so. You know how that always fared; many times we ended up doing the things we didn’t want to do and leaving the ones we were meant to do. Even the Apostle Paul lamented too in Romans 7:20-21: “…When I want to do right, wrong presents itself” (20cNT)
Controlling oneself is something we do by yielding to the Holy Spirit. Nobody can successfully control self without yielding to the Spirit. The bible makes us to understand that the flesh and the Spirit are always at war; the cravings of the flesh and that of the Spirit are opposite and one cannot fulfill the two at the same time, so we must choose whom to obey.
The cure to the life in the flesh is not in fighting the flesh, but in yielding to the Spirit- Walking in the Spirit!
It is a daily walk, not something we do on Pentecost Sundays when the Pastor says that the Holy Spirit is ‘coming’ to fall on us.
It is as we yield to the Spirit that the cravings of the flesh are overcome and by the power of the Spirit, we obey the cravings of the Spirit and live Spirit-controlled lives.
No matter what you think your temperament is, you can still live a Spirit controlled life.
Let popular opinion not deceive you to think that you can’t control your desires or choose right over wrong because “body no be firewood.” And don’t make excuses for bad behavior because you think “that is the way I am” the way you are is found in Eph 4:13b “… to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.”
Finally, a self-controlled life is a life under the control of the Spirit, I can’t think of any other way.
It is very possible!
Have a blessed week!
