Tuesday, November 12, 2024
His divine power has given us everything required for life and godliness through the knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. By these he has given us very great and precious promises, so that through them you may share in the divine nature, escaping the corruption that is in the world because of evil desire. For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with goodness, goodness with knowledge, knowledge with self-control, self-control with endurance, endurance with godliness, godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. 2 Peter 1:3-7
Spiritual Maturity and Self-Control
As Peter was speaking to the churches in Asia Minor, he was giving them a formula to live by that would help them to build up their spiritual maturity in Christ. As we grow spiritually mature in Him, we can step into the abundant life He has for us. To live that abundant life requires effort on our part to grow and remain spiritually mature, and part of that growth is self-control.
We have all used our feelings to guide our actions and that is usually not a good idea. Our feelings will misguide us and are often out of control. The actions we take and the decisions we make when our feelings are out of control can lead to a life out of control. Sometimes we make good decisions that our feelings have helped to guide us to make. The definition of Self-control that Pastor Jim gave us yesterday is “The ability to pursue the important over the urgent, rather than always being impulsive or uncontrolled.” If we are not careful, our feelings can lead us to make decisions that are impulsive or uncontrolled.
When we don’t live with self-control, we can find ourselves sliding into a hole that is hard to get out of. For many different reasons we can lose self-control before we realize it. For example, we might be experiencing some pain in life that continues until we medicate to numb ourselves on anything – drugs, alcohol, shopping, overeating, etc… This turns into an addiction that we have to have more and more of to numb the pain. Addictions become idols that we have replaced God with. We turn to the idols to give us what we need instead of God. Idols become weak and useless because they can no longer numb us or fill the void. When we come to the end of one idol, we find another and another and another. We lose all sense of discipline and self-control in the face of our addictions and idols. We wake up one day and we don’t know the person in the mirror or how we ever got to the hopeless, debilitating place we are in.
As Christ followers, we are called to be self-controlled in our lives – our actions, decisions, and in our words as well. When we have been transformed by the Holy Spirit, we will live with the integrity and knowledge of the Holy Spirit. That integrity and knowledge helps us live self-controlled lives and it begins in our minds. The decision to be self-controlled begins way before the moment of temptation. If not, the moment the pie is set before you, you will reach for it without giving it a thought. By the continual renewal and transforming of our minds by the Holy Spirit, we can make self-controlled decisions with integrity and knowledge. There will always be battles with our flesh no matter how determined we are to be self-controlled. Sometimes we will fail.
For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being useless or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. 2 Peter 1:8
When we live with self-control, we will be more patient with others, which will produce godliness, brotherly affection, and agape love. Living a self-controlled, transformed life as a Christ follower, is how we step into the very great and precious promises He has for us. As we grow in our relationship with Him we will possess the qualities of the Holy Spirit in increasing measure, which keeps us from being useless or unfruitful. We will become spiritually mature which will be evident in our self-controlled lives. This will be evident to others around us just as the other fruit of the Spirit will as well.
