Self-Control

Last week, I had the opportunity to work at a church camp for high schoolers. One of my close friends is the youth pastor of one of the youth groups that was present, and on the last night of camp he asked me to come to the cabin with his boys and hang out. It turned out that this was a set up! He actually brought me in then told the boys to ask me any question about anything they learned at camp, questions about faith in general, questions about God, etc. He wanted them to get to ask somebody from a different background than him, who would still give good, faith-based answers. I enjoy that type of thing, so I went along with it.

One of the guys asked me a question that I think is one of those life-long questions a Christian has to deal with, so I thought it would be fun to talk about it here. I’m paraphrasing a little bit, but the question was basically, “What do you do when something happens and you want to react a certain way, but you know you should react a different way?” His example was that he is a basketball player, and in basketball (especially inner-city basketball with young men – he’s from Cleveland) there’s a lot of disrespectful trash talk that happens. How do you respond when you don’t want to let somebody disrespect you, and you may even want to fight, but you know that’s not what you’re supposed to do?

His example was specific, but I think the question can be generalized. What do you do when any given situation invites a certain reaction, maybe even a reaction that would be acceptable and understandable to onlookers, a reaction that would feel good to you, but you know that a different reaction would be more pleasing to God?

It’s a great question. If you really think about it, you probably run into some kind of situation like this almost daily!

My response was something like this: Make the intentional choice to do the Christ-like thing.

Galatians 5:22-23 lists self-control among the characteristics that show the fruit of the Spirit of God living in you. Sometimes we can let ourselves think that because we love God, and because He wants us to live a certain way in the world, that some supernatural force will somehow take away any desire to act outside of what God wants. That’s not quite how it works.

God doesn’t take away our natural urge to get angry, to want to retaliate, to act in a self-promoting way, or to act pridefully. It’s not up to God to take away our emotional instability and our tendency toward prideful conduct, it’s up to us to submit to His standard. It isn’t easy. Paul compares it to athletic training (1 Corinthians 9:25-27). An athlete becomes proficient by training continuously and repeatedly. It isn’t any different for us as Christians.

In order for us to live the way God wants us to live, it’s going to take continuous effort. When the situations arise in our lives where we have the option to respond in a Christ-like manner or in a manner less pleasing to God, we will have to intentionally choose to respond like Christ just like the athlete intentionally chooses to repeatedly perform the same exercise or drill to master a skill. And for us to build self-control, for us to really be disciplined and be able to consistently respond in a Christ-like manner to the situations that confront us in life, it will take intentional choice after intentional choice after intentional choice.

The fact that self-control is a fruit of the Spirit does not mean that the Spirit somehow miraculously deposits self-control in us and we go from absolute mess one day to the epitome of Christ-likeness the next. It does mean that as we ask God to lead us and become sensitive to that leading, as we use the wisdom He gives us, and through our repeated decisions to respond how Christ would respond in a given situation, we will begin to see self-control manifest in our lives. And the by-product of that self-control will be that in each of those instances where we respond like Christ, we will have brought a glimpse of Heaven in where it didn’t exist before.