This week, we explore the last fruit of the Spirit, self-control. When we receive the Holy Spirit, the seed is planted. The seed will eventually grow into fruit if it is in the right environment. We need to nourish it by growing closer to God.
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. Galatians 5:22-23
There are a lot of things we cannot control. We cannot control the weather even though we would love to. Do you know people that are control freaks? A control freak is a person who feels an obsessive need to exercise control over themselves and others and to take command of any situation.
It is sometimes surprising how little control we have over other people—even in our families and our children. Parents are often shocked by their children’s behavior, especially of their teenagers, whom they thought they had trained well. Many parents have discovered that merely telling their children what they can or cannot do—accompanied by warnings of dire punishment—is not enough to control their behavior when the children find themselves under the pressure of a situation.
It is ironic that we want to have control over others but fail to have as much control over ourselves as we need. Think of the habits or addictions we have developed over the years that are detrimental to our success and lives. We see a good example of self-control implied in Proverbs 25:28: “Whoever has no rule over his own spirit is like a city broken down, without walls.”
Self-control helps us to resist temptation and avoid conforming to the things of this world. It guides our decisions, and it correlates with how we show the other fruits in our lives. It is how we respond to situations as compared to reacting to situations. When we react, our emotions jump in and take over. Self-control allows us to think through the situation and respond more Christ like.
Self-control is not the ability to make decisions as to what we think is best for us but is the ability to make decisions as to what God feels is best for us. We may think that we know what is best for us, but I continue to look back in my life and realize that I had no clue. That may be a little harsh, but I see where decisions that I made took me down the wrong path and when I let God make the decisions for me, the results were far better.
As I wrap up this series, I think back on how I started the process. I would accidentally call them the fruits of the Spirit (plural). They are all one fruit, a package deal. They are all intertwined. It is the essence of God. His character. Even though we can expect to fall short of what He wants us to be, we should not accept falling short. We need to strive on to be more and more like Him.
No sins or disobedience are done when we exhibit these fruits in our lives. Imagine a world where everyone exhibits these traits in all aspects of their lives. We would not need any laws. No one would ever need to be punished for what they did. Since the temptation of the flesh exists, this type of world will never exist. Maybe we are the seed of the fruit of the Spirit? The Holy Spirit planted a seed in us to grow into the fruit and we are, in turn, the seed being planted in this world so it can grow and influence those around us. Imagine a world if enough of us, as seeds of the fruit of the Spirit, made a difference. We could change the world. That sounds like a great goal to me. Join me in developing the fruit of the Spirit within you and exhibiting it in your lives to make this world a better place. More Christ like.
