The Habit of Self-Control letting the Spirit control your mind leads to & Proverbs 25:28 A person without self-control is like a city with broken-down walls. Studying about habits and joy this year, I ve realized creating good habits, changing old habits and finding more joy in life involves purposeful choices. Often, these choices involve an element of selfcontrol. This can entail releasing my desire to control something or exercising restraint from a less healthy choice. Like the walled city in the verse above, without self-control and the boundaries it creates, we are broken. The fruit of self-control provides protection from our sinful nature and the negative choices and habits that can result. Self-control is a fruit of the Spirit given to those who put their faith and hope in Jesus. Through the power of His Spirit within us, we can access self-control to say no to our sinful nature. We do not accomplish this on our own, but only by the power of the One who lives within us. Let s dive into how the Holy Spirit provides this marvelous fruit of self-control. Through the Holy Spirit we can abide in joy, create or change our habits to match His will for our lives.
Galatians 5:13, 16-17, 22-23 For you have been called to live in freedom, my brothers and sisters. But don t use your freedom to satisfy your sinful nature. Instead, use your freedom to serve one another in love. So I say, let the Holy Spirit guide your lives. Then you won t be doing what your sinful nature craves. The sinful nature wants to do evil, which is just the opposite of what the Spirit wants. And the Spirit gives us desires that are the opposite of what the sinful nature desires. These two forces are constantly fighting each other, so you are not free to carry out your good intentions. But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against these things! (emphasis mine) Letting the Holy Spirit guide our lives in thought, word and deed, can be difficult since it goes against our nature. But the Holy Spirit gives us desires that are opposite of our sinful, natural tendencies. He produces the fruit of self-control to assist us in doing God s will. Romans 7:5-6 When we were controlled by our old nature, sinful desires were at work within us, and the law aroused these evil desires that produced a harvest of sinful deeds, resulting in death. But now we have been released from the law, for we died to it and are no longer captive to its power. Now we can serve God, not in the old way of obeying the letter of the law, but in the new way of living in the Spirit. By living in the Spirit we are no longer bound like slaves to our sinful nature. We are free to live for and serve God. Romans 7:18-25 And I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. I want to do what is right, but I can t. I want to do what is good, but I don t. I don t want to do what is wrong, but I do it anyway. But if I do what I don t want to do, I am not really the one doing wrong; it is sin living in me that does it. I have discovered this principle of life that when I want to do what is right, I inevitably do what
is wrong. I love God s law with all my heart. But there is another power within me that is at war with my mind. This power makes me a slave to the sin that is still within me. Oh, what a miserable person I am! Who will free me from this life that is dominated by sin and death? Thank God! The answer is in Jesus Christ our Lord. So you see how it is: In my mind I really want to obey God s law, but because of my sinful nature I am a slave to sin. (emphasis mine) Our sinful nature causes us think and act contrary to God s will. But through the power of Jesus we are no longer held captive to our sin, but free! Romans 8:5-14, 16, 26-27, 31, 37-39 Those who are dominated by the sinful nature think about sinful things, but those who are controlled by the Holy Spirit think about things that please the Spirit. So letting your sinful nature control your mind leads to death. But letting the Spirit control your mind leads to life and peace. For the sinful nature is always hostile to God. It never did obey God s laws, and it never will. That s why those who are still under the control of their sinful nature can never please God. But you are not controlled by your sinful nature. You are controlled by the Spirit if you have the Spirit of God living in you. And remember that those who do not have the Spirit of Christ living in them do not belong to him at all. And Christ lives within you, so even though your body will die because of sin, the Spirit gives you life because you have been made right with God. The Spirit of God, who raised Jesus from the dead, lives in you. And just as God raised Christ Jesus from the dead, he will give life to your mortal bodies by this same Spirit living within you. Therefore, dear brothers and sisters, you have no obligation to do what your sinful nature urges you to do. For if you live by its dictates, you will die. But if through the power of the Spirit you put to death the deeds of your sinful nature, you will live. For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. For his Spirit joins with our spirit to affirm that we are God s children.
And the Holy Spirit helps us in our weakness. For example, we don t know what God wants us to pray for. But the Holy Spirit prays for us with groanings that cannot be expressed in words. And the Father who knows all hearts knows what the Spirit is saying, for the Spirit pleads for us believers in harmony with God s own will. What shall we say about such wonderful things as these? If God is for us, who can ever be against us? No, despite all these things, overwhelming victory is ours through Christ, who loved us. And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow not even the powers of hell can separate us from God s love. No power in the sky above or in the earth below indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord. (emphasis mine) Letting the Spirit control our mind leads to life and peace. We don t need to cave to our sinful nature, instead seek self-control through the Holy Spirit s power within us. The Holy Spirit is within us as God s children and intercedes for us in prayer according to God s will for us! Nothing can come between us and God when we live in His Spirit. Romans 12:2 Don t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect. (emphasis mine) God transforms us by changing our thinking patterns which then lead us to know and want to do His will. Selfcontrol from the Holy Spirit helps shift our thinking and desires away from ours to His. In this way, we learn to know His will in our lives and begin to live it. Let God transform the way you think.
2 Corinthians 5: 14-15 Either way, Christ s love controls us. Since we believe that Christ died for all, we also believe that we have all died to our old life. He died for everyone so that those who receive his new life will no longer live for themselves. Instead, they will live for Christ, who died and was raised for them. As believers, Christ s love controls us. Our old life is gone and a new life has begun. We now live for Christ! Ephesians 4:21-24 Since you have heard about Jesus and have learned the truth that comes from him, throw off your old sinful nature and your former way of life, which is corrupted by lust and deception. Instead, let the Spirit renew your thoughts and attitudes. Put on your new nature, created to be like God truly righteous and holy. (emphasis mine) Living for Christ means throwing off our old life and letting the Spirit renew our thoughts and minds by the fruit of self-control. He helps us to put on our new nature. It s a choice, one assisted by His power of selfcontrol. We can let go of bad habits and grab onto new by the power given by the Holy Spirit! Colossians 3:10-15 Put on your new nature, and be renewed as you learn to know your Creator and become like him. In this new life, it doesn t matter if you are a Jew or a Gentile, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbaric, uncivilized, slave, or free. Christ is all that matters, and he lives in all of us. Since God chose you to be the holy people he loves, you must clothe yourselves with tenderhearted mercy, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. Make allowance for each other s faults, and forgive anyone who offends you. Remember, the Lord forgave you, so you must forgive others. Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds us all together in perfect harmony. And let the peace that comes from Christ rule in your hearts. For as members of one body you are called to live in peace. And always be thankful. (emphasis mine) As we put on this new nature, we learn and grow to be more like Him, which as Christians is our goal. Christ is all that matters and by the fruit of self-control, we begin to be more like Him in every way.
Exercise Self-control 1 Peter 1:13-16 So prepare your minds for action and exercise selfcontrol. Put all your hope in the gracious salvation that will come to you when Jesus Christ is revealed to the world. So you must live as God s obedient children. Don t slip back into your old ways of living to satisfy your own desires. You didn t know any better then. But now you must be holy in everything you do, just as God who chose you is holy. For the Scriptures say, You must be holy because I am holy. (emphasis mine) When we put all our hope in Jesus, we have the power through the Holy Spirit to live in obedience to Him. We can exercise the fruit of self-control and choose God s way over our sinful nature. 2 Timothy 1:13-14 Hold on to the pattern of wholesome teaching you learned from me a pattern shaped by the faith and love that you have in Christ Jesus. Through the power of the Holy Spirit who lives within us, carefully guard the precious truth that has been entrusted to you. Through the Holy Spirit s power within us, we need to exercise our self-control to guard our hearts and minds to stay true to our faith in Jesus. We then create patterns or habits of faith and love from Jesus. 2 Peter 1:3-8 By his divine power, God has given us everything we need for living a godly life. We have received all of this by coming to know him, the one who called us to
himself by means of his marvelous glory and excellence. And because of his glory and excellence, he has given us great and precious promises. These are the promises that enable you to share his divine nature and escape the world s corruption caused by human desires. In view of all this, make every effort to respond to God s promises. Supplement your faith with a generous provision of moral excellence, and moral excellence with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with patient endurance, and patient endurance with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love for everyone. The more you grow like this, the more productive and useful you will be in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. (emphasis mine) God has given us all we need: the gift of salvation through Jesus and the power to live a godly life by His Spirit living within us. The more we make every effort to tap into the gifts He s given, the more we can escape this world s corruption to live for and serve our Lord. As we exercise self-control and create these godly patterns in our lives with the help of the Holy Spirit, we create habits of faith. Proverbs 16:32 Better to be patient than powerful; better to have selfcontrol than to conquer a city. Wait on the Lord! Patient self-control will lead us to the life Jesus died to give us! The Holy Spirit produces the fruit of self-control.