Is self-control just willpower, or is there something more to it?
WATCH
Fruit of the Root, 8 of 9 from July 26, 2026
“Gentleness is a fruit of the spirit that disarms a hostile world.”
Galatians 5 & Hebrews 11 by Ryan Gagnon (@RyGagnon)
SUMMARY
This sermon teaches that following Jesus in a hostile world means responding with Spirit-empowered gentleness instead of louder arguments, sharper comebacks, or self-defense. Biblical gentleness is not weakness, but strength under God’s control, shown through our actions, especially when others are watching how we handle conflict and suffering.
REFLECTION & DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
💬 In what area of your life are you are you the most tempted to replace Gentleness with volume, pressure or self defense?
💬 How does remembering that Gentleness is a fruit of the Spirit change the way you approach your daily struggles with patience and anger?
💬 How does your demeanor compare with the way Peter calls us to defend our faith in verse 15?
💬 If it needs to change, you're not abiding you're fighting. Share that struggle with someone today so they can be praying for you.
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[Music.]
Well, hey there. Good morning, church, and welcome to our neighbors. Two Sundays ago, had the privilege of being up in Marion, Indiana, at Indiana Wesleyan university with about 3,000 other youth leaders and middle and high school students who gathered for what we call Momentum Youth Conference. And there's not really any conference that I'm aware of that's kind of, kind of doing what Momentum is doing as far as not just trying to win students to Jesus, but really trying to give them the skills to be able to walk with Jesus on their own after they kind of get out of high school as they are transitioning into careers and things like that and like, really are targeted towards that. And the way that they do that is kind of an astonishing thing.
And I bring it back to you oldsters, just in case you hadn't considered that the same Holy Spirit that's in you is also indwelling them. And the same mission that the Holy Spirit is leading you on, he's also leading them. And so I just encourage you to be praying for our students. They've got the world. The world that they inhabit is not the same one that we grew up in.
And so I just encourage you to continue, keep them in the forefront of your prayers as they're engaged on mission. And so I haven't talked with any of them if they want to share anything that they felt like was super helpful for them from the conference. But I know in Sebring this afternoon, they're going to have five or six Momentum related baptisms this afternoon. So that's super, super cool. We travel together with our neighborhood church.
Yeah, we can clap for that.
So God just shows up, gives us some clarity when we spend some time kind of set aside and designated to focus on Him. And as we've been through this summer, we have slowed down the pace. We were kind of working through this letter in the Bible called Galatians. And as we moved into the summer season, we shifted or we came to this list towards the end of the letter that is often referred to as the fruit of the Spirit. And the reason we refer to it like that is because that's how it's in introduced in the scripture, says these are the fruit of the Spirit and then gives the list and lists them out.
And so we've taken a slower pace this summer just taking a look at each one of these aspects of the fruit of the Spirit. And so today we're going to be looking at the last component of the fruit of the Spirit, which is self control. And I thought that like, maybe, maybe patience was the sermon that nobody wanted to hear. It may be self control. If you were hypothetically going to take vacation for a week and like come back and preach, what topic would you want to have in the back of your mind for the whole vacation if you were going to be gone for a week?
It probably is not self control. And yet here we are. The Lord has been gracious and merciful and he's directed us together at this time as a congregation to be looking at what self control is. So who's like, super stoked? Like, I've been waiting for this day.
Okay, I got one. Okay, two. Okay. Self control. All right, cool.
You guys can pray for us. Self control is not really something that I think we get excited about or we get engaged in. However, it occurs to me that it's probably a multi billion dollar business. Like if you were walking through Walmart, there's a whole section of shelves called self help. And so if self help, like I'm going to look at what somebody else says about what I ought to be doing and I'm going to work on myself.
So I'm assuming that if they put those books in Walmart, that they probably sell some of them. And there's lots of Walmarts and there's lots of shelves. So I'm assuming that's way more money than I can probably figure. But one of the things that I find interesting as we look at self control, I just want to rewind the tape a little bit and remind us just, just quickly that what we're looking at is a list that's called the fruit of the Spirit. So when we talk about self control, the perspective of the scripture is that self control is directly related to our relationship with the spirit of God more than perhaps a relationship to our self.
We look at a book of shelves that go self help and go, I can help me be a better me. And God says, actually, in order to be a better you, you actually need to have self control, which is developed by my spirit living in you. It's not the result of more and more and more human effort. It's not the result of better and better planning strategy sessions. It's not the result of making sure that your calendar plans planner is perfectly color coordinated and that the lines never mix.
It's not making sure that whatever you put on the calendar actually gets done in the time frame of what the calendar is. I don't know if anybody else has as many calendars as I do, but it's a source of personal heaviness. But the fruit of the Spirit is not the result of human effort primarily. And that's a different perspective than, I think, the one that the world would give to us. And it's the one that we kind of naturally step into.
Like, you may be somebody who's curious about faith or skeptical about Jesus, but you're like, I'm pretty sure church will help me be a better person. And so I'm going to choose to go to church so that I can, like, listen to and filter through the nonsense the bald guy says. And maybe there's a couple things I'll pick out that I can apply to my life. And it's again, me approaching God and asking and filtering through what I'm going to let God do in my life. But fundamentally, like, as we look at this, the human contribution to self control is primarily trust.
Trust that God is doing what only God can do, which is reshaping our heart and attention. What are we focusing on? Okay, so I've got a list of eight big ideas. Can I run through those real quick? Is that okay?
All right. So this is where we've been all summer. If you're confused or lost, I'm sure by the end of the week, the podcast will be up to date. That's a thing that I didn't do last week. So we started with love, and we grow in love as we walk with God's spirit.
If we truly want to love one another, we're not really able to engage in the selfless kind of love that God demonstrates and prescribes for us. If we're not walking with his spirit, then we grow, and then God grows our joy as we focus on his glory and on his work. Love isn't like, the result of love isn't just like more and more and more love. The result of love is joy. And joy is not just a circumstantial happiness that everything happens to be happening exactly the way that I intended it to happen today.
It is a prevailing confidence that, like, oh, God, God loves me and he's using me in his work. And his work is glorious. God grows our joy as we focus on his glory and his work. And Jesus makes peace between our God. He makes peace between us vertically, and he makes peace between our neighbors.
So our vertical peace with God is also related to our horizontal peace with other people, which sounds like a lot of work. But the next week was patience. And we're just reminded that Jesus takes all the time he needs to grow the life he has planned for us. He's not In a hurry.
God's unbelievable kindness reshapes our belief to make us kind. When we look at what God has done and we look at the ways that God has been kind to humanity in general and me, spiritual specifically, his kindness reshapes me to be a kind person because God is good. God makes good things, and God does good in the world. If there's any good to be known, it came from God's hand. And evil or wickedness is the absence of good.
Pastor Ryan shared with us that faithfulness is an active obedience based on the promises of God. That when we look at what God has said and we align our lives to what God has directed, then we can kind of faithfully follow that, even if we don't know what the end goal is. And we saw last week that gentleness, the manner by which we approach the walk of faith, can disarm a world that's really, really hostile towards us and towards Jesus, because the world is opposed to the works of God and the influence of the flesh is opposed to the works of the Spirit. Well, what do you mean, Michael? I'm a pretty good person, and my family, they don't walk with Jesus, and they're pretty good people.
I can understand that. But I just want to start us, if I may, in Galatians 5, which is what I've been talking around. But let's go ahead and turn to Galatians 5 real quick before we navigate to one other passage, Galatians 5.
And this is kind of the introduction to the list of the fruits of the Spirit, starting in verse 15, Galatians chapter 5, starting in verse 13. Excuse me. For you were called to freedom, brothers only. Do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love, serve one another. For the whole law is fulfilled in one word.
You shall love your neighbor as yourself. But if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another. But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh. For these things are opposed to each other to keep you from doing the things you want to do.
But if you were led by the Spirit, you were not under the law. Now the works of the flesh are evident. Sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before that. Those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God, but the fruit of the Spirit.
Would you read it with me? Church, Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self control. Against such things there is no law. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit.
Spirit, let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another. The Lord blesses the reading of his word. Would you pray together with me?
Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever.
Amen. Amen. As we are kind of coming to the close of this focus on the fruit of the Spirit, we are going to return to Galatians 5 before we're done here, but if you'd like to keep your finger there or stick a piece of paper there, we're going to take a look at the book of First Corinthians. It's just a couple of pages to the left, First Corinthians 9. And if you're following along in the blue Bibles, it's on page 1105.
1105 in the blue Bible is. It's 1 Corinthians 9, First Corinthians, chapter nine. We spent. It's been some months ago now, but we spent a significant amount of time looking at a letter that we call Second Corinthians, which is a letter that was written to the same people. But First Corinthians surprisingly came before 2 Corinthians.
It's the first one. And the thing that they were, like, wrestling with is the city that they lived in for all functional purposes. For us, trying to jump into their world was kind of like living in Las Vegas. It was economic hotspot. There was a lot of trade, There were a lot of money flowing into the city.
And Corinth had this reputation that if you were into it, you could find it in Corinth. And so into that environment where, like, everything goes, anything goes. Jesus shows up with through this ambassador guy named Paul who shares the good news about who Jesus is and what he wants to do in their lives. And people begin to follow Jesus in that city and they start to meet together. But the interesting thing happens is as they are, like, learning how to follow Jesus, they have these old ways of operating that they still kind of are operate out of.
And so one of the things that they do that Paul's writing to correct is they kind of idolize their teachers. And they don't only idolize their teachers. They actually begin to be divided amongst one another by who their favorite teacher is. So it would be really uncomfortable if, like, we walked in this morning and half of you guys had a Pastor Michael jersey on with my big ugly face. And.
And some of you have, like, it would probably take four of you to put Pastor Ryan's head onto a jersey. You'd have to stand together.
We've been friends a long time. He's constantly complaining about how big his head is. Or, like, some of you guys had Carlos, and some of you were, like, super duper spiritual, and you just have Jesus face. You're like, I just follow Jesus. And you guys are probably right.
But what they had done is they had kind of said, no, this is my favorite teacher. This is the team I'm on. And Paul writes and says, if you guys, if you are following Jesus, you're on Jesus's team. There's only one team. You got to be on that team.
And so he's kind of giving them this correction. He's trying to redirect them away from what was normative to them, which was idolizing speakers and making divisions between themselves and inviting them into what Jesus was calling them, to which. Which was. If I say idolizing God, that sounds bad, but it's right. Like making God the center of your worship and also being unified with other people that are trying to follow God.
So in the middle of this letter, he's giving an explanation for how he has operated as an apostle. I said he was an ambassador of Jesus. And one of the things that he did when he came through Corinth is he knew this was a wealthy town. And so one of the things he did is he actually didn't, like, take any paychecks from them. He came through and he preached.
And while he was in town, he worked a separate job so that he wouldn't take any income. And this ended up. They convoluted this behavior, saying, like, he really wasn't an actual apostle because he didn't actually take money from us the way that an authorized spirit speaker would. Like, if you didn't let us pay you, then you don't really count. Right.
And so he's kind of giving this explanation for what it is that he's done. But he's. And I'll come back to that, I promise. It sounds like I just gave you a bunch of Bible nerd stuff, but it'll matter by the end of this. He comes to these concluding verses that I want to start with in verse 24.
Okay, so in First Corinthians, chapter 9, verse 24, he writes these short verses. As an example, he says, do you not know that in a race, all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it. Every athlete exercises self control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we.
And imperishable. So I do not run aimlessly. I do not box as one beating the air, but I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others, I myself should be disqualified. So as he's explaining his process and how he comes to ministry, he says, can you guys. Just as we're talking about this church stuff, let's get it.
Let's take it out of the church, and let's put it into the arena of sports. Everybody here knows how much I love sportsball, but he's not talking about sportsball. He's talking about running. And I know a thing or two about running. Not competitively, but I've been known to jog a little bit.
In fact, me and Ashlyn got roped into. We actually got conned into doing the 5k at Momentum. It was terrible, but we survived, and we ran the whole way, and it only took us an hour and a half. It was great.
He says, do you not know that in a race, all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? He says, think about what it would be like if you showed up to a race, you showed up to a competition, and, like, everybody got a trophy. Now millennials are like, yes, this is the way it ought to be. That's the way the forefathers intended it for the rest of the world. Like, they look at us little snowflakes and like, oh, that's so sweet.
Don't you know only one person wins and second place is first loser. Right. Don't you know that in a race, all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? Says there's a goal that runners are running for, and only one person gets the gold in a race? Now, that's interesting to me.
It had not occurred to me. It's not in my notes. But as I'm reading this now, I. I just am thinking, do you not know that in a race, all the runners Run.
Have you showed up to, like, the starting line of faith? And you're, like, eager and you're ready to go, and you're like, all right, let's do this. And you take off running and you're like, why didn't we go? And you kind of get distracted because you're like, jesus calls us and we're going. And you took off running and you're like, they didn't come with me.
I thought we were going together. I thought this was a thing. And don't you know that all the runners run?
Don't you know that if we're in a race, if we're called to something, that it takes putting a foot in front of the other?
Everybody's trying.
Do you not know that in a race all the runners won, but only one receives the prize? If that is true, he says, then run, that you may obtain the prize. Some of us aren't running, and some of us are running as if everybody gets a gold medal at the end. And some of us are walking and hoping that maybe the finish line will move towards me.
Every athlete exercises self control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we and imperishable. So I do not run aimlessly. I do not box as one beating the air. He says, as I am considering my faith, I want you to know that everybody who competes competes to win.
And I likewise compete to win. But my life is directed towards Jesus purpose. I'm not aimless. I'm not just hoping for a vague spiritual growth mindset. I'm not just hoping to be generally a better person.
I actually my life is directed towards Jesus purpose. He is the one who has bought me. He's the one who's put me in the race. He's the one who's directed me towards the finish line. He's the one that gets to evaluate how I'm running.
He's the one that gets to set how far I'm going to go. He gets to set the training schedule. And when I show up to race day, he's the one at the finish line that I'm looking at.
Whether I took off on the line and everybody stopped or not, I've got locked in on him. My life is directed towards Jesus purpose. I'm not aimless. I've got something bigger than me to live for.
Which is why every athlete exercises self control in all things. Self control is the exercise of saying no to the influence of our flesh.
Self control means that we embrace limitations.
Self control means that we implement moderation when appropriate.
Self control means we are directing our focus and often we are redirecting again our focus to be lined up with Jesus and his purpose. We have a goal that we're shooting for. There's a target, there's an aim. We're not just out here swinging out random acts of kindness and guerrilla acts of love on the streets in the hopes that the world might, like, suddenly float up to be kind of a nicer place to be. Like, we're genuinely engaged in Jesus mission directed towards his goal.
One of the definitions for the like, the background words for sin, is missing the Mark, that sin is just like missing the goal of what you're shooting towards. It's not an exhaustive definition of what sin is, but it is a pretty broad reaching one, that if God is the standard of perfection, my sin makes it so that I miss that goal.
But we want, like, I think what we want is we want for God to just eliminate the target. Like, I'm not hitting it. So maybe there just isn't a cargo. Maybe there's just nothing to do. Maybe I don't even have to take off running.
No, our life is directed towards Jesus purpose. Well, that doesn't sound like fun.
That's not really what I want to do. I understand.
I didn't put these verses on, but you have your finger in Galatians 5, right? I meant to put them up on the screen and I didn't. But in Galatians 5:1, it says this. For freedom, Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to the yoke of slavery.
The slavery is referring to in context of slavery to sin. You've been set free from sin. Why would you put that burden back on yourself? You've been set free for freedom. Christ has set us free.
And as we also read earlier in verse 17, the things you naturally want to do are opposed to the things that God wants for you to do.
Verse 17. For the desires of the flesh are against the spirit, and the desires of the spirit are against the flesh. For these are opposed to each other to keep you from doing the things you want to do. The things that you want to do are the things that end up as the works of the flesh. I don't even like reading that list.
Michael, how can you say that?
I'm just reading the book. And I wonder if maybe we spent some time being honest about which of these works of the flesh is most attractive to me. It wouldn't take us long to find one that we'd kind of gravitate towards one or two. Maybe not so bad. I don't think that one ought to be on the list.
The things that you want to do are opposed to the Spirit. So what that means for us is that following Jesus means we are governed by His Spirit, not ourself.
Following Jesus means we're governed by His Spirit, not ourselves. Who's the one who's calling the shots? Is it me? Am I the final authority in what gets said? Or am I following Jesus, meaning that His Spirit is the one who's telling me and directing me in the way that I ought to go?
As we surrender our lives to Jesus, our life is directed towards Jesus purpose. See that in verse 24 and in verse 26. So what's the purpose?
I'll just draw your attention up to verse 23. We didn't read it, so it's kind of not fair for me to do that. But just look at if you have a question about the text. Sometimes if you just look at the verses before and after, you'll find the answer to the question that you have. In this case we looked at verse 23.
It says I do it all for the sake of. What does it say? I do it all for the sake of.
I do it all for the sake of self satisfaction. I do it all so that everybody thinks that I'm a good Christian. I do it all so that my kids like me. I do it all so that my boss gives me that promotion. I do it all so that my wife has nothing to say that I didn't try hard enough.
He says no, no, no, I do it all for the sake of the gospel that I may share with them. Those who do not know the Gospel in its blessings.
The purpose that Jesus has for us is that we bend and shape our lives around his purpose. And his purpose is the Gospel. What's the gospel? It's the good news that Jesus has overcome sin. That everything that is killing us and separating us from God, Jesus has taken on himself and willingly died to pay the price for covering that over.
And not only that, that he came back to life to demonstrate that. The check was paid in full. It cleared the account. He's got nothing left to owe. Jesus died to pay for our sin.
And when we trust him, we are set free from the bondage of sin. We used to have to sin like before Christ. If we have put our faith and trust in Jesus, we've asked him for the forgiveness of our sin. We used to have to do the sin. And what Jesus Says, is I unhinged you from that?
The gate's unlocked. You don't have to sin. You're set free to live righteously the way that I designed you to live.
He says his purpose in self discipline and self control is to make sure that he can participate and share in the blessings of sharing the gospel with other people, of living it out. So what purpose is steering our life?
Kind of gave a couple of examples. Do we live to make other people happy? Do we live to get an attaboy? Do we live for promotion? Do we just live?
Do we just live to be at peace? Can I just be quiet, please?
What purpose is directing our life? We have one. We can't be aimless. Do you know that I've never met a person who actually is aimless? Sometimes their aim is like internal.
I just live to make me happy. Okay, good luck with that. But we all like have a purpose. That's one of the reasons why retirement doesn't actually work. Because we're like, I finished the goal, I can just enjoy life.
And it's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, but then what are you going to do? The nagging question of now what do I do on a Thursday when I don't have to go to work? We'll adopt some kind of a purpose. What purpose is directing our life?
Oftentimes well meaning athletes will do thing that kind of gets on my nerves a little bit. And I'll just share this with you. If you have one of these, like, it's okay. But sometimes well meaning athletes will like get tattoos and stuff to like put Bible verses to kind of justify their investment in their sport because their sport just occupies so much of their life. And so they'll take verses like, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me, and kind of use that as a banner to say, hey look, I'm a Christian, it's okay for me to invest in the athletics and I can appreciate like the hard attitude behind that.
But I just want to set you free. If you're an athlete, you don't have to do that because the scripture looks at athletes as the example of what discipline and self control we ought to be modeling for. Like we're like, yeah, I need the Bible to like, no, no, no, the Bible says you're doing a good job. Other people should be disciplined and self controlled the way you are. Scripture looks to them as an example of virtue just by nature of their self control.
And so here's a crazy thing, like maybe it's a crazy thing for a Pastor saying at church on Sunday. But self control is a virtue beyond our faith.
Like, if you find self control out in the world somewhere, like, it's a virtue if you find somebody who's saying no to what naturally comes to them, that's a sign that somewhere along the line they are, like, descendants of God.
There's a lot of good things that happen in exercising self control outside of our faith. There are a lot of good programs that help people say no to addictions that are outside of the faith. So this is a virtue beyond what our faith is, but it also is an integral part of what the spirit grows in us beyond helping ourself.
They look at athletes and they see, like, okay, as they train, they have designated times of training, which means if they're at practice, they're not anywhere else. There's times where they've separated themselves to focus on what it is that they're training for.
You'll also notice that athletes kind of curate a selection of influences that they're willing to listen to. The best athletes listen to the best coaches.
I could probably coach you on soccer generally, but you're probably not going to win the World cup. If I'm your coach.
I could probably tell you a couple of things that that logically makes sense generally. But if you really want to, like, excel as an athlete, you should probably listen to a coach who knows what they're talking about, and it's probably not me. I'm qualified to dig holes and to read this old book to you and tell you what it says.
And there's principles that apply to playing soccer, but probably not the ones that are going to help you win if winning is your goal. They curate the selection of influences. They choose which voices they listen to. Because I think, I hypothesize, because I see it in pastors and I see it in community leaders, that in everybody who has had a measure of success, there is a nagging voice of insecurity which tells them that they're an imposter and they're not good enough and they're not going to measure up. And the athletes who are winning are the ones who have chosen not to listen to that voice, but instead to listen to the voices that are guiding them towards their directive, their goal, their purpose.
So they've chosen separation from everything that comes naturally so that they can train. And they have chosen, what influences am I going to listen to? And that goes into how they work. They make this choice. My body serves my purpose.
It is not my purpose to serve my body's desires.
Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it. Every athlete exercises self control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, a crown that is going to die. It was literally made of leaves.
It was going to wilt and blow away. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. So I do not run aimlessly. I do not box as one beating the air. But I discipline my body and keep it under control.
Lest after preaching to others, I myself should be disqualified. My body serves my purpose. My purpose is not to serve my body's desires.
I don't know if anybody else is going to tell you that this week the prevailing voices in my feed say that I should just treat myself and do what feels good to me and make sure that I satisfy my own desires and follow my heart. But the Scriptures say my body is given to me a gift, a beautiful gift that's given to me to be aligned with Jesus purpose.
Perhaps we've drifted into the lie that true freedom is unlimited options to do whatever we want. You know what unlimited options look like?
Go to Publix and buy ketchup.
We don't need that much ketchups.
But there's something in us. There's something, they put it on the shelf because it sells that says that like true freedom is being able to pick what variety of spiced ketchup you want or what color of ketchup you want. Sugar free ketchup, which is an oxymoron.
We're Americans, so we celebrate every summer our Declaration of Independence. America got rid of the tyrants, right? But have you ever thought about the fact that freedom from tyranny did not result in anarchy? When they declared independence from Britain a tyrannical form of government, they then installed another form of government.
Liberty for everyone requires limitations on individual choices. Because if I'm free to do whatever I want, regardless of how it impacts you, that actually impacts your freedom.
And so we may have accidentally drifted into an individualistic lie which says that true freedom is unlimited options. And when we come to the Scriptures, we see these encouragements for self control and self discipline and we go, but I thought I was set free for Christ to do whatever it is I want to do. And Jesus says, that's not freedom, that's a different kind of slavery.
Freedom from sin places us in submission to the governing law of Christ. Which is why I say that following Jesus means we're governed by his spirit and not by ourself. So what influences do we need to separate from in order to give the ear of our heart to Jesus? Just think about your heart. Think about your heart having ears, which is kind of funny.
But what are the messages that you're like, allowing to filter in? And what influences do we need to separate from in order to give the ear of our heart to Jesus? Now, I could make this super legalistic. I grew up in a Southern Baptist church, so I can name off the influences that you like, really ought to avoid. Sports ball is high among them.
Not really. I mean, unless you're convicted, in which case you should probably pray about it. What are the influences? What are the things that we're letting influence? How we shape our purpose, how we follow our purpose, and how we run the race?
Because don't you know that everybody who's in a race is running to win and only one wins the prize? Which, if you're like me, I read a verse like that, I'm like, well, it wasn't me. I ran. I ran my best. And I had no expectation that I was going to be the one that win.
And the only hope that I have is that the one who won it is Jesus. And when he gets up on the podium and says, I won the whole shebang, he says, I'm going to give, I'm going to put my medal on you.
This is, I don't know, this is in my notes, and I'm probably over time, but I was reminded as I was working through this that self control is related to meekness, which is not a word we use a ton, but I think we ought to bring it back. We talked about it when we were talking about 2 Corinthians a lot, but meekness is strength and power under measured control. It's like I have the strength, I have the power. I'm able to do a bunch of stuff, but I'm not recklessly exercising all of that. So I may have the authority to fire everybody on the spot, and I may be angry enough to fire everybody on the spot.
But meekness would be saying, all right, team, let's take this failure and let's learn from it and let's redirect towards our purpose. Meekness is strength and power under measured control. Which is, I think, why we read from James chapter one, that if any of us lacks wisdom, lacks self control, lacks the ability to do what we know is right, then he should ask God, and he should ask God without doubting, trusting that the fruit of the Spirit is the fruit that the Spirit grows in me, not the thing that I generate by myself.
You have to choose self control. You have to choose discipline. There's two sides of the same coin, and I can illustrate it with humility. And I'm going to take humility, apply it to discipline. The reason I'm going to use humility is because English works better for that.
What's the difference between humility and humiliation?
Humility means you chose to be humble. Humiliation means somebody else chose it for you.
Right. What's the difference between discipline that you choose and a discipline that God exercises on you? The fruit of the Spirit is that I choose to live under the Lord's discipline, the Lord's government, God's direction for my life, in order that I might better serve his purpose as opposed to being governed and directed by myself. So how do we do that? Because it's a lot easier for me to tell you to do it than it is for you to actually do it.
Right. I've got kind of three action steps if you need them, and I do. First is you got to know what's true. You got to have studied and know what it is that God says. You got to know what he didn't say.
Because sometimes we get caught up being mad at God for saying stuff that he didn't actually say. So you got to know what's true. Okay. And then you got to identify what's lying to you. Because oftentimes sin missing the Mark is seeking out a legitimate need in an illegitimate way.
When I want to trust Jesus, I want to walk in his ways. But I also have this need to just be chill or this need to just not be anxious all the time. I try to take my anxiety to Jesus, but then it's so much easier to just smoke a little bit. Right? I have a legitimate need to be at peace, but I've chosen instead to trust this substance over trust my Savior.
So know what's true. Identify what's lying to you. God doesn't actually care if you're anxious. Well, that's not true. He does.
He knows the number of hairs on my head, and he knows when a sparrow falls and he cares for me.
And then here's the but what happens is I make all this space to say all this stuff, and then I identify that thing's a lie. But then I just kind of keep living underneath it. And so I want to know what's true. I want to identify what's lying to me, and then I want to act on what's true and not on what's false.
One more point real quick. I'm just going to.
No, I don't think I am. I think I'm just going to leave it there.
Let's pray together.
Lord, you know that there's more to say and more that could be said. And God, I don't know if it's me or if it's our room or what it is, but just feel the heaviness as we consider action steps for self control. God, it's just. It's the opposite of what we want to do naturally. And so Jesus, I pray that as we look to your word, God, that you would show us and highlight for us that it would jump off the page what is true and what, what is real and what's reliable.
And Lord, as that brings up some tension in us, God, I pray that you would help us to identify the lies that are coming up, the ways that we are looking to satisfy and gratify our selfish desires in ways that are actually harmful to us.
And Lord, I pray that you would help us to find, fix our eyes, our attention, our focus and our trust on you. Your guidance and your direction.
And Lord, I know. I know that if we walk out of here with an overwhelming feeling that we just got to try harder, that the enemy has won today.
And so Jesus, I pray that you would shepherd your people.
I pray that you'd give correction where we need it. Lord, I know there's places that we need it.
But Lord, I pray that you would help us to repent and turn that sin to you, trust you with it, and that you would grow in us the self control, not that we'd just try to muster it.
And God, week after week you ask me to point to these things that are truths that are greater than me. And I try my best, Lord, I know that the lives that are hearing my voice right now are precious to you. And so I pray that you would do the work that only you can do, that you would tune our hearts to hear your grace, To repent and turn and run, To discipline our body to serve your purpose and not our flesh.
So that your name can be known near and far.
It's in Jesus' name I pray. Amen.
[Music.]
LINKS
Music by Blue Dot Sessions
