Is self-control just willpower, or is there something more to it?
WATCH
Fruit of the Root, 9 of 9 from August 2, 2026
“Following Jesus means we are governed by His Spirit, not our self.”
Galatians 5 & 1 Corinthians 9:24-27 by Michael Lockstampfor (@miklocks)
SUMMARY
This sermon teaches that self-control is not something we create by willpower, but something the Holy Spirit grows in us as we follow Jesus. Using Galatians 5 and 1 Corinthians 9, Pastor Michael explains that true freedom means being freed from sin, living for the gospel, and choosing truth over the lies that pull us away from God.
REFLECTION & DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
💬 What purpose is steering our life?
💬 What influences do we need to separate from in order to give the ear of our heart to Jesus?
💬 Who are we prayerfully moving towards for the sake of the Gospel?
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If you turn on the news or scroll through social media for any amount of time, something comes to mind pretty quickly and it's this idea of how are you going to win anything? And it seems like we're in a world right now where the way to win is volume. Get. Get as many things out there as possible, be as loud as possible, get as much attention as possible. You could say we're somewhat in an attention based economy to some degree.
And that's the way that you'll win any kind of argument that you. The world teaches us that if we want to protect ourselves, we want to defend our rights, we want to win an argument, we just got to shout louder, respond faster, and push back harder than anyone else. Outrage has become a currency of the time and hostility is often misconstrued as strength. Have you guys picked up on that? The people that are the most hostile and the most forthcoming, they tend to be viewed as like the strongest.
But is that the God that we serve? Is that what he calls us to? Is that what he says real strength is? We often find ourselves on one side of the argument at all times. There's this division that's happening in our society and in this idea of this division and this constant bickering that we find ourselves in.
There's many reasons as to why we're there. But the Bible would say that there's one core reason and it's this idea that the world is busted. Let's just start here. The world was designed by God to be a perfect place where we could be in relationship with Him. Sin entered into that world and once that happened, nothing is as it's supposed to be.
Nothing. And when I say nothing, I mean everything. From how the ant builds an ant hill to. To how protons work, everything is off. Nothing is working the way that it should.
And now what we find ourselves in is we find ourselves in the consequences of those choices and then the rationalizations that we make from the consequences of those choices and how that continues and continues and continues. And now we find ourselves here. Where do you feel hopeless sometimes? Like you should have heard it in our prayer circle this morning. There were just tears about so much that's going on in the world today.
It is busted. But that's the world we're in. What characteristics are evident in the lives of believers as we navigate this fallen, broken and rage filled world? How are our responses different from. From those who would not claim Christ?
Are they. Are we just as hostile, just as rage filled? Or is the fruit of the Spirit Showing itself in the way that we walk. It's been really hard going over the Fruit of the Spirit the last seven weeks. I'm seeing some nods.
Yeah, this has been tough, Right? We've been covering the Fruit of the Spirit. We're gonna be in First Peter, chapter three, by the way. I know you guys see Galatians. We're using Galatians as the Fruit of the Spirit as the core text.
But today, if you have one of the large Bibles, it's going to be on page 1167, first Peter, chapter three is where we're going to be. But we're going to continue this idea of the Fruit of the Spirit and what it looks like. We talked about faithfulness last week. Now we're going to get into gentleness and this idea of gentleness. I got to tell you, when I was reading through our outline, because, remember, we built these sermons a year ago.
I was like, gentleness? Yeah. Not really, quite frankly. I was. I want something that's like, you know, like, I'm.
I'm. I want something aggressive. Gentleness. Okay. Yeah, it's a Fruit of the Spirit, and, yeah, I think it's okay, but.
Okay, God, I trust you. Let's see what you have in mind. And I gotta tell you guys, gentleness ain't no joke. And we're gonna read that as we go through this passage and as we unpack some of that this morning. But before we get there, it's our custom to read the disciples prayer together.
So if we could flick there. My clicker's not working, so. No, it's on. So here's the disciples prayer. So again, we talk about this each week, but we just want to be real clear.
These are not magic words. This is Jesus to the disciples saying, this is how you should pray. So we use this as our model. So we put it up so that if you don't know the words, that's completely fine. We would just invite you to read those out loud so that we can center our heart and our mind on what God has for us today.
Let's read that together. 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. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen. Okay, so we've been studying this idea of the Fruit of the Spirit, and there's this Idea that just keeps coming back of abiding. Right. Abide is a church word, right?
But we say it a lot, but we don't always unpack what it actually means. Think about a vine, and abiding is being connected to that vine when you're connected to it, when we're connected to Christ, when we're locked in with Jesus, the fruit that comes comes because of him. I'm not growing my own tomatoes, right? It comes from the root, it's coming from the ground, it's coming from the nutrients. Right?
And then the fruit is what comes out of that. So we've been studying these different pieces of the fruit of the Spirit, and here they are. So just to recap these, the first was, we grow in love as we walk with God's spirit. Then we learn God grows our joy as we focus on his glory and work. The third week was Jesus makes peace between our God and our neighbors.
Fourth was, Jesus takes all the time he needs to grow all the life he plans. That's a tough one. God's unbelievable kindness reshapes our belief to make us kind. Week six was, God is good. God makes good and God does good.
And then last week, we learned faithfulness is active obedience based on the promises of God. So we're going to get into gentleness today, but just want to introduce an idea. You ever think that you live, like, in the worst time ever? Anybody? Now you're getting quiet now.
Yeah, we all kind of do, right? We kind of romanticize the past sometimes. And then sometimes we think, this, this is terrible. Look at all the stuff that's going on. And I got good news, I got bad news.
The good news is we're going to start with the bad news. The bad news is it is bad. There's a lot going on. We just talked about that, right? But the good news is that God has dealt with a lot harder times for the life of a Christian.
I don't want to sound like I'm disparaging how hard it is to follow Jesus today. It's not what I'm saying. But, guys, it's been a lot harder. It's been a lot more difficult. And we're going to study some of those times today.
But while all this is happening, we're gonna go back all the way to around the year 64 or so. And you got the Apostle Peter, who, if you've read through the Book of Acts, this is a guy who was thrown in jail for his faith. This was a guy who went through a lot of Crazy stuff for his faith. This guy had seen some bad stuff, and now he's in a world where he's called by God to introduce this whole area to Jesus. So he's doing this, and as he's doing it, you have these churches in this area called Asia Minor.
Think modern day Turkey. So now we're at about year 64. Rome had this thing where they were completely fine with a bunch of different religions, as long as it didn't mess up the status quo. Status quo is good. Pay your taxes, we're going to be all right.
But there's this problem that's starting to happen. There's fighting that's happening between the Jews and the Christians, and it's spilling over. And now we got arguments. And now that all this kind of fuss is happening, and Rome just wants to be Rome. So what Rome would do is once you became kind of a problematic religion, you could get outlawed, things could get really bad really quickly.
And Christianity was starting to get there. So now all of a sudden, you could have your land confiscated. You could be killed, you could be beaten, thrown in jail. All this stuff that's happening just for following Jesus. So imagine the Gospel's going out.
People are being introduced to Jesus. Their lives are changing. They're going into their homes, talking to their families, and some in the family are going, that sounds incredible. I want to follow Jesus. And others are going, I'm going to get beaten.
No, thanks. So you have families that are somewhat separated because some are following Jesus and some aren't. This is a tough time. So Peter is writing to those people to encourage them. Suffering is going to come.
How do you deal with suffering? How do you respond to it? What's the godly way to respond when things aren't going well? And he's going to use this idea of gentleness that we'll unpack here today.
His whole strategy sounds completely counter to what you would expect. If I was going through a really hard time and people were yelling at me and people were beating me, do you think the response would be like, hey, just chill, be gentle? Is it like a gong in your ear? Does it not sound right? Part of the reason it doesn't sound right is because we're not thinking about it properly.
So we're going to learn that gentleness is a fruit of the spirit that disarms a hostile world. We live in a hostile world hostile to the Gospel. Gentleness is a fruit of the spirit that actually disarms some of that hostility. It's how God uses it. It's really cool stuff.
So let's jump into chapter three of First Peter and let's read how he unpacks this for them.
Likewise, wives, be subject to your own husbands, so that even if some do not obey the Word, they may be won without a word by the conduct of their wives. When they see you respectful and pure when they see your respectful and pure conduct, do not let your adorning be external, the braiding of hair and the pulling out of gold jewelry, the clothing you wear, but let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart and the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God's sight is very precious. For this is how the holy women who hoped in God used to adorn themselves by submitting to their own husbands, as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him Lord, and you are her children if you do good and do not fear anything that is frightening. Verse 7 likewise, husbands, live with your wives in an understanding way. Show honor to the woman as the weaker vessel, since they are heirs with you of the grace of life, so that your prayers may not be hindered.
Verse 8 Finally, all of you have unity of mind, sympathy, brotherly love, a tender heart, and a humble mind. Do not repay evil for evil, or reviling for reviling, but on the contrary, bless for those who are called that you may obtain a blessing. For whoever desires to love life and see good days, let him keep his tongue from evil and his lips from speaking deceit. Let him turn away from evil and do good. Let him seek peace and pursue it.
For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous, and the ears are open to their prayer. But the face of the Lord is against those who do evil. Now who is there to harm you if you are zealous for what is good? But even if you should suffer for righteousness sake, you will be blessed. Have no fear of them, nor be troubled.
But in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason, for the hope that is in you. Yet do it with gentleness and respect, having a good conscience, so that when you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame.
So Peter's going to take us down this road. He's going to use a marriage relationship to help illustrate this idea. But there's a lot of heavy stuff in here. But for us to really understand what gentleness is, we need to start by thinking about gentleness from a Biblical perspective. We need to Understand that the word used here actually describes a wild horse that's been tamed.
So think about this image for a second because it's a really cool image. So when we think about gentleness, we kind of go like, stuffed animal. That's where my head goes, you guys. I just think like, gentle, nice. Like cuddly, cuddly.
That's not the image. That's part of the reason that some of this doesn't line up is when we first start to think about it, the idea of gentleness, the word that was here, is literally a horse that's been tamed and is now under the direction of the rider. You know what? The horse didn't lose those muscles, that ability to run, the ability to handle itself, but it's now handling itself by direction of the rider. Do you see the difference?
So the horse is now gentle, but we're not talking about a stuffed animal here. It's a different mindset. Gentleness is power under self control. It's a fruit, not a mood. It's not a mood.
I'm not like, I'm feeling pretty gentle today. No, it's a fruit of the spirit. It's God equipping me to be able to handle tough times and still respond without punching someone in the face. Yeah, it is like, that's what we're talking about. It's control.
It's power under control. Power that was not under control apart from Jesus. Do you see the difference? That's what we're talking about here. So this idea of gentleness now, so fruit is also.
We talked about that idea of abiding, right? You know what? I don't. I'm not gentle when I'm like this. I'm gonna be gentle.
I'm gonna be gentle. I'm not. Not gonna lose my mind. They're driving me crazy. I'm just gonna put my head down and not talk to anybody for two days, and I'll come out of this okay.
You know what that is? That's not God working in you. That's you trying to grin and bear it through life. And as we talked about with faithfulness last week, that is not a fruit of the spirit. That is not following God.
That's trying to handle it all on your own. That is not fruit. Fruit naturally grows as the branch remains connected to the vine. When you find yourself trying to do that, check yourself. Am I connected to the vine?
Have I gone off on my own? And I don't know where the vine is anymore? That's where we find ourselves it also flows from faith. Remember we talked about faith last week, right? The idea of God goggles, okay?
I see the world the way that God says it is. God says, this is how I've designed the world. This is how you are to conduct yourselves within it. I put my glasses on, I see it the way that God says it is. I cannot have Biblical gentleness if I don't have Biblical faith.
It builds on the other. I cannot be okay with circumstances going on that are not good if I don't realize that the God of the universe is still in control. You tracking without understanding. He is still in control. There is no gentleness.
I'm grinning and bearing it. And that is not a fruit of the spirit. So if you find yourself in that anxiety induced, just rage filled, want to just yell at the world. You are not connected with the vine. You are not following Christ.
Check yourself if that's where you are. You got to have some prayer time here. Understand that he is in control, that God has got this. It's a fruit, not a mood. All right, now continuing here, he does this thing where now he's going to talk to us a little bit about how kind of gentleness is going to play itself out.
So I want to do a little bit of a game of like a compare and contrast of Biblical gentleness and what that looks like versus how the world would do it. So I think in weird visual pictures. So if you guys will indulge me for a minute, some of these pictures are kind of silly. Are you guys up for silly? Remember, I teach kids a lot.
Okay, the first one is that actions speak louder than words. The idea is that actions taken mean more than words said. Notice he's talking about a wife in a relationship with a husband who does not follow Jesus. So how should the wife conduct herself in a relationship with a person who does not want to follow Jesus? The direction that he gives is to do it through action.
You're not going to argue him into anything. I see a couple ladies here just like, they're locked in on this, right? We guys can be very, very stubborn, right? But now let's go one step further here. Think about beyond the marriage relationship.
Think about us who are following Jesus. And what we really want to do is we want to talk a lot. And what we don't want to do is act very much.
It kind of hits the square in the shots, right? We want to talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk. But the action isn't there. The thing that God will use to help bring about repentance in other people's lives is not only your words, it's primarily your action. Do you see it in your communities, in your work relationships, in your family relationships?
For those people that don't know Jesus, they are going to see more of Christ in you through action, through talk talk, talk, talk, talk, talk talk. Your Facebook post isn't fixing anything. It's just not. It's not bad unless, don't misunderstand me, but it's the actions. Are you caring for people?
What does that look like?
Understand too. And this is something that even the most mature Christians, I think, struggle with. Prayer is an action. Sometimes we find ourselves wanting to, like, do. But then we don't talk to God about what it is we're gonna do.
And then we wonder why it didn't work out when we didn't pray about any of it. Prayer is an action, talking to the God of the universe that created everything and saying, hey, God, what do I do here? That's an active thing. That's not talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk talk. That's actually inviting him in and seeing like, what do I gotta do here, God?
Direct me. And far too often we just skip right past that. The next thing you notice is this whole idea of judging a book by its cover. The heart matters, the avatar doesn't. The world looks to project an outward image.
The world's very concerned about what everybody thinks. The Christ follower cares from the heart. It's the thing that Jesus can see. We seek to understand where someone is coming from. We're patient because we know he's patient with us.
So think about this for a second. How much time are we spending making it look from the outside, looking in like things are going well versus I'm following Jesus. That's all. That's my only message. Do you see the difference?
He's talking about this in reference to a wife and what she's wearing. And the point that he's making, though, because you can get really hung up in the details of, like, you know, braiding hair. That's not the point. The point is the heart behind it. And the point is, for the unbeliever, are they seeing a flashiness?
Are they seeing a facade? Or are they seeing a genuine walk with Christ? Because the book that just says my life in Ocala can be really boring looking at it like that. But for any of you guys that know our family and the stuff that's happened in our lives, dude, that book is nuts. It's crazy.
What's in that book? Right? And it's like that for all of us, for the things that God has done. What is, what are we doing? Are we more concerned about our image or are we more concerned with where our heart is?
And what does that look like? He doesn't end there though, he keeps going. It's pretty fast paced. The next one I call the judo principle. Now, for those of you guys that don't know, you might laugh at this.
That's okay. It doesn't look like it, but I used to be a bit of an athlete. My daughter's in the back, she's giggling at me because she thinks I'm silly. But I was a third degree brown belt in judo and I could handle myself on a mat. The reason I bring this up with judo is it's a really interesting thing.
When you're in with judo, you're redirecting the other person's emotion. So someone's attacking you, you're not going right back at them. You're literally using their foot sweep to sweep their foot and flip them. It's redirecting that motion, right? It's going along with it.
It's kind of counterintuitive to how we would normally respond. So the point that I'm making with this is don't take the bait, redirect it. So we as Christians, if we're being gentle, if that fruit of the Spirit is coming out, when the world is putting poking at us and coming at us, are we fighting fire with fire or are we redirecting that energy that's coming at us in a godly perspective and in a godly way? Are we trying to defend ourselves or are we trusting that the God of the universe can defend us? It's a different thing.
For the eyes of the Lord, verse 12 are on the righteous and his ears are open to their prayer. But the face of the Lord is against those who do evil. When you're met with aggression, do you respond with aggression? Jesus knows what's going on and he's got this gentleness is a fantastic counter to an aggressive, skeptical world. How often do you find yourself in one of these conversations where somebody just wants to pepper you with questions and they're, they're trying to like all argue you out of your faith.
You ever been there, by the way? I used to be that guy. Used to love those conversations. I used to be that guy with my wife. It was terrible.
I was such an idiot. But like, seriously, like that happens. But you know what counters that? Not getting Defensive. A gentle response.
A gentle response turns away wrath and turns away anger. Proverbs says. So what God is calling us to is to trust that we don't need to defend ourselves. Did you hear me? God is telling you you don't have to defend yourself.
He's got you now. What I'm saying is, obviously you could take that a couple different ways. What I'm talking about is within the idea of following Jesus. God can call balls and strikes. He knows what's going on.
His eyes and ears are on the righteous. It says it right here. So let's look at what this looks like, Right? Peter directs us to use that situation to explain to people that God doesn't waste pain. We live a gentle life, a hopeful life.
The world notices something different about us and asks us, why do we have such peace. And then you give the reason for your hope. Because if you do all of these things, gentleness sets the stage for evangelism. That's where all this was going from the very beginning. We talked about gentleness being a fruit of the spirit that disarms a hostile world.
Why do you want the hostile world disarmed? So you can introduce him to Jesus. It's not to win an argument. If you win, not another argument the rest of your life. But people come to know Christ.
Those are all wins. It's not about the argument here. So if we're following God and the fruit of the Spirit is coming out in us, we're walking in faithfulness. People are seeing this gentleness. And we are going through just as much busted stuff as everybody else.
But they see something different, they will want to know why. Why are you not losing your dagum mind?
Are you dumb? Do you not know what's going on? I can give you the five things right now. That's how the world's talking. That's what they're saying to me.
I know it's what they're saying to you too. The difference is we have a hope in Christ. We have a God who loved us, paid for our sins, brought us from death to life. And we know that this world ain't it. That's what we have.
All of this leads to a perfect stage set for evangelism.
Now a couple things, you're not gonna argue anybody into it. Remember where we started. So just cause the stage has been set, doesn't mean that now all of a sudden you pull out all your best stuff. No, your actions are your best stuff. Your prayers are your best stuff.
God handles all the rest of it. But he does all of this so that at the end of this, the end of this chapter, we read it together.
Now, who is there to harm you if you are zealous for what is good, but even if you should suffer for righteousness sake, you will be blessed. Have no fear nor be troubled. But in your hearts, honor Christ. The Lord is holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you. Yet do it with gentleness and respect, having a good conscience so that when you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame.
The God of the universe saved you, and he did it for a couple of different reasons. First, he loved you. He saw you in your bustedness and your sinfulness and your I want to be king or queen of my own life. And he said, I still love you. I have a plan for you.
And my plan is greater than anything you could ever come up with. It's also different than anything you could ever come up with. Then he saved us. Then after he saved us, he called us to go out into our communities to introduce more people to him. He empowered us to do this.
He guided us in it and then said, bring them to me. And he's been working on them the same way he was working on you. But we're not running out with a flag, y'. All. We're not in some we're not an invading army.
We're people called by God to live in communities that need to know God. That's what we are. There's nothing better than that, man. There's nothing better than that. There's no calling on your life that is greater than that calling.
There's nothing than following God and God using you for him to save someone else.
So let's reflect on a couple of things here. In what area of your life, whether it be your home, your workplace, are you most tempted to replace gentleness with volume, pressure or self defense? How does remembering the gentleness of the fruit of the Spirit change the way you approach your daily struggles with patience and anger? And number three has your demeanor when sharing or defending your faith, reflecting the gentleness and respect commanded in 1st Peter 3:15. What is one way you can adjust your approach?
When you think about gentleness and you think about what God has called us to, and you think about the fact that you are that wild horse that the writer is directing on what he wants, is he using that gentleness to disarm the hostile world around you? Or are you just as hostile as they are. And if you're just as hostile as they are, the question is, how connected are you to the vine?
That's it. It's both simple and really. Sc we live in an aggressive, fallen world that doesn't want to hear about hope, especially hope. They can't see. They connect a relationship with Jesus to a religious system that is trying to sell them something.
They're hurt, scared, skeptical, frustrated, angry, sad, and maybe even bitter. The good news, bad news is that you can't save them. That's the bad news. The good news is he's the one who does. That's it.
Like, apart from him, we can do nothing. Nothing doesn't mean a lot of stuff. And then we can't do this part. No, it means nothing. Apart from his empowering and his guidance and directing us on what we should do, we're just wasting our time.
But understanding that salvation is his, not ours, changes everything. So the challenge is to tame your tongue in conflict. Lead with actions, not just words. Don't retaliate when you're wronged. And finally cling to the truth that Jesus sees it all and will deal with it.
Be used by God through his gentleness to reach your neighbors. Father in heaven, Lord, thank you for you. Lord, thank you for your word.
I just pray that you would navigate through everything that was said this morning and just make it so clear.
Lord, if there's someone in the sound of my voice that does not know you, Lord, don't let them leave this room without meeting you.
We know that there is nothing special about us. But Lord, we also know that there is everything special about you. We pray that you would make that abundantly clear to them.
Father, if there's someone in the sound of my voice that has been walking with you for a while. But if they really took an inventory of their life, there's not much gentleness there. I just pray, Lord, that you would challenge them and guide them to the place of understanding that gentleness is just power under control.
We're not talking about weakness, Lord. We're talking about being under your control and following you. There's nothing better than that, Father. The rest of this week we just pray that you would walk with us step by step, that you would draw those around us to you and that, Lord, in the way that you would use us. We just.
We cling to that. And we thank you that you would even have us on your team. You are so good, Lord.
You brought us from death to life.
We pray that there would be so much more of that in our community. It's in Jesus' name we pray.
LINKS
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