FRIDAY 25th
2 Peter 1:6
‘and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness,’
We come to the third of the steps in these few verses, that is to add to knowledge, self-control.
Self-control covers a number of bases within the context of the Christian life. It is that quality or supplement that when added to our faith will enable us to exercise caution, restraint, or cause us to hold back from making a rash move or decision. Self-control is like a check point, a place where we consider our actions or the consequences of our actions if we were to carry them out. How often have we heard the phrase, ‘think before you act’ it means stop, exercise self-control then react in a right way once you have considered the matter. For example, if someone was to aggressively rub you up the wrong way, the immediate thought may be to punch them on the nose—hard! But self-control will cause you to stop and consider how best to react, which would be to thump them twice on the nose—hard, no, only joking, it would be to walk away, to react positively and not negatively. And in many ways this is not always easy, that is why as believers we need to add self-control to our faith.
We need as an example to exercise self-control in areas of sexual morality. The desire or the urge may be to act in a certain way, but we know it would be wrong, so we exercise self-control and say no to the urge or desire. This is relevant to every single one of us, but I want to stress the importance of self-control within sexual morality to the younger generation. As you watch TV in nearly every programme, sexual immorality has become the norm’, self-control is no longer practised, anything goes and anything is deemed acceptable, but for us as believers, the acceptable is determined not by society and what TV may portray, but by what does the Word of God say, and God expects us to respect the opposite sex, he expects us to respect the boundaries that he has established which are non-negotiable boundaries, God expects us to exercise self-control so that the purity of our lives in sexual relationships, marriage and family can be upheld.
I have emphasised just one example for the need for self-control, but self-control as we know is also one of the fruit of the Spirit, it is a characteristic that should be evident in the life of all believers and exercised in every area of our lives.