UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE: If you’ve ever wanted to know what I sound like, you can listen to my message on our church Pod Cast. BTW, I never knew I talked so fast…and I was trying to talk slow…

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Today’s “Notes On A Sunday Sermon” come from none other than your’s truly, WunderKraut. I think it went really well. I managed to avoid saying anything heritical, so I’ve got that going for me. In preparing for my message, I decided to write it out as if I were speaking it. I used this is my note during the message. So no, I didn’t read this word for word. The actual spoken version had more stories and asides which I feel made it a better word.

So, for what ever it’s worth, here are the notes i wrote up, from which I gave today’s message. Also, there may be a recording of the message later this week. If that makes it to the internet, I will let you know. That way it will be just like you were there!!!! And who says I don’t look after my loyal readers.

Today’s message was on Self-Control:

We were born for freedom. Ever since the Garden, the Lord has relished in giving us freedom. Christ came to set us free:

[Gal 5:1] – It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.

A lot of times I feel that the church views freedom incorrectly. We are correct in saying that Christ set us free, but we often times turn around and set rules “can’t touch”, “can’t eat” and “can’t say”. We subject believers with our own version of the Law and squelch the very freedom Christ paid for. I know this is not every church and there are exceptions, but in general we bring our little rule book…the Bible…with us to instruct new believers.

Yes discipleship is essential and yes we are to live holy lives, but often what we bring to the table are our own sets of beliefs and rules of conduct. These may have no grounding in the Word or may be selectively gleaned from the Word. But what does the Word say about our freedom? Paul says:

[Gal 5:13-14] – You, my brothers, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature ; rather, serve one another in love. The entire law is summed up in a single command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

Hmm. That is it. But where is the giant book of rules? I want some sort of external control over my life. We need some sort of external control over the church, because…what if someone does something wrong!?!?!?!?!?!? OH NO, What are we going to do then?

I’m being funny, but it is how we tend to operate. So why do we feel the need to have some sort of imposed external control system over our lives? If we were born for freedom, why do we so willingly sign over our freedom?

Simple…it’s easier.

After all, it is much easier if I turn off my brain, hand it over to someone else who then tells me everything I am to do and not do. It takes all responsibility off of my shoulders. If we mess up and it wasn’t in the rule book, hey man, I didn’t know. Or when someone messes up, we can hit them over the head with the rules and justify turning our back on them and walking away. Bummer, they broke the rules. We can’t be seen around them. It’s honestly what we do, even if on a sub-conscience level.

Jesus gives us exactly 2 rules:

[Luk 10:27] – He answered: ” ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”

You may be thinking “What about Paul’s list in Galatians?” True there is a list and here it is:

[Gal 5:19-21] – The acts of the sinful nature are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.

For a rules list, that sounds pretty good doesn’t it? Within each of those acts, we have made an entire subset of rules, which have their own rules on top of that. But what was Paul talking about? He was talking about the acts of the sinful nature. So, if you are a believer in Christ, do you have the old sin nature anymore? No? Then, um, you shouldn’t be doing those things, not because there is a list telling you not to, but because of Romans 6:11:

[Rom 6:11] – In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.

So I will ask you again, why do we give away our freedom and become enslaved?

Same answer: It’s easier. It is easier because in order to exercise freedom, you have to have self-control…

In its simplest form, self-control boils down to telling yourself what to do and doing it. The reason we give away our freedom in exchange for an external system of rules is because doing what you tell yourself is hard man. It really is, but it is vital. Proverbs says:

[Pro 25:28] – Like a city whose walls are broken down is a man who lacks self-control.

Without self-control we totally set ourselves up for two things. The first is failure or the fear of failure which leads us to the second which is to seek the safety and comfort of a rule based system.

The church has been especially guilty of this. Something happens to make a mess and so the leadership decides that wow, it’s hard teaching self-control and it’s even harder trusting people to exercise it, just look at this mess, let’s make sure this NEVER happens again. We actually teach people to be self-control-less. Is that even a word.

But God loves freedom. He created us to be free. So much so that he sent his Son to make our freedom permanent. Learning how to properly exercise our freedom is one of the most import aspects of proper discipleship.

Since it is so important, the Lord made it a Fruit of the Spirit. In other words, believing in Christ and being full of the Holy Spirit, these things should naturally flow from you. We are all familiar with them:

[Gal 5:22-23] – But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.

After the Lord gave me this word on self-control he lead me to this scripture. I realized something that I had been doing my entire Christian life. I had been putting greater emphasis on the beginning fruits and glazing over the end ones. I mean, come on, love? Wow really big! Joy? Biggie! Peace? Need it! Patience? Yeah, yeah, yeah…mumble, mumble, mumble…there is no law. It’s almost like saying your ABC’s. When we get to L, M, N, O, P what do we do? LMNOP! As quickly as possible. It’s funny because when our kids were learning their ABC’s they would act as if those letters were one giant letter/word. It was only until later did they realize they were individual letters. That is how I have been treating that scripture. Don’t tell me I’m the only one!

The next thing the Lord showed me was that you can’t have a single fruit without self-control. It’s impossible. Let me explain.

Life is full of choices. That’s a common phrase, but the reality is that life isn’t just full of choices…it is a choice. EVERYTHING you do requires you to make a choice. There is never only one choice. Danny Silk says it this way “Put a gun to my head and tell me to deny Christ. I still have a choice.” It’s true. Life really works that way. Taking a look at the Fruit of the Spirit again shows that each and every fruit requires a choice to be made. If a choice is to be made, that choice requires self-control.

Love. It’s the only rule Jesus gave. It is the most important thing. Paul’s famous lines in Corinthians on love:

[1Cr 13:1-8] – If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing. Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.

Basically, it means that if you do not have love, you get zero points at the end of the game.

So, is love a choice? Yes it is. Jesus says in Matthew 5:44 to “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” That sure sounds like a choice. It is so easy to love those close to us. Those we choose, there’s that word again, to surround ourselves with. But continuing on in that same scripture in Matthew, Jesus asks “Do not even pagans do that?”, yet we do it all the time. Telling yourself to love your enemies is a hard thing to do, but with Christ in us and with the help of the Holy Spirit, we can learn to tell ourselves to love and then actually do it.

What about Joy? Is joy a choice? Yes, yes it is. This may be one of the harder things to believe. See, we blame all sorts of things to make excuses for our lack of joy. You don’t understand. Our finances are a wreck. Daddy didn’t love me. Someone in the church hurt me. I can’t help it, it’s how I was raised. And on and on. The problem is, those are all lies. Every single one of them is a lie from the enemy. We have a choice when we wake up if we are going to “Rejoice in the Lord and be glad in it” or if we are going to be bummed out. Don’t get me wrong, I understand all the reasons I listed above and they may be real issues. If they are, I plead with you to go to someone you trust in the Lord and deal with those issues whether it be forgiveness or deliverance or whatever, please deal with it. But even after dealing with it, you have a choice to make. Remember, Jesus is our joy:

[Jhn 15:11] – I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.

Peace? Oh man this is very similar to joy. How many times have we begged and pleaded with the Lord for peace in our lives concerning a certain issue? I know I have done that over and over and over. We keep waiting for this magical moment when:

[Phl 4:6-7 NIV] – Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Sort of like this thing comes over us and takes control over us and we have peace. See, we even view the peace of God in terms of an external control system. What is the reality? What did Jesus say?

[Mat 11:28-30 NIV] – “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

Look at the action words: Come and take. It implies some sort of action on our part. We have to give him our problems and in exchange, and this is the important part, we have to take on his yoke. What we tend to do is give Jesus our problems, but we fail to choose to put on his yoke. As a result we fail to achieve that peace we so desperately need. His peace requires us to choose to lay down our burdens and to take up his yoke. That choice requires us to exercise our self-control and lay down our right to worry and fret over a problem.

Patience? Have patience, have patience, don’t be in such a hurry, when you get impatient, you only start to worry. Remember, remember, that God is patient too and think of all the times when others have to wait for you. Remember that kid’s song? Man, we used to listen to that record…yes record…all the time as a kid. Driving in a van with 4 kids for 12 hours…think you have a choice to make to have patience? Think that requires a little bit of self-control. What happens when a Dad fails to properly exercise his self-control? Boom!!! Big bomb just went off in the van and there are now numerous walking wounded…yeah, no fun.

Kindness? This one gets me because of this scripture:

[Rom 2:4] – Or do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, tolerance and patience, not realizing that God’s kindness leads you toward repentance?

What do we show the world? What do we show our brothers and sisters in the Lord? What are they seeing from us when they make mistakes? Anger? Wrath? Disappointment? What does God want us to show? His kindness. That requires a choice and that choice requires self-control to relinquish our rights for anger, wrath and punishment.

I know I am cheating a bit, but I do tend to lump goodness and gentleness in with kindness. I know they mean different things, but it is hard to find one mentioned about God without the others. They are attributes of the Lord and because of Christ in us, they are to be attributes of our daily lives. When I think of goodness and gentleness I think of how I treat my kids. I am to represent the Lord in our house. They will see the Lord in how I treat them. It takes tremendous self-control to exhibit gentleness after a long, stressful day at work. It is so hard sometimes to show God’s goodness when they make mistakes. But it is so, so important to practice self-control or what I say and do has the potential to cause deep wounds.

Last but not least is faithfulness. Choices required? Self-control needed? Yep. All you have to do is look at the covenant of marriage. Are you going to be faithful in the covenant? I’m not just talking about faithfulness in terms of cheating on your spouse, I’m talking about the rest of the vows you took when you got married. The parts about loving her as Christ loved the church and died for her. That is being faithful. It takes self-control to remain faithful. I don”t mean that I’m just one bad day away from cheating on my wife, but I’m talking about every day, day in and day out, being faithful to her in thought and deed and fulfilling my covenant with her.

We are all able to exercise self-control. Not in of ourselves, but because Christ is in you and you have the Holy Spirit. It takes relearning how to live. Every aspect of your life requires self-control. Your thoughts are the biggest place. The enemy is constantly trying to tear us down by telling us lies. If we lack self-control we will tend to believe those lies and that will just lead us down to places we do not want to go. As a man I have a huge responsibility to control my mind when it comes to lust. As we have heard, the first thought is the enemy and is a lie. At that point, our self-control better kick in and tell the enemy to “Get a life!” What happens when you begin to entertain those thoughts or believe those lies? It is shocking how quickly you can go from being up here…to being down there.

But, you are capable. How do we learn self-control? You have to practice it. Just like Paul says:

[1Cr 9:24] – Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last; but we do it to get a crown that will last forever. Therefore I do not run like a man running aimlessly; I do not fight like a man beating the air. No, I beat my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize.

I beat my body and make it my slave…No, he isn’t talking about physically beating your body. He is talking about having mastery over ones body. Telling yourself what to do and actually doing it…Self-Control.
Being accountable to someone is the best way to learn self-control. I know you have heard it preached over and over in this church, that is because it is SOOOO important. It is vital. Jon Gurr and I are accountable to each other. There are areas in my life I need help in and the same goes for him. Jen has complete freedom to go to Jon when I am not living up to my potential in the Lord. The same is true of Joanna. She has complete freedom to come to me when Jon is having issues. That has actually happened. One Saturday morning I woke up in a funk. I had a choice to make. I could wallow around in my funk, or I could exercise my self-control, deal with the issue and be full of joy…Yeah, I chose the wallow around one. The result was that I created a very not fun atmosphere in the house. So much so that Jen told me to leave until I could find my joy. If I needed to call Jon, I should do that or she would be willing to do it for me. It wasn’t in anger or as a threat. It was because she loves me and my lack of self control was bringing the house down.

Life is too short. The Kingdom needs us to learn self-control. It is very hard to advance the kingdom when we seldom get off of start. You can do it because Christ is in you and you have the Holy Spirit.