Fruit of the Spirit: Self-control — with Phil Whittall

Welcome to the Grace Church Weekly Podcast. We're an international church right

in the heart of Stockholm, Sweden.

Each week, we share a message that's rooted in the faithful teaching of God's

Word and open to the vibrant work of the Holy Spirit among His people.

Here's this week's message.

Titus chapter 2 verse 11 to 14 For the grace of God that brings salvation has

Titus 2:11–14

appeared to all men It teaches us to say no to ungodliness and worldly blessings

And to live self-controlled,

upright and godly lives in this present age While we wait for the blessed hope

The glory is appearing of our great God,

Saviour, Jesus Christ who gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness

and to purify for himself the people that are as very eager to do what is good.

And Lord, that is, I sing to his word.

Let's just pray and ask God to speak to us and to speak through me to pray.

Heavenly Father, we want to come under the authority of your word.

We believe that you speak to us, which is such an incredible privilege that

you do not leave us guessing, But we can hear you through your word.

And so it's for the great open our hearts and our ears to hear from you,

to see what your word says to us, and to bring ourselves in alignment with it.

And help me, Lord, as I speak, that you would be glorified through my words

in Christ. In Jesus' name. Amen.

Scenario one. I live in a house where my mother-in-law, my wife,

my daughter, and even on occasions my son likes to bake.

So cakes, cookies, brownies, puddings, desserts, anything sweet and tasty.

And it's great. They like making them. I like eating them. It's brilliant.

Except I also like running and I'd quite like to run faster.

So what do I do when the smell of freshly baked shortbread, cookies,

blackberry crumble, wash your house, is put in front of me? James has an answer

to this colundrum. Fika discipline.

Scenario two. We've recently completed some renovations in our house.

We spent a long time not being able to decide what to buy from where else. Ikea, of course.

But now we've made our choice and the order is in.

Or is it? The next morning, my beloved wife is unsure.

So we cancel the order. And we start again.

I love Ikea, and I'm very tempted to tell her how much I'm loving Ikea right now. What happens?

Everyday life constantly tests our self-control. And scripture's full of the same struggle.

King David, not with his army, in his palace.

He's on the rooftop and he spies a lady having a bath.

Kay is jealous. God, it seems, loves his brother, but not him.

His offering is being rejected.

There's his brother. No one is watching.

Jesus, starving hungry, 40 days since he's last had something to eat.

Why not turn some of these stones into bread? Why not? Who would know?

Each moment has different outcomes in the different stories,

but each moment hangs on one thing, self-control.

And it's not just one fruit among many. It's what they call a keystone.

It's a foundation on which the success of the other fruits in your life,

love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness,

and self-control, those other ones hang on this one.

Think about it. Without self-control, the others can collapse like a house of cards.

If you lose self-control, your patience becomes impatience.

Your peace becomes anger. Your love can become hate.

Your faithfulness can become unfaithfulness in a moment where you lose self-control.

Gentleness can become harshness.

One moment and everything, like a house of cards, can come crashing down.

The Bible describes in vivid imagery what we're like when we lose self-control.

It says a person without self-control is like a city with broken down walls.

Most people's cities don't have normals any longer, but the image is there's

no God left. There's no protection.

Anything can come in and take you captive.

There's no safe place left if the wolves have gone. The enemy has got a free road in.

In the space where self-control should be, we find ourselves vulnerable.

Vulnerable, vulnerable to impulse, vulnerable to design, vulnerable to self-control,

I mean, vulnerable to temptation.

Wrongdoing, even evil, when we lose self-control.

There's been a lot of, there's a lot of scientific social research and studies

into self-control, or if you prefer, willpower.

Do some people have willpower and some not? Yes.

How do you use it? How do you lose it?

Is willpower a finite resource that will run out on you? Can it be refilled?

How do you get more of it if it can?

What's the connection between willpower and habits, systems of control,

and the connection to self-control?

There's a lot of good stuff. There's a lot of research out there.

There's a lot of books out there, a lot of valuable insights that can be learned.

But social science doesn't deal in the same sort of categories that the Bible

deals in. It doesn't deal with sin or redemption.

It might talk about addiction and improvement. And in the world,

self-control comes firmly under the category of self-improvement and self-help.

You can get better.

Now, obviously, people can learn. You can learn to get better sorts of things.

And we can, in fact, figure out ways to become more disciplined,

but not always in everything and not always in the time.

We can get better, but we just can't get perfect.

God's approach to instilling self-control works from a very different starting point.

The Bible doesn't say you need self-improvement. It says you need redemption.

When I act in the opposite of these fruits of the Spirit when I act in an unloving

and unkind and impatient and ungentle and without joy.

When I act in the opposite of those things, I actually bring death to my soul

and the soul of others into the world.

We're all responding to the pains and the sorrows that you feel will almost always be as a result.

The pains that other people have ever caused you in your life will always be

as a result of one of them acting in the opposite of these fruits.

When someone has been mean to you, harsh to you, cruel to you,

unloving to you, all of these things cause you pain.

Sometimes there'll be moments of anger, anger erupting into your life.

Sometimes it becomes just who these people are as they control and shape you.

And it becomes, they've given up, they've given over themselves to these things. It brings death to us.

And into the world. Greed and violence and hate and harshness are all bringers

of death in small ways and sometimes large ways.

And ultimately, they lead to spiritual death.

So God says, Jesus, my son, will take this.

He'll take all that death and

all that consequences, the guilt and all of it, and take it to the grave.

He'll take your place. He'll suffer the consequences of these things.

He'll receive the punishment, all of this, these things deserve. And he did on a cross.

And God says that anyone who trusts in his son, it will be as if they died with him.

This is crucial. This is crucial to understand. Their old self will get crucified.

So this is Romans chapter six. If we've been united with him in a death like

his, we'll be united with him in a resurrection like his.

We know that we've been crucified with him so that the body of sin might be

destroyed. and here's the important thing, that we might no longer be enslaved to sin.

Whoever has died is freed from sin.

Death, the Bible says, no longer has dominion, rune, master.

Sin no longer enslaves. This is good news.

It's very good news. And it's a gift. It's called grace.

You didn't deserve it or add it, but God gave it to you and you receive it by

faith, which God also gives so that no one can boast.

And as Drew, the author of the book I recommended, says, from the biblical view,

there's only two modes of life available to us, enslavement to sin or life in the spirit.

One or the other. You're either walking in a life enslaved to sin or you're

walking in a life in the spirit. There isn't some middle gray third option in

the middle that we get to have. It's one thing more though.

But as you well know, and I well know, just because we know and believe that

this thing happens, that we as creatures are still far from perfect.

There's still struggle. There's still mucking things up. We're not always the

best examples of suddenly this glorious freedom and deliverance where I no longer

made these kinds of mistakes any longer. So what gives?

People living in their own strength so

as poor as james read from titus the grace

of god has appeared that offers salvation to all

people and the grace teaches us

to say no to ungodliness and worldly passions and

to live self-controlled upright and godly lives

in this present age right now so we

while we're waiting we're waiting for something to see that grace frees you

and trains you grace is both freedom and formation that's why it's a fruit of

the spirit in us we've been set free to say no where previously we could not,

I was a slave, but I'm not no longer. I don't have to listen to the slave master any longer.

Doesn't have control over me. Not my master. I can say no to you. I couldn't before.

We no longer have to give in to passions, impulses, and temptations.

Grace can teach us to say no.

But grace also teaches us how to say yes to God. How to say yes.

First grace, God frees us, then God teaches us.

And one of the things he teaches us is that one of the best ways to fight temptation is to flee from it.

You might think with all this spiritual power, you could just open up the cookie jar and not eat.

You can open up that website and not lust.

It's your fault if you do. god's advice

is to run falling run far run hard

run fast away from it flee the bible says

flee from sexual immorality flee from idolatry

flee from these passions how do

you resist the devil so he will flee from you now

listen to him but not be present at all exercise the

power of know which you now have the

jail doors have been opened run get

out of it get as far away from it as possible

so back in romans 6 paul says don't

let sin exercise dominion in your mortal bodies to make you obey their passions

no longer present your members to it stop showing up in front of it for work

and instruction it says as instruments of weakness but present yourself instead

to god as those who've been brought from death to life,

presenting them as the God as instruments of righteousness.

For sin will have no dominion over you, since you're not under law, but under grace.".

You know, it's hard to be tempted if you're just not there. Don't present yourself

with the opportunity. Instead, do the opposite. You'll present yourself to God.

And this is where habits and control systems come in.

If you're rested, fed, connected relationally and at peace, you actually will

have greater mental resources than if you're hungry, angry, lonely, time.

Any one of those things can make you vulnerable. So a system of ensuring that

you need properly, get enough sleep, exercise, maintain friendships and connections.

They're all helpful things to building up your resources of willpower to live

the life that you would hope to live.

But a system of control and habit formation is not the same as self-control.

Often people who rely on a system of control struggle when the system changes.

So you're traveling for work, your routines are

changed you're suddenly not in the environment that

you've created and the habits that you've got your body's on

a different time zone the foods that you can normally eat aren't available to

you you're away from your family and your friends and suddenly the system starts

to let itself down and suddenly you're open to dealing with the stress and the

pressures and the loneliness and the hungering you might feel,

and you start being vulnerable.

People who are away and out of their systems, or when stress overloads the system,

that you can no longer keep up.

You're overloaded by stress and by work and by circumstances that the system breaks down.

And you realize still that you had a system of control, but you didn't have

self-control. in the moment when you needed it, self-control wasn't there.

We do need godly habits. We do need to exercise willpower with the help of God.

Good habits are better than the alternative, right? Good habits are good.

You'll help them. I need them. I'm all for them. But we're called to reliance

and to walk instead with God by His Spirit.

So we mustn't make habit formation the ultimate goal.

The ultimate goal is to walk a life with God, in relationship with God,

instead with the Spirit each day, each moment, to rely on Him and not on these other things.

Which is why the advice is don't just present yourself, not just simply stay

away from madness, but present yourself to God.

We have an invitation and an opportunity to do everything we do in life with God, with Him.

Ultimately, the best way to avoid sin, the most powerful means of self-control,

comes by listening to a sweeter song.

For Christians, this means tuning into God's ultimate purpose for us.

It means listening to His voice and obeying His commands.

It involves desiring and delighting in Him.

And that last part is crucial. It isn't that we're replacing old laws with new

laws, an old thing with control, with a new system.

We've got new desires and we need to cultivate those desires to delight ourselves

and enjoy ourselves in the grace and the love of God.

And God promises that we can ask the Spirit in every situation to help us.

In every moment, we can ask the Spirit to help us. He counsels us.

He'll show us an escape route if we found ourselves in a place of temptation.

Who taught us to pray the prayers of Jesus, lead me not into temptation,

but deliver me from evil.

I need to pray that daily. If we're getting close to trouble, he'll give us scoge.

He'll teach us and remind us, you don't have to listen to the serpent's voice.

He is there if only we would ask.

In fact, James Byer says, you don't have because you don't ask.

Often in these moments, we're relying on ourselves instead of relying on God.

And then when our self runs out, we find ourselves in trouble.

Saying the thing that we later regret, making a choice that we wish we hadn't

done, hoping to wind the clock back a few hours to early in the evening when

I was doing okay and suddenly it's late and I'm not.

1 John 5, the apostle John says, this is the boldness we have in him,

that if we ask anything according to his will, and what's his will for you,

that one, that we wouldn't walk in sin, that we wouldn't fall into temptation,

that we wouldn't do these things, but that we would have all his life.

This is God's will for you, that you would be full of love, joy,

peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

You'd be full of these things, producing benefits and life in you, he'll hear you.

And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have obtained the requests made of.

So if you know God's will for you and you ask him for that will for you,

he will, without fail, give you what you ask.

That's an incredible promise and an incredible gift.

There isn't a moment where you

go god i need more love and

he says sorry maybe tomorrow need more patience i'm really up against it in

this moment with whoever it is or whatever it is i need more patience so god

says work this one out for yourself it's not what he says it's this style. I'm with you.

Relax. We've got this. I'm here. You can do this. Trust in me.

Take a breath. All right.

I'll take another one. Good. You're exercising patience.

Don't say anything just yet. Hold it. Hold that thought.

Hold that sentence. Think about it. Oh, yeah. Okay. You don't have to say that, do you? No, I don't.

All right. Okay. Patience. Well done. He'll hear us.

He's there for us. This is what we believe. The Spirit is there for us always

to guide us and to help us and to counsel us and to lead us in paths of righteousness. Always.

We just need to ask. Back to the list in Galatians, the passage in Galatians

5, before we get to these negatives and the positives that God wants for us,

Paul says this, he's saying, and walk by the Spirit, and you will certainly

not carry out the desire of the flesh.

You know, if someone cuts me up, I can tell you what the desire of my flesh

is, is to let them know exactly what I'm thinking right then and there.

And I'm hanged, you know, in the moment where suddenly, oh,

yeah, the desire within me is not always instantly towards a moment of love

and love for my fellow man and words of peace and encouragement.

It's not always my first instincts.

But if you walk by the Spirit, you will certainly not carry out the desires for the flesh.

Sometimes my desires are disordered. Sometimes the things that I've loved are

not what God wants for me.

But if I walk by the Spirit, I don't have to count any of them out.

That's the promise of Scripture.

There's also the grace and the assurance that if we make a mistake, there is forgiveness.

That doesn't break our relationship with God. It doesn't bring everything down.

We don't go from Christian to non-Christian, to Christian, to non-Christian,

to Christian, to non-Christian, every 24 times a day.

We're safe and secure in our relationship with God because of his grace,

he hones us and nothing can separate us from his love. We've got that assurance.

And there's grace if we confess our sins, he's faithful and just,

he'll purify us from all unrighteousness and forgive us of our sins. Amen, hallelujah.

Rest on that. But I want to walk in, not with this get out of jail free card,

I want to walk in step of the spirit. I want to walk in the goodness of life.

This is where I want to spend my time. This is where I want to present myself.

I'm going to situate myself more and more in these good things.

And the more and more I do that, the further away I am from all these other things.

And the more I'm desiring what God wants for me, and the more I'm desiring that,

the less I'm desiring these things.

It's not saying I'll never be vulnerable to them, never be tempted by them.

That's not what it's saying.

It's saying more and more I'm looking this way. And I'm falling habits in my

life, thoughts in my brain in which make it easier and easier to walk this way.

The more you read scripture, the easier it is to read scripture.

The more you pray, the easier it gets to pray.

The more you form these God-beer habits, the easier it is for you to keep them.

The hard thing is often in the building of them.

But we want to walk in step with the Spirit. So first, you need to be free, and God has done that.

He's taken on it, his responsibility to free you, and he has accomplished that

through Jesus Christ on the cross.

To anyone who receives it by faith, you are free.

Then we need to cultivate the habit of fleeing. To flee from my old life and

the things that brought me dead, to flee and present myself to God.

And then as we do that, we flee from the one and run to the young.

We begin to be formed by the Spirit, walking in step with him.

Life with God is not supposed to be simply fighting.

It's never-ending battle against sin and temptation, but a constant discovery,

a delighting and a desiring of the good things that God has for us.

It's not supposed to be this hard, crucial, grinding down, oh, I'm a sinner.

Oh, it's just a temptation battle. No, God's got good things for you.

Walk in step with us for it. Isn't this good? Yes, it is.

Enjoy the grace, the life that is abundant. To me, Christian,

it's like, do you have life in all abundance? Yeah, not really.

It's a bit of a struggle and a bit of a grind.

Well, sometimes it's like, sometimes we do struggle and life is hard.

But it's not about life being easy, but sometimes within me,

actually, I'm really enjoying God.

He's really good. His favor on me is pleasurable.

I'm so glad to be sitting under the shade and the shelter of His wings.

He's my strong tower and my refuge.

He's my joy and my delight. He's producing streams of nervous water.

All the promises of Scripture, they're not just for me.

They're realities that we're supposed to and allowed to and encouraged to enjoy

and to experience. This is what God has for you.

So we're called to life and life abundance. And for the practical things,

it often rests on self-control.

The difference between walking in a life where you feel like you're moving in

the right direction and constantly flowing backwards into the wrong things and

the right things, the wrong things, the right things, is in the middle is self-control.

Something else may have mastery over you, and you need God to say, hey, free me from this.

People can be subject to addiction, subject to habits which control us, and we don't want it.

So we need to God to free us, we need to flee, and we need to be fooled.

So this week, before you open your phone in the morning, praying,

Spirit, help me to walk with you today.

When you feel temptation rising, practice fleeing by physically removing yourself

from that environment. Get up, get out.

Turn, take that moment and pray. God, help me. I need help right now.

Right now. Help me get out of here.

Show me the escape route that you promised.

Practice presenting yourself daily to God, saying, okay, God,

here I am. I'm this afternoon.

I've just had lunch. God, I'm yours now. Help me

to work with you what is it who is it that you're gonna bring

my way what is it you want me to do well hey i'm running out

i'm running a bit low now on on everything

the day is taking it out of me god will you help me as i step back into my home

environment so that my home people they don't get the short shift of everything

else they get the loose ends of all that i've got left which is nothing as i

walk back through the door hi honey nice to see you no it isn't you know it's.

Really not. Because you've just given me nothing. No, we'd say,

yeah, dear God, as I'm about to walk into my home, help me to be a blessing

and to love the people inside.

As I'm walking into the office, well, help me to be a blessing and to love the people inside.

You know, this is what we pray. This is how we can pray. And God will help us.

Present yourself to God. So know the gospel. It has set you free.

Live by the Spirit. Present yourself to God. say helping

to walk with you and walk in step throughout the day asking

him for things that you need so that you can walk in step

with the spirit as we practice those things

your self control your ability to control yourself in moments of tension and

of crisis which is what which is what presents us all the time right parents

you'll know it your kids will present you with a moment of crisis and how you

respond to it can be loving or unloving.

In work, someone will do something and it presents you this little moment,

it's not like a life-changing crisis, but it's a moment, it's a crisis moment.

How are you going to respond to this moment? In what way?

Will your staff, will your team members think, he responded kindly to me missing my deadline?

Gently, he could have been harsh and wasn't. It's fair, you know,

how you handle these moments, how you handle your team,

how you handle the pressures of deadlines and team members and people having

different opinions and stupid ideas and ideas you think are stupid.

And the boss choosing the stupid one, like what's he thinking or she thinking.

This moment where you can send that email to the rest of the team. What are they thinking?

No, you can hold it.

All these moments of moments of crisis, to be in control of yourself is a gift that God gives you.

It's a gift that God gives you. It's a gift that God helps you with in order

to live lives that produce the other kinds of fruit, which will be joy.

Self-control is a foundation gift and a foundation habit and a foundation virtue

in which the other gifts flourish, the soil in which the others have this freedom to know.

And so know the gospel, live by the Spirit, and walk in step with Him. Let's pray.

Lord, we confess. I confess. There are moments where I live self-reliance.

I think I take self-control and think that I have to do it by myself without you.

And for those moments and for that way of thinking and that way of living,

I ask you to forgive them.

And I ask you to teach me a better way of living,

a more fruitful way of life, to rely not on my own strength,

but on the ever-present help of the Holy Spirit, which you have given to us

freely and abundantly to help us each and every day,

in each and every moment, wherever we are, whatever we do.

You're not absent, but you're present to help us.

Thank you that there is always a way out from these moments of temptation that

I need not, do not have to give myself over to sin. Thank you.

And thank you so much for your forgiveness and your freedom that you give us,

that you have set us free, that we're not enslaved to sin any longer,

and that the sins that we've committed have been forgiven through Jesus Christ.

Thank you so much for your freedom, for the ability and the calling to flee

from these things, which are So do us so little good and help us,

form with us a righteous character, a life full of the goodness of the Spirit

within us flowing from us.

And help us not to rely on our own things.

However much we need to be taught in systems and habits of control and of discipline

and of mastering, help us to walk in reliance and in step with you, we pray.

So that you would be glorified in our lives and the fruit of your spirit would

be evident so that we would bring blessing to those around us because from out

of our hearts flow these fruits that are produced by your Holy Spirit in us.

This love, this joy, this peace, this patience, this amplified kindness and

goodness, this gentleness and this faithfulness as well as self-entraught.

We pray in Jesus' name we ask all these things. Thanks. Amen.