Self Control Series

FRUIT OF THE SPIRIT - SELF CONTOL

Gal. 5: 16-26

Today were looking at the fruit of the spirit—Self control

Now who here today would not like- a little more Self control,

or Self discipline in your life?

How about you parents of small children

How about you business managers with a lot of employees?

Or you Teachers with a classroom full of students?

Or you young people with all that peer pressures.

Friday someone asked me what I was preaching on.

I said “Self-control” He said: “I don’t have any problem with self.

It’s the control part that bothers.”

E.Stanley Jones was in Madras India and watched a man

driving a cow and a calf from door to door

and milking the cow in the presence of the housewives.

Why did he have to trudge in the hot sun day after day

And bother moving the cow and her calf in this way to

Sell and deliver his milk?

Simple reason…he could not be trusted by the housewives..

He had watered down the milk in the past and his dishonesty doomed him

to this drudgery of milking the cow in their presence.

9 out of 10 people owe their success to self disciplines.

Those who have failures in marriages, business, finances,

Usually lack self control.

God is committed by sending the Holy Spirit

To transforming us into totally disciplined persons.

able to discern between good and evil

Paul writes: And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ, (Phil 19).

so to live a life of Self control : We must learn to :

I. PAY BEFORE WE PLAY.

Paul writes I Cor. 9:25-26 Everyone who competes in the game goes into training… 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.

Any athlete knows he had better pay the price

Before he competes in the race.

You can’t expect a muscle to do on the field of competition

what it was unwilling to do in the practice arena.

So we must pay before we play.

You can’t ride the Go Carts at Thunder road

Until you pay for the rides.

This is “not a charge and ride” business.

You “Pay before you play.”

Parents must teach this lesson to their children

If they want them to grow up as self controlled adults.

One of the rules my father had on the farm was

“Get your work done first before you play.”

Every year they would decide which chores each of us kids would do.

I never wanted to do any chores.

But I never got a vote.

My Dad believed the scriptures: “If you teach a child to be faithful in a little things he can be trust in the larger things. Luke 19: 17 (Paraphrase)

Chores were our responsibility.

My father never milked my cow.

My brothers never milked my cow.

I would have to milk my own cow.

I had often wished my father might have been irresponsible or more undisciplined.

I would have made a great sparodic milker.

Course the cow would have gone dry by then.

I really wanted the chicken chores.

Getting the eggs and feeding the chickens.

They had self feeders.

You only had to fill them up once a week.

You could leave the eggs in the nest overnight.

Sure the Chicken would crack a few eggs and get a little careless about others.

But If your parents didn’t know it.

You could get them the next day.

You might have to wash and scrub them a bit more.

One day I remember taking care of the chickens for my sister.

And placing the eggs in that wire basket we had.

I was learning about the laws of gravity and centrifugal force in school at that time.

And that gravity on the earth is related to that spinning motion

That if you spin something

The centrifugal force will hold it into place.

I had already discovered that you could do that with a pail of milk.

I don’t know why I was thinking about that in the chicken house.

But I decided to demonstrate this theory of centrifugal force with an egg basket.

So I swung the egg bucket in a great circle of my arm.

I discovered at that time another law at work.

Some guy by the name of Murphy.

He must have been a looser.

To have a law named after him that if it can go wrong it will.