“Like a city whose walls are broken through is a person who lacks self-control.” — Proverbs 25:28
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Once, when I was watching some women’s gymnastics, the commentators spoke of a certain competitor on the floor exercise and how strong she is. One of the challenges in this particular discipline is to stay in bounds. Any step outside of the lines will result in a deduction of points. They talked of how this athlete has a tendency to lose control of her body because she develops so much momentum that she can’t stop herself. “Sometimes she’s so powerful, she just catapults herself out of bounds.”
I couldn’t help but see the analogy here to our personal life and, especially, our walk of faith with God. Perhaps less so for those of a more sensitive and quiet nature, but those of us who have been given great strength and strong personalities have a challenge presented to us to harness those in a positive way, or we will wield that power and strength negatively and find ourselves stepping outside the boundaries God has set for us.
When God places us in positions of influence — which, let’s be honest, are pretty much anywhere and everywhere our feet find themselves — we are charged with the responsibility to use that to a healing and positive advantage for ourselves, our community and the world. And it takes self-control to exercise that effectively in a way that brings light and goodness and hope, instead of adding to the pain of our already broken society and selves.
I see two ways in which we can accomplish this:
1) We must learn and grow in the Spirit. After all, self-control is listed as one of the fruits of the Spirit in Galatians 5:22-23 as evidence that the Lord is ruling in someone’s life and they are becoming more like Him. All the qualities named in that passage reveal what God’s nature is like: loving, joyful, peaceful, patient, kind, good, faithful, gentle, self-controlled. Even He who reigns over the entire universe knows how to utilize His power in a controlled way that doesn’t harm unnecessarily. The more we study the heart of God and see what it means to hold both strength and gentleness in equal balance, the easier it will be to do that ourselves. We imitate what we desire to become.
2) We can look to the Bible for practical examples of what this self-control looks like. Proverbs 16:32 says, “Better a patient person than a warrior, one with self-control than one who takes a city.” Later in Proverbs it says that someone who doesn’t have self-control is like a city that has no defense and is open to attack (Proverbs 25:28, above). Just as you’d guard a territory or city and set up watch to make certain it was protected, so you need to guard and watch your spirit to make sure that you maintain that controlled power and use it for the right reasons.
If a self-controlled person is more praise-worthy than someone who conquers a city, then perhaps we need to place more emphasis on this internal quality in our everyday lives because it matters so much to God.
— Katherine Singer
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