Have you ever wondered why it is hard to exercise self-control? An incident happened to me yesterday that illustrated the 1 thing required for self-control vividly.
I was driving home from a visit to my mother. As I drove along the main highway, my cell phone buzzed. It was a
text from my husband Mike. Mike had read on our neighborhood website that a traffic light was out at a busy intersection that I had to go through on the way home.
He was warning me to avoid the area.
I was approaching the last road I could take to avoid it. I had a
choice:
1. Do I heed Mike’s warning and use my knowledge about the back roads to take a better route to get home?
– Or –
2. Do I continue along the same road and take my chances that the
traffic wouldn’t be that bad?
I picked choice #1. I turned off that "last chance" road and navigated the back roads until I got home.
On the way to Bible study later that evening, we decided to pass through that intersection since traffic was usually heavier on the opposite side at that time of day.
The traffic light was still out. We saw the people stuck in their cars on the westbound side, which was the way I had been traveling earlier.
I’ve never seen the traffic that bad.
I thank God and Mike for helping me to avoid the jam – and the frustration that would have come with it!
This situation reminded me of how people often stumble with self-control and a scripture that tells you what must come first:
The scripture is
2 Peter 1:5-9:
But also for this very reason, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, to virtue knowledge, to knowledge self-control, to self-control perseverance, to perseverance godliness, to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness love. For if these things are yours and abound, you will be neither barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus
Christ. For he who lacks these things is shortsighted, even to blindness, and has forgotten that he was cleansed from his old sins.”
Do you see the word that precedes self-control?
That is right. The word is knowledge. With more knowledge comes more options. So to use self-control,
it requires exercising the knowledge you have.
If you only knew one thing, then you’d just go in the direction you know. You don’t have any other choice because you are ignorant of other options.
But increased knowledge gives you access to them.
Unfortunately, many people decide that it is too hard to choose a better route. Why? Because at first, it doesn’t feel as comfortable as the old one.
That is normal. Eventually your brain will learn to follow the new route just as well as the old one. What is required is faith that it will happen, along with persistence and
time.
Great rewards await you when you take that better path.
This is essential information if you need more motivation in exercising your self-control.
Be blessed in health, healing, and wholeness,
Kimberly Taylor
Creator of the Take Back Your Temple program