The In Touch Daily Devotional. Now available in easy to read large print. Order yours today. announcer: “In Touch,” the teaching ministry of Dr. Charles Stanley. Next on “In Touch,” “The Battle for Self-Control.” Dr. Stanley: Is there any area of your life that you would consider as being out of control? What about your finances? They’re out of control? What about your moral life? Would you say that’s out of control? What about your relationship with other people? Is it out of control? What about your attitudes towards some people,
like jealousy? When you think about your life, is there any area of your life that you say, “Well, I think that’s out of control?” For example, you drink and maybe you take drugs or maybe you gamble a little bit, you say. And what about gossiping? What about just having a critical spirit? What about being lazy? None of those fit who we are.
That’s why Paul said to the Galatians, “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.” So when you think about your life, would you say that your life is under control or would you say that, “There are some areas of my life that certainly are not in control?” Well, it’s a battle; and that’s the title of this message, “The Battle for Self-Control.
” We all want to be in control of our lives, and now–what I mean by that is this. We wanna have the relationship with our Lord by which we are submitted to Him to the point that we’re not always battling. Because watch this. When things are not right between you and God, it’s like a tug of war. God wants you to do the right thing.
You’d like to, but you don’t and so there’s tension and stress and uneasiness and oftentimes unhappiness, lack of peace, lack of joy, lack of all the things that Paul just mentioned. You see, you cannot be living a life of disobedience to God and have love, joy, peace, goodness, and all the rest. You can’t.
You say, “Well, I’m sort of happy the way I am.” Sort of. But you cannot have real happiness, real joy, real peace, real love when you and the Lord Jesus Christ are not in agreement about your life. So I want us to think about this whole issue of the battle for self-control in our lives because all of us either have had a battle or are in a battle right at the present time.
So think about this. Would you say that your life is under control, that you have a–sort of a healthy attitude about all of these things? The desire for acceptance by others, how strong is that desire that you have that you wanna be accepted by everybody else? The desire to be loved by others. Do you want people to love you; that is, have a close relationship? What about desires for all types of pleasure? Does that characterize you? It–just whatever is fun, whatever makes you feel good for the moment, that’s what you’re looking for.
