Wednesday, May 29, 2019

Fruit of the Spirit - Part 8 SELF-CONTROL

Thursday, May 30, 2019
But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives:  love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.  There is no law against these things!  Galatians 5:22-23
I have learned to pay attention to Grandma.  Now, that certainly applies to the Grandma I live with, but it also reveres the tons of wisdom that flow from Grandma’s hearts everywhere.  My Mother’s Mom, Grandma Carrie, had a favorite expression that Solomon would’ve loved:  Enough is too much!
Over the years I have learned to decode this piece of wisdom that corresponds so well to the Godly advice of Scripture.  Now, it seems a contradiction that having enough isn’t right, but Grandma said it was too much.  The arguable point here is that our natural appetites for anything we like will always take us over the top if we get what we want. 
Consider Solomon’s advice on the matter:

Do you like honey?  Don’t eat too much, or it will make you sick!  

Don’t visit your neighbors too often, or you will wear out your welcome.

Proverbs 25:16-17

Does that sound like Grandma to you?  Who can argue against those warnings?  My Dad would shout a loud “amen” here, especially to that honey thing.  During the Great Depression my Dad was a teenager.  His parent’s home was an apartment in New York, on the second floor, right over a neighborhood delicatessen.  The owner took a liking to my Dad, and every day handed him several samples of cheeses when he was coming or going. 
It was great, free cheese!  But after six months of the fabulous cheese giveaways enough became too much!  To the day he died my dad couldn’t be comfortable in the same room with cheese!
This brings us to the spiritual warning of too much cheese or anything else for which we would sacrifice moderation:

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

Proverbs 25:28

The obvious reference here is a city or nation that lets its guard down becoming easy prey for the enemy.  If you’re going to remain free, the cost is to remain vigilant.  That means more than being tough to keep the bad guys out of your business, it also means taking care to guard your appetite for too much of any good thing, because it will make you easy prey for the chief enemy:

Stay alert!  Watch out for your great enemy, the devil.  He prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour.  1 Peter 5:8

This advice from Grandma Carrie (by way of Solomon) about enough being too much is proved out in Scripture, even in Satan’s life.  Ultimately, his over-the-top appetite for “devouring” the spiritual life of God’s children will be his enough undoing.  That war against God that he loves so much will be his too much!
For You Today
Like a city without walls is hard to defend, so is your spirit without self-control.  So, pay careful attention to developing moderation and self-denial; you either rule your spirit or lose it!
You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day.

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[1] Title Image: Pixabay.com  
             Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture quotations are from The New Living Translation©

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