Spirit-Control

Yesterday I preached sermon 10 of 11 in our Fruit of the Spirit series. We talked about Self-Control. As I've preached these messages I've begun the sermon writing process with the blogs I wrote last year, and the notes I have from the teen lessons from last spring/summer, and my original notes from a year and a half ago.

As I've been doing this series I came to a deeper understanding about the Fruit of the Spirit, but my thinking wasn't really that radically transformed until this past week. I started on self-control thinking I knew what it was about, then God showed up.

I said in the sermon,"This seems to be the one people struggle with the most. This seems to be the one that people have the most trouble with." When I first studied this topic with a group, the adults of the church wanted to know about self-control. From my initial study I found the word, egkrateia, to be simple and straightforward. But then I read something that I had read before, it just hadn't started to sink in yet.

"the various powers bestowed by God upon man are capable of abuse; the right use demands the controlling power of the Spirit of God;"

Galatians 5.22-23, "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law."

I think the reason people struggle with this one so much is because we put too much emphasis on the "Self" listed here, and not enough on the "of the Spirit" at the beginning. This is the Fruit of the Spirit. It's fruit so it takes time to grow, but the Spirit is the one producing it. These nine characteristics are all Fruit of the Spirit, so we can substitute any one of them for the word fruit at the beginning. It would be, "Love of the Spirit" "Joy of the Spirit" so therefore it would be "Self-Control of the Spirit".

These characteristics are dependant upon God. So really, it isn't self-control, but Spirit control of the self. The Spirit empowers us to be self-controlled, and to use the gifts God has given us properly, it is dependant upon Him. Spirit-Control.

Peace be with you