week 5: self-control
Wednesday
Self-Control is About Your Heart
”And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.”
Ezekiel 36:26-27
I am sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but when it comes to self-control, there are no magical steps that can take away your lack of self-control. Cutting corners won’t work, and programs will always end. This is because ultimately it is not that you just have a self-control problem, but a heart problem. And if it is a heart problem you have, putting a bandaid on it will not get you very far.
What you need is a heart transplant.
Hearing that you need a heart transplant sounds really bad, and it is, but it also isn’t. Let me explain. It is far better to get the prognosis that you have a heart problem, than a misdiagnosis. With a diagnosis, doctors can move forward with treating the root problem, but a misdiagnosis can make matters even worse. If you are in need of a heart transplant and instead they minimize your problems and say you just need to exercise more to help your high blood pressure, little do they know that the more you exercise the closer you are to killing yourself. This all sounds so dramatic, but it is true not just with a physical diagnosis, but spiritually. We don’t need to simply exercise more, eat healthier, and be the perfect woman checking off her daily to-do list. We think all of those things will fix our problems and make us feel fulfilled, but we have misdiagnosed ourselves and are making things worse by minimizing our sin. What God shares with us in His word is that we need our hearts to be transformed, and we need Him as our surgeon to preform the heart transplant. This thought might be terrifying if it were for a physical heart transplant, but physical or spiritual, when you have the God of the universe as your surgeon you are in good hands!
So what does a heart transplant look like, and what is the prognosis for us if we do have one? Paul gives us this: “Whereunto I also labour, striving according to his working, which worketh in me mightily” Colossians 1:29. This heart transplant allows us to have to power of the Holy Spirit instructing us in the superior beauty of grace, and enabling us to see and savor (and trust) all that God is for us in Jesus. When we really see and believe that God is for us, by grace through Jesus Christ, the power of wrong desires is broken down. Therefore, the fight for self-control is a fight of faith. “Fight the good fight of faith, lay hold on eternal life, whereunto thou art also called, and hast professed a good profession before many witnesses” 1 Timothy 6:12.
Questions to Ponder:
What have you been doing to put a bandaid on your deeper heart issues?
Have you allowed God to give you a heart transplant? Do you trust you are in good hands with him and that he can fix you?
Today’s Reading: