self control

2 Peter 1.13-16 - a ready mind. What is your mind filled with each day? Is it a diet of soap-operas, unrealistic fantasies, glossy magazines with airbrushed models and unachievable expectations? Is the Truth of God's Word applied to your mind? Do you bring every thought captive before Christ? Do you actually have a Christ centred mind. You lacking self-control? Where is your mind this morning? Colossians 3.2 tells us it should be focused on the things above - but how often do we actually think of eternity? Of Christ during a day?
1 Peter 5.8 be aware of what is around you. we often lack self-control because we are blind to what is going on around us and within us. We are often spiritually blind to the spirit realm around us. We seriously need to open our eyes - not to see demons under everything and every common cold as a spiritual attack but we are so reluctant to see spiritual things at work in and around us.
Daily Reading of God's Word - there is no substitute for the Word of God in our lives. As humbly as I can say to you this morning - you will not hear God speak and you will have no self-control in your life if you do not read the Bible.
Regular prayer - again there is no substitute for this basic discipline in your spiritual life. There will be no self-control if you are not praying regularly.
Stop sinning. I want to be honest with you and this applies to me as well,I am tired of hearing excuses for sin. I am tired of hearing 'therapeutic' reasons being given for people's sinful behaviour. I am sorry, I am not dismissing therapeutic work but it is time for a reality check - sin is sin. You can dress it up how you like but it is sin and it is an abomination before God. You lack self-control - stop sinning. Be disciplined.
Keep good company. That sounds like old-fashioned advice doesn't it - but let me read to you some verses from Psalm 1. You know if you took each of those verses this week and applied them to your life you would see a remarkable development in your self-control. Bad company corrupts good character. Please do not come to me and tell me that it is a means of evangelism - the truth is you are more likely to fall down than for your friends to come to Christ. I want to say something to some of you which you will not want to hear. God is not fooled by your life. It is a sinful lack of self-control to run with the fox and hunt with the hounds. You cannot be a Christian on a Sunday and live as you please with your friends. Your company reveals more about you than you realise. Keep good company. Ecclesiastes 4.10 - cultivate spiritual friendships. I Corinthians 15.33 curtail the bad influences on your life.
Admit you have a problem with self-control and yield to the Lordship of Christ in your life - Galatians 5.16. Job 31.1 practice good habits and welcome gracious corrections - Samson should have listened to the correction and he would not have fallen into sin and captivity.
Babies have no self-control - they need someone else to feed them, clothe them, bathe them but eventually they grow and mature and do all these things for themselves. Self-control is a sign of growing up. So this morning - it is time that as Christian believers and as a Christian church we held one another accountable to be self-controlled. To lovingly no longer accept the respectable sin of not controlling ourselves.
You know the area in your life that you need self-control. You need to pray about it and then you need to get on board and be disciplined about it.