I live with my beautiful bride, Judy, and a cranky old man named My Self.
Sometimes, when I rise early for my 45-minute walk, Self tells me, “You can’t go out and walk today. Your knee hurts.”
“Well, we’re going out anyway,” I reply.
“I’m just trying to say your right knee is going to be weak,” Self says. “You might fall.” Self knows how I hate falling down.
“Be that as it may,” says I, “we’re going.
Self doesn’t like to exercise, though he always feels better after it. Self also likes to eat foods that are bad for us, and he would like to engage in conduct that is just plain wrong. So, we have a lot of arguments.
Listing the fruit of the Spirit, the apostle Paul included self-control in Galatians 5:23. In the next verse he wrote, “Now those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.” This relates to an earlier statement in the same book when Paul wrote, “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me” (Galatians 2:20 NASB).
The problem most people have, including me, is that we are supposed to crucify Self and its desires and exercise self-control. Instead, we let Self talk us into things we shouldn’t do.
So, when Self and I have discussions about what I should, or shouldn’t do, he usually loses. I’m under the control of a new owner — Jesus Christ — and he rules in my life.
Does he rule in yours?
John Henson
Dibrell church of Christ
McMinnville, TN