Self – discipline… Time to grab the remote or go make breakfast and skip this one.

Trust me I would rather talk to you about love or peace. The reason is, I am confronted with a lack of self-discipline not an abundance of it. Why is this area seemingly the most difficult?

Grace comes to bear more in this area than any other for me.

Truth be told, self-discipline isn’t the most difficult; the first one, love is. Self-discipline feels like it is the most difficult because it wars on our routines. Love would totally be the most difficult if we saw it more as a verb than a noun as I believe was the intent from the beginning.

Love clearly is a person…God is love. And yet we are told to love one another. God is love, love is a noun, and the name of love is God. We are also told to love.

1 John 4:7-8 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God.  Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.

More about love at another time. Let’s get back to self-discipline. I was saying to you that the Holy Spirit’s manifestation of self-discipline in you is difficult because it pushes against the normal way we do things. He isn’t necessarily going after sinful places that need to be changed.

He is going further than that. He is reaching into your whole life when He works self-discipline in you. The indwelled one has to make a decision whether you give the Holy Spirit permission to do that or not.

Most indwelled ones are ok with the Holy Spirit rooting out the bad. None of us likes to carry on in outright sin. We hate it! We ask the Holy Spirit to do His work at stopping the sin.

He does, but as you have heard before. He will break out of the box you put Him in. You try to encapsulate Him in the areas that need work and keep Him out of the areas that you think are fine.

When we begin to feel Him pressing into our otherwise “ok” areas we begin to say things like, “Well, what’s wrong with that?” Or, we say, “There is nothing wrong with me doing this or that.” And we make His movement about right and wrong, thereby, shutting the door for His desire to ultimately control your whole life.

Maybe somebody should say this… What if the sins that we often ask the Holy Spirit to help us with, come from those places that we think are alright? What if, the Holy Spirit is going after the true seed beds for besetting sins? WELCOME TO SELF-CONTROL 101. Ugh!

The outlying regions of our life that seem good and peaceful to us are the target of the Holy Spirit. Those places to us do not seem broken or evil, but to the Holy Spirit, maybe He sees something we don’t. Well, let me rephrase that, He always sees things that we don’t.

The work of self-discipline is a staging area for the next move of the Holy Spirit in your life. If you feel the push in you, that means that the Holy Spirit has His eye on territory, and He is making a move to take that land in you.

You feel restriction, and He feels expansion. You might feel a sense of loss and He feels great gain. You might feel that you are losing parts of yourself, and He knows that He is bringing you to you in a greater way.

Do you know what the Holy Spirit is really doing as He generates self-discipline in you? He is creating roads. Avenues and highways are being built so that the presence of God comes into you more freely and flows out of you as well. When a new road is put in the ground is dug up, leveled and concrete is poured on a firm foundation. Then the road is opened, and more travel is capable.    

2 Corinthian 9:8 And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work.

God knows what He is doing. He knows what He is up against. And I am not even talking about the devil, or the devil in you. I am not speaking about sin or wickedness. I am referring to our ongoing resistance to any kind of change that pinches our will.

God smiles at you, and He loves you. He is going to continue to work on you – self-discipline is God’s plan to bring change to you as quickly as possible.

What happens when we don’t let God build roads? Maybe we should talk about that next.  

God of heaven and earth, we love You. Thank You for caring for our souls. And thank You for sending the Holy Spirit to shape our inner being. We are precious in Your sight, and we feel Your great love. We see how much you love us by the high price paid to acquire us though Jesus. We praise You and thank You today for all that You do Father.

Blessings

Pastor D.