MAKING A DECISION TO DO THE RIGHT THING

In my last blog post (I’M STRONGER. I’M SMARTER. I’M MORE SPIRITUAL.~12.5)  I shared the first step to living self-controlled, which is acknowledging how weak we are in ourselves and how much we need the Holy Spirit’s strength. As we all know, that’s one of those things which is so much easier to write or to tell someone else to do, than to actually apply it to our lives. What seems like happens in many of our lives is we move between total DEPENDENCE upon God (“I desperately need you, Father.”) and a pride-filled INDEPENDENCE (“I’ve got this! I can do this on my own.”). I admire people who are solidly consistent in their daily walk with Christ.

The next step in living self-controlled is making a DECISION to do the right thing. Poet Gil Fausto said: “All good things that happen to us is the result of our own obedience to God.” I think making a strong decision to live self-controlled is extremely important. By a “strong decision,” I’m drawing a distinction between a decision where we figure we’d better make a change in our life but we’re not very committed to the idea, as contrasted with a decision where we know we must get control of our life. A weak decision happens when we’re being pressured by others, so we’re making a change more for their sake or to keep them off our back. This is like the husband who promises his wife he’s going to stop drinking, but he doesn’t really want to stop. He’s doing it so she’ll stop bugging him about it.

There’s no substitute for the right decision made for the right reasons. If you’re a follower of Jesus Christ, the right reason for all of our decisions is to please the Father and to bring honor to Jesus Christ. This is contrary to the psycho mumbo jumbo we hear these days, which encourages people to “do what’s right (or feels right) to you.” 

If there’s an area of your life where you struggle to maintain self-control, celebrate your successes. Celebrate every day of freedom from a life-controlling addiction. Celebrate every pound lost, if your struggle is with weight (Just don’t celebrate by eating a Twinkie!). Celebrate every debt paid off, if you’ve been dominated by overspending. Celebrate every week you’ve planned and executed, if you’ve struggled with time management. Celebrate progress!

In your quest to gain self-control there will be setbacks. It’s most likely the behaviors which contribute to your struggle to maintain self-control are deeply ingrained in your mind [psyche]. It’s going to take a process, lots of persistence and perseverance, and tremendous amount of patience to retrain your brain. When you experience a setback don’t get stuck dwelling on it. If it’s an issue where you believe you’ve sinned against the Lord, offer confession and repentance. Thankfully, God’s grace covers all of our failures. If you “fall”, or more accurately, when you fail, get back up and begin a new path of obedience.

 "Every great person has first learned how to obey, whom to obey, and when to obey."
 *William A. Ward

“Only he who believes is obedient and only he who is obedient believes.”   

*Dietrich Bonhoeffer