Isaiah 50:4-6
The Master, God , has given me a well-taught tongue, So I know how to encourage tired people. He wakes me up in the morning, Wakes me up, opens my ears to listen as one ready to take orders. The Master, God , opened my ears, and I didn’t go back to sleep, didn’t pull the covers back over my head. I followed orders, stood there and took it while they beat me, held steady while they pulled out my beard, Didn’t dodge their insults, faced them as they spit in my face.
Hey GANG! I'm praying all is well in the land of the living. Today's the last day of June, guys. This is it for the year of 2019. Tomorrow and henceforth will be the rev up for 2020. We'll be heading into new land for real, for real.
I'm reminded of a quote I recently saw by a journalist named J.E. Lawrence (1949) who said,
"New land is harsh, and vigorous, and sturdy. It scorns evidence of weakness. There is nothing of sham or hypocrisy in it. It is what it is, without an apology."
I'm picking up that these last five months of the year will come with no sugar coatings or extra garnishments. It's going to be what YOU make it. Whatever you have in your arsenal or artillery, you've better use it!
Or see no fruit and catch mad fades!
This weekend I was convinced into checking out the children's museum here in Chicago with a young lady I'd met earlier in the day at my church's women's outing. Low-key, I was in my element. That place of course is weetot central. Babies were everywhere living their best lives, playing with toys and other nick nacks. Just simply relishing in their youthful innocence with no cares in the world.
I tell you, when life is trying to strangle the essence of your child-likeness out of you, go somewhere where there are kids. You'll most definitely get the boost you need.
Anyway, we went to a room where there was a table filled with clay and sat down to lollygag. While we chatted, we helped ourselves to play with the clay. My new sister, made the cutest miniature skillet with a handle.
Guess what I made?
A lifeless log.
Ha! Creative right?
With all that unused clay on the table, I literally could have made something else. Something just as cute. Something better than I'd had!
My point?
These next few months are going to require some intentionality, some fervor, some risk taking, some audacity, some consistency, some boldness, some FAITH!
Don't let life be something that just happens to you.
Let it be something that you live and experience!
Taste and see that the Lord is good in ALL of your days.
Go after whatever it is that you set your mind on and kill it!
You can do it!
Use what you have and shoot your best shot!
Alright! Let's get into some things!
Wew!
This fruit of the spirit journey has been reeeeeal! Nevertheless, I'm actually sad that this entry will be the last one dedicated to the fruit.
Last week, we talked about the fruit of gentleness. Wasn't it fun learning how to be a transformer?
I've been catching a little hell trying to show y'all my cheat codes. But that's ok though. I'm learning that this is the price I have to pay for being an oracle. Sooooo, yeah. The show must go on whether hell likes it's or not.
You feel me?
What I want you all to keep tucked in your soul though, is this; to be transformed you must first transform your mind! You've got to check your think tank. Romans 12:2 put it this way, "Do not be conformed by the way of the world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is--his good, pleasing and perfect will." Many can't practice gentleness on their fellow man because they have the same mind they had post salvation.
*BOOM!*
Where are we going this week? We're wrapping it up with the 9th fruit and that's SELF CONTROL, folks.
I hate to admit it, but it's not looking too good in this department. Check the average believer's progress report and all you'll see are red flags doing the WOAH!
I just laughed out loud, but this isn't humorous. It's sad.
Self control is the art of personal restraint and discipline. It's responding in the exact opposite than you normally would to an agitation.
Especially if the way you would normally respond, can be compared to a rabid Tasmanian devil or ratchet reality TV star!
I've surmised that the first thing many believers automatically associate self control with is the abstaining from sex.
NO!
That's just one minute angle.
I want to look at a more broader angle here;
The practice of maintaining the headquarters of your emotions during an unfavorable situation.
For example, I have never seen so many people make excuses for using Facebook live as an outlet to express an offense. I touched on this at the beginning of the year, y'all gone stop using
Matthew 18:15-17 as the golden excuse to do such!
Let me holler at you for a second, FACEBOOK IS NOT THE CHURCH!
Your following is not the church at large.
Your audience is like a container of Planters mixed nuts. It's some of everything in there. And just like there are peanuts in the can with that little brown film on them, you have some people who are still covered in flesh! I don't care how much they proclaim Jesus is LORD!
These people will cheer lead you to HELL if you let them while you call yourself publicly defending your offense.
Speaking of defending offenses, do we not believe God is the GREAT DEFENDER? Do we not believe that God's vengeance is far greater than our elementary hurt feelings and any self preservation method we choose to use?
I was having lunch with one of my close friends a few weeks ago, and she said something so profound as we were discussing properly handling offenses.
She said, "Some people get so busy being real ABOUT God, they forget to be real WITH God."
Why, whatever did she mean by this?
She meant, that we have a lot of people believing that they are behaving within the scriptural confines of the bible and will never once take the time to consult with the ONE who inspired them.
!QUICK!
Think of your favorite childhood toy and let's gather around!
We're about to PLAY!
Yit-ta-deeeeee!!!!
Micah 7:18
Who is a God like You, who forgives wickedness And passes over the rebellious acts of the remnant of His possession? He does not retain His anger forever, Because He [constantly] delights in mercy and lovingkindness.
Ok, still on the wavelength of my friend's statement, we have all of these BELIEVERS going live on social media as soon as they're made offended, and nobody is going LIVE in their prayer lives. Nobody is going LIVE in their personal time of worship. Nobody's actually pressing the LIVE button to heaven to reach God and ask Him to cup their hearts before responding to something one of His children did to them.
Here's why this isn't a typical habit nor why I don't believe it's a regular practice.
Because immersing yourself in prayer and worship, and chasing after God with your broken heart, wrecks you! Real talk!
It takes the sting out of the offense and tranquilizes your flesh. It de-funds your motives to retaliate. It places a muzzle on your grievances no matter their validity, disarms you, then makes room for God to handle the situation.
WHEN He decides to handle it.
And the fact that there is a chance that one will have to wait for God to handle it, is another issue.
People are impatient.
They would prefer to take matters into their own hands since going to God on the matter could potentially mean delayed gratification.
Also, too many fail to realize that when you defend yourself, it's like having a public defender appointed to you and in this case, because you refuse to use your flesh as payment to appoint a REAL ONE.
The outlook will not be promising.
Flesh will never rep you well.
I don't care how much scripture you use! Cry and sob all you want. Until there is no more shame in you, no more boiling anger in you, and no more resentment, you will never defend yourself properly. There will be holes in your case and your vindication will have an expiration date. There will still be something in you that wants to get even.
All of your efforts to defend yourself will not be enough whether you have receipts or not.
On top of that, if you decide to monetize your offense by gathering an audience to feed them your grievances, you're going to have to keep feeding the same account to them in order to get them to stay, which means you will never fully be able to get over it.
You may be reading this and think, "Alright! Let somebody do to you what was done to me! And you will see how it feels."
Oh, dear.
I have been abused. I have been mishandled. I have been used. I have been dropped. I have been kicked. I have been spit on. I have been rejected. I have been insulted. I have been lied to, lied on, and lied about. I have been manipulated. I have been ostracized. I have been demonized. I have been ridiculed. I have been robbed. I have been spiritually raped. I have been humiliated.
Every single season of my journey in God, I tend to run into at least ONE person that I'm challenged to activate self control over. I've had to take compliments laced with shade and hate and throw them in a junk pile. I've had to refrain from reacting adversely when I've interpreted the true language of someone's tongue.
I've had to run home and pray when a bad encounter with someone rubbed me the wrong way. I've smiled and laughed with snakes and people that broke my heart when all I really wanted to do was slap slob out of them.
I've been betrayed and bludgeoned. Then thrown into the murky swamps of malice and deceit, and left for dead.
In the end, I have learned to repent for possibly possessing the same kind of characteristics I've witnessed in others who've hurt and offended me. I've learned to ask God, "If there's something in me that reminds You of something that I don't like in them, check it and remove it."
How many of you know that sometimes God will use people to show us a reflection of ourselves?
Know that I am in no way trying to badger you or discount your accounts. I instead would like for you to consider the fact that when you gave your life to Christ, you actually signed over your rights to respond how you normally would to most situations. As believers we don't have that luxury or privilege to partake in the trends of the world.
That includes not exhibiting the fruit of self control and taking our offenses to the public arena.
I know this may seem like a lot of hard work.
Refraining from reacting.
It is.
It's supposed to be hard
BUT less taxing.
This is why the fruit of longsuffering has to be mastered first.
When you can suffer long through a thing, other things don't trigger you like they used to. They may bother. But they won't trigger you. Needless to say, it's going to take a lot of practice, humility, and accountability to graduate to this particular space of unbotheredness.
Let that marinate for a minute.
Y'all want to hear an embarrassing story of mine? I promise you it seems like I have stories for days, but it's because I'm legit like a toddler that's always getting into stuff.
Ok, so since the end of last year on up until the beginning of this year, I have been having issues with my second floor neighbors and their loud music playing.
After making numerous complaints to my landlord, it was evident that I was not going to receive assistance from this avenue. The next available option was to confront my neighbors. However, no matter how much I tried to speak to them in person, they blatantly ignored me. Called the police and that only calmed things down for a week or two.
Then one day as I was riding around talking with one of my homeboys and as we pulled up to my place, he told me that he might know my neighbor. He showed me a female pic on Facebook. All I knew was that my neighbor was a woman with dreadlocks because I would see her in passing but not a full visual.
I saw the pic of a woman with locs and said with surety, "Yup that's her!" I went in the house and searched her name to find out I was friends with this person AND went to highschool with her. I'm like, "What are the odds?"
#mylifeisnotmyown.
I kid you not a few days later in the wee hours of the morning, the loud music begins to play. I was livid! I gave myself two options: Try and confront her OR send her a three piece spicy message via Facebook. I scrapped the first option because I didn't see any profit in doing so because all other previous attempts had failed. The second option seemed most profitable to me.
I'm so honest, I lay in bed that night viciously calling out this woman's name. Then rehearsing thoughts of someone breaking into her home to steal her sound system. Then to looking for the snarkiest words to message her on Facebook. I was doing all of this while the music played. Mind you it was around 2 a.m. on a weekday!
I picked up my phone and begin to search for the woman on Facebook prepared to slice her in half with my words and I heard,
"NO! PUT YOUR PHONE DOWN NOW TANZY!
I angrily slung my phone on the floor and sat in my bed. I retrieved my phone and and attempted to look for the girl on Facebook again to try and send her the message real quick and heard, "STOP AND PUT THE PHONE DOWN!" I reluctantly sat my phone down, slammed my face into my pillows and screamed.
Shortly after the music stopped.
The next morning as I left out of the back of my apartment to take my dog for his walk, we made it to the second floor and he runs right into my neighbor's house because she had her back door open. He ran straight to her and she greeted him and patted him on the head. I'm like, "Noah get your tail out of people's houses!" I was so embarrassed.
But I was even more embarrassed when I finally was able to see the woman's face and noticed that she was NOT the girl I was looking for on Facebook and geeked up to curse out. She was not my homeboy's friend at all.
Here I was lighting up an innocent person in the spirit due to mistaken identity and if I'd not practiced self control earlier that morning I would have been beefing with somebody who I'd no previous problem with. I repented immediately and asked God to show me how to reverse any damages I may have caused behind the scenes.
My sentence was actually walking out my repentance. Every time I saw my neighbor I would be provoked to speak and be cordial. A lot of times my dog would initiate our greetings because after the initial incident, he continued running up in her house whenever he saw an opportunity! It was like he was the mediator. Since then the discourteous noise has subsided considerably! Whenever it does get out of hand, all I have to do is lightly tap on her door to get her attention.
Look at God!
Moral of my embarrassing story, the fruit of self control PROTECTS. It's a fruit that covers. It's a fruit that will allow you to walk away more liberated and less burdened by people. It keeps you from giving away your power. You won't have to worry about scavenging for ways to feed your offenses when you're operating in the fruit of self control. And until you can get delivered from the ravenous hunger to avenge yourself, those offenses and their environments in which they thrive in, will remain active!
Most significantly, the fruit of self control keeps you from generating collateral damage! Many, in their offense have been guilty of shooting at the one thing that hurt them as well as everything else connected to it even if everything else that was connected to it played no parts in what caused their offense. One would have to pay the bill in repentance in order to clean this up. A refusal to do so will be a season of humbling later on down the line.
I personally have an issue with believers walking in these gift offices with bold authority when it comes to expressing their offenses but turn into prideful and ignorant banshees when it's time to practice self control.
It's like the idea of self control is foreign to them.
Self control doesn't have a time stamp. It's something that's supposed to be used CONSTANTLY. Why? Micah 7:18. God doesn't hold onto His anger and He delights in showing mercy and lovingkindness to people who don't even deserve it! People like you and I!
All the more reason to begin to make a habit out of practicing self control on others whom we deem underserving. It's the most liberating thing you can do for yourself.
It's telling yourself sincerely,
"It's above me now."
It's you giving the issue to Management. Giving the issue to God.
You can start to prep yourself to activate this fruit of self control right now by going live in worship! Let's go! Cry out to Him and lift up a release! You need to release! Let's release these offenses. Let's release the anger, bitterness, resentment, and hurt lingering in our souls.
Let's cry out to God in worship!
The Master, God , has given me a well-taught tongue, So I know how to encourage tired people. He wakes me up in the morning, Wakes me up, opens my ears to listen as one ready to take orders. The Master, God , opened my ears, and I didn’t go back to sleep, didn’t pull the covers back over my head. I followed orders, stood there and took it while they beat me, held steady while they pulled out my beard, Didn’t dodge their insults, faced them as they spit in my face.
Hey GANG! I'm praying all is well in the land of the living. Today's the last day of June, guys. This is it for the year of 2019. Tomorrow and henceforth will be the rev up for 2020. We'll be heading into new land for real, for real.
I'm reminded of a quote I recently saw by a journalist named J.E. Lawrence (1949) who said,
"New land is harsh, and vigorous, and sturdy. It scorns evidence of weakness. There is nothing of sham or hypocrisy in it. It is what it is, without an apology."
I'm picking up that these last five months of the year will come with no sugar coatings or extra garnishments. It's going to be what YOU make it. Whatever you have in your arsenal or artillery, you've better use it!
Or see no fruit and catch mad fades!
This weekend I was convinced into checking out the children's museum here in Chicago with a young lady I'd met earlier in the day at my church's women's outing. Low-key, I was in my element. That place of course is weetot central. Babies were everywhere living their best lives, playing with toys and other nick nacks. Just simply relishing in their youthful innocence with no cares in the world.
I tell you, when life is trying to strangle the essence of your child-likeness out of you, go somewhere where there are kids. You'll most definitely get the boost you need.
Anyway, we went to a room where there was a table filled with clay and sat down to lollygag. While we chatted, we helped ourselves to play with the clay. My new sister, made the cutest miniature skillet with a handle.
Guess what I made?
A lifeless log.
Ha! Creative right?
With all that unused clay on the table, I literally could have made something else. Something just as cute. Something better than I'd had!
My point?
These next few months are going to require some intentionality, some fervor, some risk taking, some audacity, some consistency, some boldness, some FAITH!
Don't let life be something that just happens to you.
Let it be something that you live and experience!
Taste and see that the Lord is good in ALL of your days.
Go after whatever it is that you set your mind on and kill it!
You can do it!
Use what you have and shoot your best shot!
Alright! Let's get into some things!
Wew!
This fruit of the spirit journey has been reeeeeal! Nevertheless, I'm actually sad that this entry will be the last one dedicated to the fruit.
Last week, we talked about the fruit of gentleness. Wasn't it fun learning how to be a transformer?
I've been catching a little hell trying to show y'all my cheat codes. But that's ok though. I'm learning that this is the price I have to pay for being an oracle. Sooooo, yeah. The show must go on whether hell likes it's or not.
You feel me?
What I want you all to keep tucked in your soul though, is this; to be transformed you must first transform your mind! You've got to check your think tank. Romans 12:2 put it this way, "Do not be conformed by the way of the world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is--his good, pleasing and perfect will." Many can't practice gentleness on their fellow man because they have the same mind they had post salvation.
*BOOM!*
Where are we going this week? We're wrapping it up with the 9th fruit and that's SELF CONTROL, folks.
I hate to admit it, but it's not looking too good in this department. Check the average believer's progress report and all you'll see are red flags doing the WOAH!
I just laughed out loud, but this isn't humorous. It's sad.
Self control is the art of personal restraint and discipline. It's responding in the exact opposite than you normally would to an agitation.
Especially if the way you would normally respond, can be compared to a rabid Tasmanian devil or ratchet reality TV star!
I've surmised that the first thing many believers automatically associate self control with is the abstaining from sex.
NO!
That's just one minute angle.
I want to look at a more broader angle here;
The practice of maintaining the headquarters of your emotions during an unfavorable situation.
For example, I have never seen so many people make excuses for using Facebook live as an outlet to express an offense. I touched on this at the beginning of the year, y'all gone stop using
Matthew 18:15-17 as the golden excuse to do such!
Let me holler at you for a second, FACEBOOK IS NOT THE CHURCH!
Your following is not the church at large.
Your audience is like a container of Planters mixed nuts. It's some of everything in there. And just like there are peanuts in the can with that little brown film on them, you have some people who are still covered in flesh! I don't care how much they proclaim Jesus is LORD!
These people will cheer lead you to HELL if you let them while you call yourself publicly defending your offense.
Speaking of defending offenses, do we not believe God is the GREAT DEFENDER? Do we not believe that God's vengeance is far greater than our elementary hurt feelings and any self preservation method we choose to use?
I was having lunch with one of my close friends a few weeks ago, and she said something so profound as we were discussing properly handling offenses.
She said, "Some people get so busy being real ABOUT God, they forget to be real WITH God."
Why, whatever did she mean by this?
She meant, that we have a lot of people believing that they are behaving within the scriptural confines of the bible and will never once take the time to consult with the ONE who inspired them.
!QUICK!
Think of your favorite childhood toy and let's gather around!
We're about to PLAY!
Yit-ta-deeeeee!!!!
Micah 7:18
Who is a God like You, who forgives wickedness And passes over the rebellious acts of the remnant of His possession? He does not retain His anger forever, Because He [constantly] delights in mercy and lovingkindness.
Ok, still on the wavelength of my friend's statement, we have all of these BELIEVERS going live on social media as soon as they're made offended, and nobody is going LIVE in their prayer lives. Nobody is going LIVE in their personal time of worship. Nobody's actually pressing the LIVE button to heaven to reach God and ask Him to cup their hearts before responding to something one of His children did to them.
Here's why this isn't a typical habit nor why I don't believe it's a regular practice.
Because immersing yourself in prayer and worship, and chasing after God with your broken heart, wrecks you! Real talk!
It takes the sting out of the offense and tranquilizes your flesh. It de-funds your motives to retaliate. It places a muzzle on your grievances no matter their validity, disarms you, then makes room for God to handle the situation.
WHEN He decides to handle it.
And the fact that there is a chance that one will have to wait for God to handle it, is another issue.
People are impatient.
They would prefer to take matters into their own hands since going to God on the matter could potentially mean delayed gratification.
Also, too many fail to realize that when you defend yourself, it's like having a public defender appointed to you and in this case, because you refuse to use your flesh as payment to appoint a REAL ONE.
The outlook will not be promising.
Flesh will never rep you well.
I don't care how much scripture you use! Cry and sob all you want. Until there is no more shame in you, no more boiling anger in you, and no more resentment, you will never defend yourself properly. There will be holes in your case and your vindication will have an expiration date. There will still be something in you that wants to get even.
All of your efforts to defend yourself will not be enough whether you have receipts or not.
On top of that, if you decide to monetize your offense by gathering an audience to feed them your grievances, you're going to have to keep feeding the same account to them in order to get them to stay, which means you will never fully be able to get over it.
You may be reading this and think, "Alright! Let somebody do to you what was done to me! And you will see how it feels."
Oh, dear.
I have been abused. I have been mishandled. I have been used. I have been dropped. I have been kicked. I have been spit on. I have been rejected. I have been insulted. I have been lied to, lied on, and lied about. I have been manipulated. I have been ostracized. I have been demonized. I have been ridiculed. I have been robbed. I have been spiritually raped. I have been humiliated.
Every single season of my journey in God, I tend to run into at least ONE person that I'm challenged to activate self control over. I've had to take compliments laced with shade and hate and throw them in a junk pile. I've had to refrain from reacting adversely when I've interpreted the true language of someone's tongue.
I've had to run home and pray when a bad encounter with someone rubbed me the wrong way. I've smiled and laughed with snakes and people that broke my heart when all I really wanted to do was slap slob out of them.
I've been betrayed and bludgeoned. Then thrown into the murky swamps of malice and deceit, and left for dead.
In the end, I have learned to repent for possibly possessing the same kind of characteristics I've witnessed in others who've hurt and offended me. I've learned to ask God, "If there's something in me that reminds You of something that I don't like in them, check it and remove it."
How many of you know that sometimes God will use people to show us a reflection of ourselves?
Know that I am in no way trying to badger you or discount your accounts. I instead would like for you to consider the fact that when you gave your life to Christ, you actually signed over your rights to respond how you normally would to most situations. As believers we don't have that luxury or privilege to partake in the trends of the world.
That includes not exhibiting the fruit of self control and taking our offenses to the public arena.
I know this may seem like a lot of hard work.
Refraining from reacting.
It is.
It's supposed to be hard
BUT less taxing.
This is why the fruit of longsuffering has to be mastered first.
When you can suffer long through a thing, other things don't trigger you like they used to. They may bother. But they won't trigger you. Needless to say, it's going to take a lot of practice, humility, and accountability to graduate to this particular space of unbotheredness.
Let that marinate for a minute.
Y'all want to hear an embarrassing story of mine? I promise you it seems like I have stories for days, but it's because I'm legit like a toddler that's always getting into stuff.
Ok, so since the end of last year on up until the beginning of this year, I have been having issues with my second floor neighbors and their loud music playing.
After making numerous complaints to my landlord, it was evident that I was not going to receive assistance from this avenue. The next available option was to confront my neighbors. However, no matter how much I tried to speak to them in person, they blatantly ignored me. Called the police and that only calmed things down for a week or two.
Then one day as I was riding around talking with one of my homeboys and as we pulled up to my place, he told me that he might know my neighbor. He showed me a female pic on Facebook. All I knew was that my neighbor was a woman with dreadlocks because I would see her in passing but not a full visual.
I saw the pic of a woman with locs and said with surety, "Yup that's her!" I went in the house and searched her name to find out I was friends with this person AND went to highschool with her. I'm like, "What are the odds?"
#mylifeisnotmyown.
I kid you not a few days later in the wee hours of the morning, the loud music begins to play. I was livid! I gave myself two options: Try and confront her OR send her a three piece spicy message via Facebook. I scrapped the first option because I didn't see any profit in doing so because all other previous attempts had failed. The second option seemed most profitable to me.
I'm so honest, I lay in bed that night viciously calling out this woman's name. Then rehearsing thoughts of someone breaking into her home to steal her sound system. Then to looking for the snarkiest words to message her on Facebook. I was doing all of this while the music played. Mind you it was around 2 a.m. on a weekday!
I picked up my phone and begin to search for the woman on Facebook prepared to slice her in half with my words and I heard,
"NO! PUT YOUR PHONE DOWN NOW TANZY!
I angrily slung my phone on the floor and sat in my bed. I retrieved my phone and and attempted to look for the girl on Facebook again to try and send her the message real quick and heard, "STOP AND PUT THE PHONE DOWN!" I reluctantly sat my phone down, slammed my face into my pillows and screamed.
Shortly after the music stopped.
The next morning as I left out of the back of my apartment to take my dog for his walk, we made it to the second floor and he runs right into my neighbor's house because she had her back door open. He ran straight to her and she greeted him and patted him on the head. I'm like, "Noah get your tail out of people's houses!" I was so embarrassed.
But I was even more embarrassed when I finally was able to see the woman's face and noticed that she was NOT the girl I was looking for on Facebook and geeked up to curse out. She was not my homeboy's friend at all.
Here I was lighting up an innocent person in the spirit due to mistaken identity and if I'd not practiced self control earlier that morning I would have been beefing with somebody who I'd no previous problem with. I repented immediately and asked God to show me how to reverse any damages I may have caused behind the scenes.
My sentence was actually walking out my repentance. Every time I saw my neighbor I would be provoked to speak and be cordial. A lot of times my dog would initiate our greetings because after the initial incident, he continued running up in her house whenever he saw an opportunity! It was like he was the mediator. Since then the discourteous noise has subsided considerably! Whenever it does get out of hand, all I have to do is lightly tap on her door to get her attention.
Look at God!
Moral of my embarrassing story, the fruit of self control PROTECTS. It's a fruit that covers. It's a fruit that will allow you to walk away more liberated and less burdened by people. It keeps you from giving away your power. You won't have to worry about scavenging for ways to feed your offenses when you're operating in the fruit of self control. And until you can get delivered from the ravenous hunger to avenge yourself, those offenses and their environments in which they thrive in, will remain active!
Most significantly, the fruit of self control keeps you from generating collateral damage! Many, in their offense have been guilty of shooting at the one thing that hurt them as well as everything else connected to it even if everything else that was connected to it played no parts in what caused their offense. One would have to pay the bill in repentance in order to clean this up. A refusal to do so will be a season of humbling later on down the line.
I personally have an issue with believers walking in these gift offices with bold authority when it comes to expressing their offenses but turn into prideful and ignorant banshees when it's time to practice self control.
It's like the idea of self control is foreign to them.
Self control doesn't have a time stamp. It's something that's supposed to be used CONSTANTLY. Why? Micah 7:18. God doesn't hold onto His anger and He delights in showing mercy and lovingkindness to people who don't even deserve it! People like you and I!
All the more reason to begin to make a habit out of practicing self control on others whom we deem underserving. It's the most liberating thing you can do for yourself.
It's telling yourself sincerely,
"It's above me now."
It's you giving the issue to Management. Giving the issue to God.
You can start to prep yourself to activate this fruit of self control right now by going live in worship! Let's go! Cry out to Him and lift up a release! You need to release! Let's release these offenses. Let's release the anger, bitterness, resentment, and hurt lingering in our souls.
Let's cry out to God in worship!
Comments
Post a Comment