Encore - 1005- What You Can Control - 2 Timothy 3:3

Welcome back to the Follower of One podcast. I'm Mike Henry Sr., thank you so much for joining us. Today's devotional, I'm continuing this self-coaching, self-study on the word self-control, and I came to a verse in 2 Timothy 3:3. But realize this then in the last days, difficult times will come for men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good." He goes on. But I want to share today some thoughts that crossed my mind as I was studying the term "self-control." There are a few episodes in the recent days that have been around that topic because I'm studying self-control for me.   I want to do a better job of controlling myself; of being in charge of my attitude and my temper and the way I eat and the way I think. And this word self-control here. I got to looking at the Greek and I was surprised because the Greek word was actually a little difficult to look up. The Greek word is actually, "power." It's a word translated power. And then the Greeks, they add an "a" to the beginning of it- "ah". When they add an "a" to the beginning of a word, it negates it. And so, it's "negative power" or "without power," "without self-control." I can't pronounce the Greek word, but you can look this up. It's interesting because it's often translated as, without self-control clearly.   However, in The Message, they talked about it being impulsively wild. And what's interesting is in the original King James, and this is what really caught my attention, in the original King James it is translated "incontinent." "Without natural affection, a truce breaker, false accusers incontinent for your despisers of those that are good."   That's the King James version. The word "incontinent" means something narrower now. It means unable to control our bowel movements or our digestive processes. It's not just generally unable to control ourselves. Self-control is an inability to behave in public and inability to choose proper manners or words, an inability to eat to moderation, which is my challenge.   I overeat, I eat too many sweets. But in many areas, it can be any kind of a habit we can let get out of control. The question today, the question for us as followers of Jesus, where do we surrender our power over ourselves? I wanted to challenge myself today and challenge you. Let's control ourselves.   Let's exercise control over ourselves let's bring our bodies and our minds and our spirits in line with what God would have us do. Our job is to glorify him. Our body exists and our resources exist so that we might bring him glory.   We might use those things to serve him. Our time is so that we can serve him. If we can make Jesus visible by giving away little bits of our life and little bits of our resources and our time and our energy to the people that we interact with. We are glorifying God. We're doing what he called us to do.   We're serving as ministers in the marketplace.  I'd like to challenge you today. Control yourself. Let's exercise power over ourselves and use our time and our resources and our spirits to glorify God at work. That's our challenge for today. Thank you for being a marketplace minister. Thank you for being self-controlled and for using your time and resources to make Jesus visible and to help other people move one notch closer to Jesus.