98 Sermon Illustrations on Self-Control

John Keegan, in "The Mask of Command," analyzes various leadership styles down through the ages. In 323 BC Alexander the Great led his Macedonian Army into battle against the fortified city of Multan. At the head of his troops, he climbed to top of wall, ladder broke, he leaped to the fray and slaughtered the enemy, even with an arrow in his lung, until his troops reached him.

Adolf Hitler in fall of 1942 was on train going to new headquarters. His army was endangered at Stalingrad. On Nov. 7, 1942, as he was sitting down to supper in the rosewood paneled diner of his special train, a freight car chanced to stop on an adjacent track. The car contained a throng of starving and wounded soldiers from the eastern front, who naturally stared in astonishment at the Fuhrer in his diner just two yards away. "Without as much as a gesture of greeting in their direction," recalls Albert Speer, Hitler "peremptorily ordered the servant to draw [close] the shades."

In modern armies a clear mind and self-control are often better than bravery. Ancient extolling of bravery is dangerous in the nuclear age.

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Version used on August 12, 2012:

In 323 B.C., Alexander the Great’s army had made it all the way to what is now Pakistan. They came to the fortified city of Multan and decided it had to be captured. Alexander put himself at the front of his troops. They broke through a gate in the outer walls and poured in. When the reached the next set of walls, his engineers tried to undermine them so a portion would collapse. Alexander thought it was taking too much time so he grabbed a ladder and began climbing to the top of the wall. Other soldiers followed him up the ladder to protect their great leader. So many jumped on, the ladder broke.

Alexander was left alone on the wall. His soldiers held out their arms to him so he would jump down. Instead, he jumped down the other side and began fighting furiously, even killing the leader of Multan. But an enemy arrow penetrated Alexander’s lung, severely wounding him.

By now his desperate troops had broken through and rescued Alexander. His personal example inspired them so much, they ended up conquering much of the known world.

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An adaption of the top illustration and material in the article, "Mallian Campaign," Wikipedia.org,

Years ago a friend gave me what he called his "Formula: How to Know Right from Wrong." The formula asks four questions based on three verses in 1 Corinthians:

1. "'Everything is permissible for me' - but not everything is beneficial."

Question #1: Is it helpful - physically, spiritually, and mentally?

2. "'Everything is permissible for me' - but I will not be mastered by

anything" (1 Cor 6:12)

Question #2: Does it bring me under its power?

3. "Therefore, if what I eat causes my brother to fall into sin, I will

never eat meat again, so that I will not cause him to fall" (1 Cor 8:13)

Question #3: Does it hurt others?

4. "So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory

of God" (1 Cor 10:31)

Question #4: Does it glorify God?

As simple as this formula may appear, it is powerful in developing conviction, if we are willing to use it. These questions can get rather searching. But they must be asked if we are to pursue holiness as a total way of life.

Effective arguments why God wants us to wait for sex till marriage:

1. Protection from God's judgment.

2. Protect the mind from sexual comparisons.

3. Protect from suspicion and provide trust.

4. Protect from fear and provide peace of mind.

5. Rules without a relationship equal rebellion.

#640

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Book review. Book is on addiction and relates it to free choice and responsibility. Addiction gives us the opportunity to appreciate God's grace. He focuses on the spiritual dimension.

A definition of addiction by psychiatrist Gerald May:

"Addiction is giving ourselves over to things that, in our deepest

honesty, we really do not want. It is a process of attachment which

'nails' our desire to specific objects, with the result that our will

and desire become enslaved. Addiction breeds willfulness within us,

yet paradoxically it erodes our free will and eats away at our

dignity."

How to be more patient:

1. Allow for a margin of error.

(Friend gets stuck in traffic, misses interview, doesn't get job.)

2. Put things in perspective.

3. Think ahead.

4. Be prepared.

5. Use your imagination.

6. Live for the moment.

I spent much of my ninth summer on a bicycle. About a mile from our house the road went down a steep hill and turned sharply at the bottom. Coasting down the hill one morning, I felt my gathering speed to be ecstatic. To give up this ecstasy by applying brakes seemed an absurd self-punishment. So I resolved to simultaneously retain my speed and negotiate the corner.

My ecstasy ended seconds later when I was propelled a dozen feet off the road into the woods. I was badly scratched and bleeding, and the front wheel of my new bike was twisted beyond use from its impact against a tree.

I had been unwilling to suffer the pain of giving up my ecstatic speed in the interest of maintaining my balance around the corner. I learned, however, that the loss of balance is ultimately more painful than the giving up required to maintain balance. It is a lesson I have continually had to relearn. As must everyone, for as we negotiate the curves and corners of our lives, we must continually give up parts of ourselves.

#1993

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Sermon in James series. Control of the tongue. James 3:1-12

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TWO OUNCE SLAB OF TROUBLE

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I. And you think your mouth gets you in trouble...

II. Getting your words across. 3:1-2

A. Teachers use a lethal weapon - the tongue.

B. Teachers will be judged by a harsher standard. 3:1

C. If we can control the tongue, we can control anything. 3:2

III. It's not the size, but the impact. 3:3-6

A. The tongue is small.

B. Good things the tongue can do.

C. Fiery destructiveness of the tongue. 3:5

D. Ever-widening influence of the tongue. 3:6

IV. Controlling the tongue. 3:7-8

V. God can do it! 3:9-12

A. Seek God's control over our tongues.

B. Practical advice on controlling tongue. T.H.I.N.K.

T - Is it true?

H - Is it helpful?

I - Is it inspiring?

N - Is it necessary?

K - Is it kind?

C. The tongue is the barometer of our souls. Matt 12:34

No one wants to crash and burn.

On September 8, 1992, Air Force master pilot Don Snelgrove was flying over Turkey in an F-16 fighter. He was on a four-hour mission to patrol the no-fly zone established over northern Iraq to protect the Kurds.

Nature calls even for master pilots. He pulled out a plastic container, set his F-16 on autopilot, and undid his lap belt. As he adjusted his seat upward, the bucklet on that lap belt wedged between the seat and the control stick, pushing the stick to the right and sending the plane into a spin.

As he struggled to regain control, the plane plunged 33,000 feet. Finally at 2,000 feet altitude, he ejected from the plane. Moments later the F-16 struck a barren hillside and burst into flames. Neither the pilot nor anyone on the ground was injured. But I'll tell you what: there was one very embarrassed master pilot. That F-16 burning on a hillside in Turkey cost U.S. taxpayers $18 million.

Even inadvertent mistakes are terribly embarrassing. How much worse are the mistakes and failures that result from our weaknesses, flaws, and sins. But we don't have to crash and burn morally. We can develop godly character, and James 1:2-4 shows us how.

Allow your anger to transform your relationship with God.

Most people do not walk into the day seething with anger that looks for an opportunity to explode. Most of us feel anger when we are slighted, cheated, or attacked. And when we do get angry, it is common for us to wonder: What am I supposed to do? How am I to handle this situation so that I don't (1) cause more trouble, (2) offend, (3) make a mountain out of a molehill, or (4) embarrass myself? [Illustration of frustrated airline ticket holder when another person jumps in line.]

1. Control or transform?

Anger control techniques use "time outs." You pause and consider the

consequences and alternatives, and by that point a rash response has

been avoided. Some Scriptures support this, but it is better to be

transformed by anger than to just control it. Often anger is an

effort to make up for the "failure" of God.

2. Waiting can intensify anger.

a. Rash anger is almost always violent, damaging, and ungodly.

b. Anger that is not acted on does not generally evaporate.

c. Once anger wanes, there is no impulse to wrestle with ourselves

or with God.

3. Pondering: Wrestling with God.

a. Don't dwell on anger, but settle it.

b. Ponder and search your heart.

4. Surprised into praise.

a. God invites us to see into the dark parts of our heart.

b. To truly cure anger, we must grasp the goodness of God.

c. Wait for God's wrath, rather than seeking revenge today.

#3225

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Sermon.

"GOD'S STANDARDS FOR SEX"

I. Dilemma of sexuality.

A. Intense curiosity, joy.

B. Intense pain, ruin.

II. Sexual standards in the church.

A. In the past they were very strict.

B. Current standards are much looser.

III. God's standards for sex.

A. Sexuality is good.

B. Sexuality has boundaries.

C. Sexuality must be as broad as Christian freedom.

IV. Personal sexuality.

A. Christians must know where they stand on matters of sexuality.

B. Your relationship with God is intimately bound up with sexuality.

C. Self-control is possible and expected. 1 Thess 4:4

V. Final perspective on sexuality.

A. Sexuality is only one area of obedience among many.

B. Failure can be forgiven.

C. Intimacy can be enhanced among Christians.

#3317

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It is hard to know just how to take an invitation to write about gluttony. “We thought you would be the perfect person,” the editor’s letter read. “Gee, is it that obvious?” I thought, alarmed. “No, no, that’s not really me. It’s just these horizontal stripes.”

But, if I am honest, I have to admit that it is me. It’s most of us. Food is an intoxicating pleasure, and it appears superficially like an innocuous one. What is so bad about engaging in a little gluttony, anyway? It’s not one of the bad sins, like adultery or stealing -- we wouldn’t do that. All gluttony does is make you soft and huggable. It’s the cute sin.

But gluttony is not about appearance; our inclination to associate it with external effects alone shows how reluctant we are to confront the sin in the heart. The gluttonous impulse is a sign of disharmony with God’s provision and creation, and it can disrupt the spiritual lives of people of every size. External dimensions are no predictor of internal rebellion.

Previous generations of Christians knew this. Overindulgence in food did not just lead to thickened waistlines and arteries; it led to spiritual disaster. These words from a nineteenth-century Russian monk, Bishop Ignatius Brianchaninov, build in an alarming crescendo: “Wise temperance of the stomach is a door to all the virtues. Restrain the stomach, and you will enter Paradise. But if you please and pamper your stomach, you will hurl yourself over the precipice of bodily impurity, into the fire of wrath and fury, you will coarsen and darken your mind, and in this way you will ruin your powers of attention and self-control, your sobriety and vigilance.”

If that doesn’t make you take a second look at your second helpings, nothing will.

The key word in the passage above is self-control. Gluttony is not wrong because it makes you fat; it is wrong because it is the fruit of self-indulgence. Gluttony says, “Gimme”; Jesus says, “Come to me.” When we come to him, we give up all claims to be coddled; we come to shoulder our own rough cross. The path to the buffet table and the path to sanctification lie in opposite directions.

Yet anyone who has tried to diet knows that the will to eat indulgently is surprisingly strong and unruly. Plans to eat reasonably and with an eye to good health may look attractive on Sunday night, when sketched out on a full stomach. (Oh yes, and we’ll get up early every day to jog, too.) About 3 p.m. on Monday afternoon, however, it’s a different story. The stomach that was placid and amiable has become a bucking, rebellious pony, with a defiance that was never evident until it was made to wear a bridle. Dieters are often shocked at their deep-seated and ungovernable compulsion to eat, as facets of unconverted willfulness, never suspected, are being brought to light. What makes gluttony such a hard sin to break?

FOOD AS POWER

Of course, food is pleasurable; that alone can make a sin enticing. But while some pleasures can be relinquished with a melancholic pang, the attempt to discipline food sins prompts a ferocious, angry resistance. Something more is going on here. The urge to overindulge in food is powerful, I think, because it is linked to a desire for power. A complex net of submerged assumptions teaches us that food grants some limited, but tangible, control over the exterior world. We bite the apple (or the doughnut) because we have heard a whisper, “You shall be as gods.” This plays out in various ways:

1. EMPEROR BABY.

Eating is the first pleasure. Researchers have found that if amniotic fluid is sweetened, unborn babies will gulp it more greedily. For a newborn, many sensations are unpleasant or frightening, but food, glorious food, is a constant and dependable comfort. Controlling access to food, crying to be fed, and winning the reward of sweet, warm milk is the first task of newborn life. No wonder we retain into adulthood a zeal to gather as much good, sweet food as we can grab; it was the first job we ever had, and it felt like an urgent one, indeed. “I don’t think it’s fair that they changed the rules,” my husband said one day, looking forlornly at the ends of his belt; they would no longer quite meet in front. “I can remember a time in my life -- in fact, it lasted quite a long time -- when people were constantly affirming me with, ‘My, you’re becoming such a big boy!’” He tried once more to make the belt ends meet. “Now that I’ve gotten really good at it, suddenly they changed the rules.”

His whimsical protest conceals a grain of truth. The baby that focuses all its attention on getting food soon grows to be a child that is praised for eating, indulged with treats, and admired for getting bigger. Not only is getting food our first job, not only is it intrinsically pleasurable, but it’s a talent for which most of us were praised throughout our childhoods, the way in which we elicited praise and admiration from our elders.

2. I’M IN CONTROL.

Succumbing to the desire to overeat may be a straightforward way that people demonstrate power. Life is complicated and fraught with compromises, unmet desires, and nettling disappointments. We cannot make other people do right. Friends, neighbors, spouse, children all may resist our will, but, darn it, that chocolate cream pie is going to know who’s boss. Overeating can become a secret, habitual way to reassure yourself that you are not powerless, that you can subdue and conquer as much food as you choose. Viewed in this light, anorexia has the same root as gluttony: a desire to demonstrate control. Women starve themselves to prove that they are the Empresses of Ice Cream, wielding a scepter of iron rejection where a plumper sister might choose the tactic of conquering by consuming.

3. SQUIRREL AWAY.

A related impulse is the need to hoard. Perhaps a cream pie this perfect will never cross my path again; it is only wisdom to tuck away as much as possible before the waiter clears the plates and we must part forever. Hoarding food discloses our need to establish ourselves as independent resources, free from dependence on God. There is an intrinsic mistrust of his ability to provide, though he owns the cream pies on a thousand hills.

4. BOREDOM.

A constant stream of pleasant sensations coming in may help keep more troubling self-confrontation at bay. The continuing work of repentance is lifelong, and comparatively less jolly than a bag of gumdrops; those gumdrops may be just enough to keep us distracted one more day. Bishop Brianchaninov, cited above, insisted that an evil of gluttony was its ability to dull the mind. Pennsylvania pastor Pat Reardon says, “When people ask me why God seems so distant, I ask them ‘How much TV have you been watching? What thoughts are you allowing into your mind?’” We could add: And how much idle junk food do you nibble for no apparent reason?

5. BIG.

The title is clumsy and forbidding, but Fat Is a Feminist Issue delivers a startling insight. Author Susie Orbach writes that many dieters self- sabotage because they fail to realize that “compulsive eating is linked to a desire to get fat.... Many women are positively afraid of being thin.” This strikes us as howlingly counterintuitive, but Orbach’s research is intriguing. She has women imagine themselves in a social situation; they are to envision every detail of dress, posture, with whom they talk, how others react to them. Orbach has them imagine themselves in the same situation, but immensely fat; then she has them repeat the exercise, but imagine themselves with ideal slimness.

In a culture where slimness equals beauty, women have powerful reasons to want to be thin; but, surprisingly, when they imagined it, they found they did not enjoy it. Slimness was associated with being “cold and ungiving,” “self-involved,” burdened with others’ expectations, the object of unwanted desire from men and uncomfortable jealousy from women. The fat self, on the other hand, was relaxed, free from unwanted sexual attention and the need to compete, and able to talk comfortably with others. As the study demonstrated, another reason people subconsciously desired a greater girth was because they sensed that, as a result, they had more authority. One woman put it this way: “The fat in the situation [made] me feel like a sergeant major-big and authoritative. When I go through the fantasy of seeing myself thin, what immediately strikes me is just how fragile and little I feel, almost as though I might disappear or be blown away.” Men have as many reasons as women do -- maybe more -- to want to be bigger. Our attempts at self-control in eating fail, in part, because part of us really doesn’t want to risk shrinking. We want to be big.

A “Bizarro” cartoon by Dan Piraro showed an enormously fat man looking into a refrigerator, while a smaller man stood nearby, holding up a finger of admonition. “You are what you eat,” the scolder said. The fat man replied, “Good. That makes me omnipotent.”

SATAN’S PLOY

One of the crueler tricks of temptation is that it exacts painful dues while failing to deliver the promised pleasure. A really clever temptation can impose the very opposite of what was promised. This is the case with gluttony. If overeating is about gaining power, the stomach may indeed feel a gratifying, temporary dominance-after which the overeater will likely feel ashamed and, ironically, out of control. Overeating may be an assertion of power, but the classic confession is, “I have no will power.” Far from establishing the glutton as a master, it exposes him as a slave.

This is not a slavery merely to self; it is worse than that. The apostle Paul speaks of those whose “god is the belly” (Phil. 3:19; all Scripture references quoted are NRSV), and Saint John Climacus, seventh-century abbot of the monastery on Mount Sinai, writes of “that clamorous mistress, the stomach.” Those who succumb to gluttony experience themselves not as rulers, but as helpless prey. Prey, indeed, we are; this is not just a matter of deficient self-control, but of slipping under another’s control, into another’s trap. “Like a roaring lion, your adversary the devil prowls around, looking for someone to devour” (1 Peter 5:8). It is in the nature of evil to consume, and those who feast wantonly become themselves morsels.

In “The Screwtape Letters,” C. S. Lewis has the senior devil write to his nephew: “To us a human is primarily food; our aim is the absorption of its will into ours, the increase of our own area of selfhood at its expense. But the obedience which the Enemy [God the Father] demands of men is quite a different thing....We want cattle who can finally become food; He wants servants who can finally become sons. We want to suck in; He wants to give out. We are empty and would be filled; He is full and flows over.”

When Screwtape’s nephew finally fails in his mission, the senior devil gloats in a fashion that any glutton would find chilling: “I think they will give you to me now; or a bit of you. Love you? Why, yes. As dainty a morsel as ever I grew fat on.”

“He is full and flows over,” Lewis’s devil wrote. The flowing over by which God would fill us extends from Genesis to Revelation. He does not merely decline to devour us, he feeds us. Eden was planted with “every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food” (Gen. 2:9); in the New Jerusalem there is “the tree of life, with its twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit each month” (Rev. 22:2). In the Song of Solomon we sing, “He brought me to the banqueting house” (Song of Sol. 2:4), and at the end we hear, “Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb” (Rev. 19:9). We are invited to ask, “Give us this day our daily bread.”

He feeds us. Safe in his pasture, we will not become food. The task is learning to eat the food he gives, in the measure he gives it. Our whole lives consist of learning what he meant when he said: “I have food to eat that you do not know about” (John 4:32).

Satan came to Adam in Paradise; he came to Christ in the desert. He came to two hungry men and said: eat, for your hunger is proof that you depend entirely on food, that your life is in food. And Adam believed and ate; but Christ rejected that temptation and said: man shall not live by bread alone but by God. By doing this, Christ restored that relationship between food, life, and God which Adam broke, and which we still break every day. (Alexander Schmemann, “On Fasting at Great Lent”)

THE GRAYNESS OF GLUTTONY

“Which we still break every day.” How do we restore the food-life-God relationship? Mastering gluttony is a tricky task, because you can never be sure you have arrived. With the broader sins, you can swear off the behavior and know with certainty at the end of the day that you either kept your promise or did not. The thief does not wonder whether or not he stole. The person struggling with homosexual longing either went out and picked up a date, or didn’t. With some sins, there is not much gray area.

With gluttony, it is almost all gray. You cannot simply swear off eating, and learning to eat aright seems such a slippery, indefinable goal. The standards we concoct for ourselves seem to mock us. Sallie Tisdale wrote of dieting in “Harper’s” (March 1993), “Eating became cheating. One pretzel was cheating. Two apples instead of one was cheating -- a large potato instead of a small, carrots instead of broccoli.... Diets have failure built in, failure is the definition. Every substitution -- even carrots for broccoli -- was a triumph of desire over will....I saw that the real point of dieting is dieting -- to not be done with it, ever.”

Yet overcoming gluttony must mean getting a handle on our intake of food, and Christians through the ages have discovered various helps. For example, Saint John Climacus gave his monks specific, concrete advice. “He who fondles a lion tames it, but he who coddles the body makes it still wilder,” he warned. But he cautioned against excessive discipline, criticizing one who advised taking only bread and water: “To prescribe this is like saying to a child: ‘Go up the whole ladder in one stride.’” Saint John recommended, rather, varying one’s discipline: “Let us for awhile only deny ourselves fattening foods, then heated foods, and only then what makes our food pleasant. If possible, give your stomach satisfying and digestible food, so as to satisfy its insatiable hunger by sufficiency, and so that we may be delivered from excessive desire.”

Learning to eat rightly usually means, in our modern age, dieting. But dieting can merely be a substitute of one of the Seven Deadly Sins for another: forsaking Gluttony, we fall into Vanity. Christians have, from the earliest times, wrestled with the temptation to misuse food, but the weapon they used wasn’t dieting. It was fasting.

[see #3647]

DANGER ZONE - Signs That Your Relationship With God May Need Attention

A foolish old farmer, so the story goes, concluded one day that the oats he had fed his mule for years were simply costing him too much. So he hatched a plan: He mixed a little sawdust in with the feed, and then a little more the next day, and even more the next, each time reducing the amount of oats in the mix.

The mule didn't seem to notice the gradual change, so the farmer thought things were fine and kept decreasing the proportion of oats. But weeks later, on the day he finally fed the poor beast nothing but sawdust, the mule finished the meal ... and fell over dead.

A silly tale, perhaps, but it serves as a parable of the backslider -- the Christian who slips further and further away from God through unrepented sin or neglect. Though we know our souls cannot survive on spiritual sawdust, we may well convince ourselves that a little won't hurt too much, and a little less real spiritual food won't be missed. Then, over time, the proportion of sawdust increases while the oats gradually disappear. Before long, the change is complete, and our starved, sawdust-stuffed spiritual life has collapsed. The intimacy we once enjoyed with the Father has evaporated.

This process can be so subtle, progressing in such small increments, that we fail to recognize the problem. Yet the "mule" does display a few symptoms warning us that all is not well. We might summarize them under three headings, each describing a critical loss in our spiritual life: the loss of love for God, the loss of fear of God, and the loss of faith in God.

LOSS OF LOVE FOR GOD

The first Christians in the city of Ephesus received a fine grounding in the Word of God from the Apostle Paul. His letter to them burned with a passionate love for God that was no doubt contagious. Paul prayed that they, "being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge" (Eph. 3:17-19). He fervently hoped that they would be among those "who love our Lord Jesus Christ with an undying love" (Eph. 6:24).

Sadly, not many years later, Jesus gave John a disturbing message for these Ephesian Christians:

I know your deeds, your hard work and your perseverance.... Yet I

hold this against you: You have forsaken your first love. Remember

the height from which you have fallen! Repent and do the things

you did at first. -- Rev 2:2,4-5

The Ephesians' passionate "first love" was gone. They were apparently still going through at least some of the motions of devotion to God, but their hearts had grown cold.

What specific "red flags" might go up to indicate that our first love for the Lord is waning? Think of the telltale signs of a love grown cold in human relationships; the parallels to our love for Christ may be useful.

LOSS OF JOY. We take joy in what we love. When we lose the joy in our relationship with someone, it's a sign that our love for that person has somehow diminished. A loss of joy in our relationship with God is thus one indicator that our first love has dimmed.

King David experienced such a loss following his adultery with Bathsheba. In Psalm 51 he described his anguish when he recognized how far he had fallen from God. In that prayer for mercy, he cried out to the Lord, "Restore to me the joy of your salvation" (v. 12).

AVERSION TO PRAYER AND GOD'S WORD. We want to spend time with those we love. We want to pour out our hearts to them and listen as they open up their own hearts to us. So when we develop an aversion to spending time talking and listening to someone, that's a second sure sign of love lost.

We talk to God in prayer and listen to Him as we study and meditate upon the Scriptures. As a devout rural pastor once put it, "I have a relish for God. If you love squash, you eat it for breakfast, you eat it for dinner, you eat it for supper. You just can't get enough of it. And if you love God, you just can't get enough of Him. You want to pray and read the Word." If, on the other hand, we've grown reluctant to spend time with Him in these ways, this is a sign that our love for God has cooled.

When Adam and Eve disobeyed God in the garden, what was the first token of their fall? They tried to hide from the God whose fellowship they had once so naturally enjoyed (Gen. 3:8).

AVERSION TO CHRISTIAN FELLOWSHIP. I once saw a pet-lover's bumper sticker that said: "Love me, love my cats." When you love someone, you love the ones he or she loves. You enjoy spending time with the friends of your friend. But when a friendship turns sour, you tend to lose interest in that person's friends as well, and you want to avoid people who are likely to talk about the person you want to forget.

For that reason, Christians whose love for God has grown cold because of sin tend to avoid fellowship with committed believers. They don't want to be around people who remind them of the one they're trying not to think about. In Hebrews 10, the author closely associates fellowship with God and fellowship with other believers. "Let us draw near to God," he says in verse 22, and, "Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing" (v. 25). Clearly, we cannot draw near to God without a corresponding desire to relate to others who love Him as well.

MISPLACED TREASURE. Jesus said, "Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also" (Matt. 6:21). We are made to love, and love we will. If we lose our love for God, other loves will fill His place in our hearts. Time once spent with God will be devoted to other pursuits that yield little or no spiritual fruit.

Thus the backslidden believer often becomes immersed in an array of worldly concerns as substitutes for the old spiritual life. Entertainment replaces prayer and time in the Word as a form of "diversion" -- that is, something that diverts attention from troubling thoughts that might lead to serious self-examination. "Safe" secular acquaintances with no spiritual interests take the place of Christian friends. Energies once spent in evangelism, outreach, or other forms of ministry are now focused inward on financial or career goals. Money once designated for church and charity is redirected to more selfish or frivolous ends.

Once we stop searching for the one pearl of great price (Matt. 13:45-46), we will devote our time, energy, and money to the pursuit of other treasures. Having lost our first love for God, we will go -- in the words of an old '70s song -- "looking for love in all the wrong places."

LOSS OF FEAR OF GOD

Though we often think of love and fear as opposites, the Scriptures remind us repeatedly that a mature relationship with God is characterized by both attitudes: "The Lord delights in those who fear him, who put their hope in his unfailing love" (Ps. 147:11). When we drift away from God, we lose not only our love for Him, but also our healthy fear of Him. And if "the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom" (Prov. 9:10), then the loss of that fear is the beginning of dangerous folly.

What are the signs that we no longer fear God? Since "to fear the Lord is to hate evil" (Prov. 8:13), we need only examine our attitude toward sin. A growing attachment to sin -- a sure sign that we are losing our fear of God -- typically manifests itself in several stages:

COVERING UP SIN. In the first stage, we recognize our wrongdoing, and in our shame we try to hide it. Adam and Eve provide the classic example: After their fall in the garden, they tried to cover themselves with fig leaves (Gen. 3:7). King David, too, knew the trouble that comes from refusing to confess sins to God and from trying to "cover up ... iniquity" (Ps. 32:5).

Of course, trying to hide our sin from God is useless:

Does he who formed the eye not see? Does he who disciplines nations

not punish? ... The Lord knows the thoughts of man; he knows that

they are futile. -- Ps. 94:9-11

But in this early stage of disobedience, we fool ourselves into thinking that somehow He won't know what we've done as long as we don't admit it to anyone.

DENYING RESPONSIBILITY. When we realize we can't hide our sin from God, the next step is to insist that what we're doing wrong isn't really our fault. Once again, note the pattern in Eden: Adam blamed Eve, and Eve blamed the serpent (Gen. 3:12-13).

Our excuses are legion: "Yes, it's an ugly little habit, but I was raised this way." "Of course I'm not supposed to hold grudges, but how could anyone be expected to forgive what they did to me?" "People with artistic personalities just have this weakness." Whatever the excuse, the sin continues, and the sinner moves further and further from God.

PROCRASTINATING OVER REPENTANCE. Once we realize we cannot shift the blame -- for at some deep level we know that we truly are responsible for our wrongdoing -- our next strategy is to put off the day of repentance. Augustine of Hippo, the celebrated fifth-century bishop whose autobiography, The Confessions, recounts his promiscuous youth, remembered praying this prayer: "Lord, give me self-control, but not yet!"

Believers who are actively disobeying God forget His warning: "Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts" (Ps. 95:7-8). They wait until tomorrow to repent, but tomorrow never comes. Their hearts harden like lumps of clay left in the hot sun, becoming useless because they can no longer be shaped according to God's will.

JUSTIFYING SIN. If we put off repentance long enough, our consciences become seared (1 Tim. 4:2). We stop trying to hide sin, make excuses, or delay our reckoning with it; instead we begin to convince ourselves that it isn't really sin after all. In time we may even grow brazen in our wrongdoing, openly defying God or others who condemn our behavior.

King Saul was a master rationalizer. When the prophet Samuel rebuked him for disobeying God's command to destroy everything in the enemy city of Amalek, Saul tried to justify his behavior by claiming that he had saved the best of the booty to sacrifice to the Lord. Samuel pointed out that the king had nevertheless disobeyed God's clear instructions. Yet Saul adamantly insisted that he had done no wrong (1 Sam. 15:1-21).

Other biblical backsliders repeat this pattern. Having slain Abel, Cain defied God with the impudent challenge: "Am I my brother's keeper?" (Gen. 4:9). The high priest Caiaphas had an elaborate rationale for murdering Jesus: If He wasn't put to death, he reasoned, the Nazarene's followers would cause trouble, the Romans would react violently, and the Jewish nation would be harmed (Jn. 11:45-50). Having Jesus executed, he insisted, was obviously the right thing to do.

The hardened believer thus embraces sin and refuses correction. All fear of God is gone. "This is the way of an adulteress," says a biblical proverb. "She eats and wipes her mouth and says, 'I've done nothing wrong'" (Prov. 30:20).

LOSS OF FAITH IN GOD

Unrepented sin can eventually lead to unbelief and a disastrous rejection of God. Consider, for example, the children of Israel who hardened their hearts in the desert. Having lost their initial loving gratitude for all that God had done to save them, they persisted in sin, until they finally lost faith altogether. They concluded that there was no God on the mountain after all and that something else must have delivered them from bondage. So they worshiped instead a golden calf of their own creation (Exodus 32).

Sadly, I can recall several Christians I've known who followed a similar path, rejecting the Lord altogether. Despite every indication of genuine faith, they gradually slipped deeper and deeper into sin. They lost their love for God and their fear of God and in the end no longer believed even the essentials of the faith. Finally, they declared themselves Christians no more.

Why does loss of faith follow loss of love and fear? First, we must recall that prayer, meditating on God's Word, and fellowship with other believers feed our faith. Thus, when we avoid these spiritual disciplines, we starve our faith. The old "mule" needs its oats; sawdust in the feed bag is deadly.

Perhaps another reason for loss of faith is that those who justify their wrongdoing must deny the truth of Scripture. Once they have undermined in their own hearts the claims of God's Word with regard to morality, they have opened the door to doubts about its other claims. Ever since the serpent first tempted Eve, the devil has sought to seduce believers with the unsettling question: "Did God really say ... ?" (Gen. 3:1).

Affirming God's existence and His claim to our obedience while habitually disobeying Him creates a tension in our souls that is ultimately unbearable. We can never fully convince ourselves that our behavior is justified when God has plainly said it isn't. But if we refuse to repent, the only way out of the dilemma is to conclude that either He hasn't truly spoken or that He doesn't exist after all. The result: "a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God" (Heb. 3:12).

I have taught many students from Christian families who went looking for another faith because they wanted to hold on to some particular sin. Typically, they end up in some form of New Age religion because it makes few moral demands. They relieve themselves of the inner tension by denying that there is a God who commands: "Be holy, because I am holy" (1 Pet. 1:16).

EXAMINE YOURSELVES

"Examine yourselves," the Apostle Paul instructs us, "to see whether you are in the faith; test yourselves" (2 Cor. 13:5). Do we find evidence that we've failed to address sinful patterns and hard-heartedness toward God? Are there signs that we have lost our first love, our fear of the Lord?

If so, God still stands ready to help us find the way back to Him. The spiritual disciplines we've forsaken -- prayer, Scripture study, Christian fellowship -- can serve to rekindle our love and a healthy fear, driving us to repentance and a new beginning. Then the prayer of Jude (vv. 24-25) can become our firm hope:

To him who is able to keep you from falling and to present you before his

glorious presence without fault and with great joy -- to the only God our

Savior be glory, majesty, power and authority, through Jesus Christ our

Lord, before all ages, now and forevermore! Amen.

--------------------------------------------

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

PAUL THIGPEN is a fellow in theology at the College of St. Thomas More in Fort Worth, Texas. Most people would be surprised to know that even though he's written professionally for 12 years, Paul still types with two fingers. "They're very fast fingers," he says.

Any person who can make his opponent lose his temper can defeat him whether it be an athletic contest, debate, or personal encounter. A guide commenting on the height of a mountain range in South America made this statement about a certain jagged volcanic mountain, "This would have been our tallest if it had not blown its top." This can be said of many people who could not maintain the composure of coolness. --Charles Ashcraft - Pulpit Helps, Dec. 1991, p. 12.

"Strength is the capacity to break a chocolate bar into four pieces with your bare hands - and then eat just one of the pieces."

-- Judith Viorst

*

I know a very wealthy man who became religious late in life. He had a quick temper and cursed a lot, which seemed inconsistent with his otherwise pious behavior. A rabbi who had helped influence the man to become religious explained to me: "He's trying to cut down on his cursing, so we've made a deal. Every time he curses, he fines himself $180, and then donates the money to different charities. So far, he's donated tens of thousands of dollars."

This incident happened more than fifteen years ago, and I've fallen out of touch with the man. I don't know if the $180 fines helped cause him to curb his cursing, but I suspect they did. If they didn't, perhaps $180 was an insufficient disincentive to stop this man from engaging in what had become a deeply ingrained habit. But the technique is an old and a sound one. A medieval moralistic Jewish text, "The Beginning of Wisdom," suggests a similar teaching to those who can't seem to control their anger:

Decide on a sum of money that you will give away if you allow

yourself to be angered. Be sure that the amount you designate is

sufficient to force you to think twice before you lose your

temper.

If you're making an effort to control your temper, do this: Over the next week or month, donate to charity the sum of (fill in the amount) every time you express anger that is disproportionate to the provocation. As "The Beginning of Wisdom" notes, the sum has to be enough to inhibit you and also should be over and above the amount of charity you'd otherwise give; in other words, it acts as a fine.

If this technique doesn't work, try this: Give the charity to a cause you otherwise wouldn't support. If you're a liberal Democrat, designate the charity for a conservative cause; if you're a rock-ribbed conservative, to a liberal one. You might not be happy to send your money to a cause of which you might disapprove (this alone could cause you to exert greater control over your temper), but at least your anger will then do something for the cause of civility and unity within our society.

If you find this technique too expensive for your liking, there is one approach that will cost you no money at all: Do nothing to curb your temper In the course of a few years, this technique won't cost you any money -- but it might cost you your friends, your spouse, and your relationship with your children.

It's worth thinking about fining yourself for excessive anger. It might cost you a lot of money, but in the long run, it's cheap.

There are two things which happened this year which share much in common:

Three young men in Oklahoma were enjoying the upcoming Fourth of July holiday and wanted to apparently testfire some fireworks. Their only real problem was that their launch pad and seating arrangements were atop a several hundred thousand gallon fuel distillation storage tank.

Oddly enough, some fumes were ignited, producing a fireball seen for miles.

They were launched several hundred feet into the air and were found dead 250 yards from their respective seats.

===================================

In a west Texas town, employees in a medium-sized warehouse noticed the smell of gas. Sensibly, management evacuated the building, extinguishing all potential sources of ignition -- lights, power, etc.

After the building had been evacuated, two technicians from the gas company were dispatched. Upon entering the building, they found they had difficulty navigating in the dark. To their frustration, none of the lights worked.

Witnesses later described the vision of one of the technicians reaching into his pocket and retrieving an object that resembled a lighter. Upon operation of the lighter-like object, the gas in the warehouse exploded, sending pieces of it up to three miles away.

Nothing was found of the technicians, but the lighter was virtually untouched by the explosion. The technician that was suspected of causing the explosion had never been thought of as “bright” by his peers.

=================================

Years ago, Jim Croce, in his song, “You Don’t Mess Around With Jim”, used to sing about things that you don’t dare do (pull the mask off the Lone Ranger or tug on Superman’s cape, for example). He might have done well to add, “You don’t flick your Bic inside a building with a gas leak”! In an explosive situation, the last thing you want to do is provide the spark.

We’ve all been around those kinds of situations (not literally, but figuratively) -- where someone was angry and it wouldn’t take much to create an explosion. We have two choices in that setting, described by Solomon in this way:

“A gentle answer will calm a person’s anger, but an unkind answer will cause more anger.” (Prov. 15:1, NCV).

How I admire those people I know (and my wife is one of them) who have a calming effect on those around them (including me), gently stifling the flames of anger before they burst in flames.

“Wise people calm anger down.” (Prov. 29:8b, NCV)

May God help us all to be wise.

Have a great day!

Alan Smith

Boone church of Christ

Boone, NC

In St. Petersburg, I saw in the square in front of St. Isaac's Cathedral, the magnificent equestrian statue of Peter the Great with his hand lifted pointing his nation onward and eastward toward the sea. Peter was the maker of modern Russia. In many respects, he well deserved the name "great," but he was subject to maniacal outbursts of fury and anger. In one of such outbursts, he killed his own son.

Toward the end of his reign, Peter the Great once remarked, "I have conquered an empire but I was not able to conquer myself."

A lot of us loose control when we get angry. We are kind of like the man who said, "I'm so think, I can't mad straight."

- Mike Minnix

I call them “meanies,” those men and women who spend their days spreading vitriol on the Internet. Nameless, faceless, they lurk in the shadows of many websites and blogs, waiting for any opportunity to tear those with whom they disagree to shreds.

With a toolbox full of putdowns and vulgarities, they work hard at trying to show that their opponents are not only wrong, not only stupid, but actually evil. Mean-spiritedness is not a new problem, but never before have “meanies” had such a public platform from which to spew their venom, and rarely has society been so willing to celebrate meanness and odium. The problem is so widespread that political parties and major policy organizations rely on meanness and anger in promoting their message.

Peter Wood, in his recent book “A Bee in the Mouth: Anger in America Now,” says there is a difference between New Anger, which is everywhere today, and Old Anger. There has never been a time when men and women did not get angry. Yet, at one point, anger was seen as a passion to be restrained whenever possible. Self-control and self-mastery were considered virtues; a man who was quick to anger was seen as weak and unstable. For a political leader to burn with anger in public on a regular basis was certainly considered a red flag.

In his review of Wood’s book, Howard Kurtz says this about New Anger:

“New Anger is everything that Old Anger was not: flamboyant, self-righteous, and proud. As a way to ‘empowerment’ for ethnic groups, women, political parties, and children, New Anger serves as a mark of identity and a badge of authenticity. The Civil War, and America’s past political campaigns, may have witnessed plenty of anger, yet not until recently, says Wood, have Americans actually congratulated themselves for getting angry. Anger has turned into a coping mechanism, something to get in touch with, a prize to exhibit in public, and a proof of righteous sincerity.”

New Anger has certainly found a home on cable news channels and on the blogosphere. This unhealthy anger is coupled with what legal scholar Cass Sunstein calls “ideological amplification.” According to Sunstein, ideological amplification is a process whereby one’s ideological opinions become more extreme as they encounter fewer opposing viewpoints. This is an especially big problem on the blogosphere, where men and women self-select the sites they visit. As Alan Jacobs points out in his Christianity Today web article, “Amplifying Charity,” a conservative is unlikely to defend President Bush on a liberal blog like the DailyKos when “her views -- along with her personality, her character, her intelligence, and her friends, family members, and pets -- [are] instantly subjected to a barrage of, shall we say, critical scrutiny.” A liberal is equally disinclined to dialogue with conservatives on extreme conservative blogs.

The end result is the creation of “echo chambers” or “information cocoons” in which New Anger boils over into utter hatred and malice. Jacobs has also noticed this trend: “Among the ideas that get amplified [on monolithic blogs], one of the most pernicious and (alas) common is the idea that people who are not among the Faithful deviate from the True Path not just because they make different political judgments, or have different beliefs about how best to form a just political order, but because they are, well, evil.”

The antidote to the rising heat in political debate today, according to Sunstein and Jacobs, is “political charity.” When men and women exhibit political charity they do not automatically assume that their opponents have evil motives, but they try to see their opponents’ motives in the best possible light. Those with political charity also try to identify the positive moral principle at the heart of their opponents’ views and endorse those principles whenever possible. In other words, political charity should drive those on either side of the aisle to see political counterparts as real people who mean well, not as the diabolical monsters that some people self-righteously create in their own minds. While it is true that there is real evil in the world, and that we should never be shy about identifying true evil, it is also becoming clear that in the blogosphere, on talk radio, and on some cable TV shows, we are allowing New Anger to destroy mature political discourse.

In the final analysis, self-government requires self-control. It requires from us the ability to patiently and rationally discuss our varying viewpoints as we work together for the common good. If passions like anger and hatred take over, we will completely lose the ability to reason together as a people, meaning we will have become incapable of governing ourselves. Democracy itself is on the line. As we move toward the 2008 presidential elections, there is little doubt that some blogs, liberal and conservative, will be cauldrons of animosity and acrimony. Rest assured that both of the major political parties will try to tap into these searing emotions to their own benefit.

One can also predict that some supposedly Christian groups will try to take advantage of these unholy passions to mobilize voters. Despite all of this, we will do well to remember that Christ himself called us to love our neighbors ... and even our enemies. The survival of democracy itself may depend on our ability to show true political charity.

*

[Original illustration at this number was a duplicate of HolwickID #9068]

During the holiday season, people become greatly concerned about

what they are going to eat. Of course, there is nothing wrong with

eating such favorite traditional foods as special cakes, cookies,

meats, and so forth. But for some of us there is a tendency to let it

get out of hand - and into the stomach! Perhaps we should institute a

new award to be given out at each holiday: The No-Belly Prize for

abstinence.

My friend Kimberly announced that she had started a diet to lose some pounds she had put on recently. "Good!" I exclaimed. "I'm ready to start a diet too. We can be dieting buddies and help each other out. When I feel the urge to drive out and get a burger and fries, I'll call you first."

"Great!" she replied. "I'll ride with you."

_______________

By Katina Fisher, Panama City Beach, Florida, USA

During the Vietnam War, American pilot Lance Sijan was flying his F4 Phantom fighter-bomber on his fifty-third combat mission. Suddenly a faulty fuse triggered an explosion in his aircraft, and he crashed on the border of Laos. He could have been rescued as his comrades flew near, looking for him. But Sijan lay low and did not draw them to his spot because the enemy was too close and he did not want his compatriots to risk their lives. Over the next forty-six days, he crawled three miles. He tried to survive on leaves and the bark of trees. Finally caught and put into solitary confinement, he was tortured to extract secrets.

Those who could overhear what was happening ached for him deeply but were proud beyond measure at his unbreakable will and his determination not to betray his trust. There was nothing his tormentors could do to dent his courage and his commitment to his country. We are rightly proud of such heroism.

Isn’t it astounding how a man could endure such torture, sacrificing himself for his fellow soldiers, while many of us find it seemingly "impossible" to withstand lesser pressures for even lesser causes.

Many have so surrendered their wills to such a state of weaknesses that they have lost sight of their capacity for strength. It is far better, goes the old adage, to shun the bait than to struggle in the snare. To some things we must learn to say "no" and to mean it. Not just for the sake of saying no, but because life must be lived in terms of higher purpose. Is there not more than the immediate impulse for indulgence? If we do not resist and go the easy way there will be a price to be paid someday.

An essential principle in a philosophy of pleasure arises here: all pleasure must be bought at a price. The difference between illegitimate and legitimate pleasure is this: For legitimate pleasure, the price is paid before it is enjoyed. For illegitimate pleasure, the price is paid after it is enjoyed. Turning aside from instant gratification is one of the most difficult things to do. But this is where the battle is often won or lost.

The strength of our will - and this is crucial - surrendered either to God or ourselves - reveals the character we possess, and the strength of our will determines when the price is paid. It is the submission of our will to God that protects us from illicit pleasure, so that we may fully enjoy those which are legitimate. When that distinction is made and honored, life becomes a delight.

_________________________

Copyright © 2002 Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM). Reprinted with permission. "A Slice of Infinity" is a radio ministry of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries.

When you've driven as much as I have over the years, you know when it's time to stop. I've been driving along at night, for example, and suddenly I'm enveloped in this thick fog, usually in the mountains. Semis are pulled over to the side of the road. They are professional drivers. They know well enough not to go on. It's definitely time to stop before I hit something. Same thing when I suddenly find myself in one of those driving rainstorms - or I've been in a snow storm "whiteout" - those times when you literally can't see a car length in front of you. It's like you're temporarily blind, and you'd better not keep pushing ahead.

Well, I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Blindness that Makes You Crash."

Fog can make you temporarily blind. So can rain or snow. And so can your hormones. It happened even to King David, who God called "a man after God's own heart." David's hormonal blindness - which led to so many devastating crashes - is described in one of the saddest chapters in the Bible. In 2 Samuel 11, beginning with verse 2, our word for today from the Word of God, the Bible says, "One evening David got up from his bed and walked around on the roof of the palace. From the roof he saw a woman bathing. The woman was very beautiful, and David sent someone to find out about her." Right about here you feel like screaming at the Bible, "David, don't do it, man!"

But he did do it. "The man said, 'Isn't this Bathsheba ... the wife of Uriah the Hittite?'" Uriah, by the way, was one of David's most trusted and most loyal soldiers. The Bible goes on: "Then David sent messengers to get her. She came to him, and he slept with her." Here's David - God's man, God's king. But his sexual desires started pumping, and he followed them all the way to disaster. From these few moments of sexual pleasure will come a baby who dies, David's murder of his loyal associate to cover up his sin, rape and incest and even an attempt to overthrow him among his own children, and an agony of soul David could have never imagined.

That's what is so dangerous about lust, about sexual fantasies, about pornography, about flirting with sexual sin - your hormones blind you, just like they did David. You let your lust keep pulling you toward a crash, and it makes you blind to so many things you can't afford to forget - the consequences, what you stand to lose, who you're going to hurt, the agony of a broken relationship with God. But you don't care much about all that - you just care about satisfying your sexual desires, about following your passions.

But God has sent you this way today to send you a wakeup call. Please, consider where your passions and desires are taking you. Count the cost. Think about all you have to lose if you keep driving down this road. Think about the price you'll pay in your soul - maybe the price you're already paying. Think about the hurt this can cause. And don't make the deadly mistake millions of people have made - underestimating the power of sin and overestimating your power to control it.

Sexual desire can blind you like a thick fog. Please, don't keep going this way. Pull over and stop - now ... before you crash.

________________

Copyright © Ron Hutchcraft Ministries, Inc., PO Box 400, Harrison, AR 72602. Used by permission. Written by Ron Hutchcraft. "Practical Answers to Real Life Issues"

*

I have had the wonderful privilege of being in just about all of the United States. But one of the last that I had the opportunity to visit was one of the most beautiful - Alaska. When I went there the first time, I was impressed with this motto they have on their license plates. It seemed pretty appropriate. “Alaska - The Last Frontier.” I can see why they say that. There are hundreds and thousands of miles of unpopulated expanse, abundant wildlife like bears and moose and eagles, great untamed areas, even some untamed people! There's a wildness that does seem to make it the last frontier.

Well, I'm Ron Hutchcraft, and I want to have A Word With You today about “The Last Frontier in You.”

As a state, Alaska probably qualifies as the last frontier. But if you're talking about the state people are in, well, Alaska, move over. The greatest untamed frontier on earth is identified in our word for today from the Word of God. It's in James 3:2. “We all stumble in many ways,” God says. “If anyone is never at fault in what he says, he is a perfect man (or a complete man), able to keep his whole body in check.”

God says that when it comes to the untamed areas of our personal lives, the tongue is the last frontier! He acknowledges that we stumble in many ways, but then He elevates controlling this one particular kind of sin to the position of Proof #1 that a person is really grown up spiritually, proof that the Lordship of Christ is conquering the deepest corners of a person's rebellious heart. That's when his faith has reached “what he says.”

Listen to God's description of the wildness of this frontier. James 3:7 - “All kinds of animals, birds, reptiles, and creatures of the sea are being tamed ... but no man can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison. With the tongue we praise our Lord and our Father, and with it we curse men who have been made in God's likeness. Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing. My brothers, this should not be.” Talk about a spiritual frontier!

Now, there are people who are doctrinally sound, sexually pure, financially honest, personally unselfish, busy for the Lord, but verbally untamed. If you want to graduate to real spiritual maturity, make your tongue a central issue in your commitment to Jesus Christ. This is the battle on which you need to focus all your spiritual weapons.

A tape of your conversation (your talk) this past week would probably tell the story - that sarcasm that cut so deep, the criticism that diminished the reputation of someone who wasn't even there, the putdown that made you feel bigger when it actually made you smaller, those angry words that wounded people that you say you love, the negative talk that destroyed someone's confidence, the double-meaning comments that polluted you and those who heard you. Unfortunately, the tape would tell the story. What we say is the greatest proof or disproof of all we say we have in Christ, and it's the battle we must win.

If you can, in Christ, get control of your tongue. You can find the power to control any part of your life. It's time you turned all the power of Jesus Christ on that last, untamed frontier - the one in your mouth!

________________

Copyright © Ron Hutchcraft Ministries, Inc., PO Box 400, Harrison, AR 72602. Used by permission. Written by Ron Hutchcraft. "Practical Answers to Real Life Issues"

*

"The happiness of a man in this life does not consist in the absence but in the mastery of his passions."

-- Alfred Lord Tennyson

"I define self-control, in the beginning of life, as the choice of achieving what I really want by doing things I really don't want to do. Once this becomes a habit, discipline becomes the choice of achieving what I really want by doing the very things I now want to do! I really believe that a disciplined life becomes a joy - but only after we have worked hard to practice it."

-- John Maxwell

“The only competition you will ever have is the competition between your disciplined and undisciplined mind.”

-- James A. Ray

“The truth of the matter is that you always know the right thing to do. The hard part is doing it.”

-- General H. Norman Schwarzkopf

“The most important quality in the development of human character is, and always has been, self-discipline.”

-- Brian Tracy

“If you’re not willing to accept your own discipline, you’re not going to accomplish 2% of what you could — and you’re going to miss out on 98% of the good things you could have.”

-- Tom Hopkins