Ever wish you had more self-control?

If so, what if self-control often isn’t about having more of it, it’s about when you use the self-control you have?

Galatians 5:22-23 lists the fruit of the Spirit that every believer in Christ is given and self-control is one of those so if you believe in Christ, you have it. 

But when do you try to use your self-control?

I may not have enough self-control to be near a cookie filled pantry without eating several eventually.  I hate to admit it, but I can walk by a time or two, but at some point I’m eating cookies I told myself I wouldn’t eat.

But if I deploy five seconds of self-control at the store and don’t even walk down the cookie aisle, I don’t need as much self-control at home.

That may seem like an isolated situation, but using our self-control to avoid temptation means we don’t have to try to summon what feels like super-human self-control later.

Dallas Willard wrote that it’s easier to avoid sin if we first avoid temptation.

Patrick Morley writes that if we starve our temptations, we will shrink our sinful appetites and that we can make tremendous progress if we can just put ourselves out of sin’s line of fire.

In Atomic Habits, James Clear writes about using our self-control to change our environment so we need less self-control later.

James 1 also lays out how sin follows temptation.

Are you struggling with a specific sin that you feel is stronger than your self-control? 

If so, what are you doing to starve your temptation?

Be encouraged that if you are a believer in Jesus, you have been given self-control.  Now, how can you strategically use the self-control you have to avoid temptation earlier so it is much easier to avoid sin later?