The Advent of Self-Control – December 22, 2013

Suggested Reading: Hebrews 12

Choices.

There is a saying that life is what happens while you are making other plans. This pithy maxim hints at the fact that our lives are largely made up of a myriad of small choices. These choices determine the overall direction of our lives. It is not our intentions that determine our direction, but the actual choices that we make and the consequences that follow those choices.

Mary was chosen, but she had a choice. She chose to submit to the will of God as revealed through the angel Gabriel. It is difficult for us to imagine the path before the unwed Galilean peasant girl. In her initial response to the angel, she was confused and disturbed. She knew that to be found pregnant without a husband might well mean her death. She questioned the angel, but at the end of the conversation, she chose to trust and pledged herself to God’s service.

Joseph too had a choice. He must have been very upset when he found that his bride to be was pregnant. He had decided not to press charges, which would have meant her death and that of the unborn child. He was not about to marry her under the circumstances, until he too had an angelic visitor who reminded him of the ancient prophecies. He chose to believe the angel and cherished Mary and her unborn child.

Without the choices of these two nobodies, simple people from a small town, the Messiah would not have been born. Imagine the pressure they would have felt to make the opposite choices. Imagine the fear and the uncertainty. From where we sit, two thousand years later, reading the familiar story, we can miss the stress and difficulty, and in doing so we miss the beauty of their self-control. They exercised their will and became a part of the greatest story ever lived.

As Jesus grew in wisdom and in stature, in favour with God and man, He learned obedience through suffering. What must it have been like for Him to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous treatment at the hands of sinful man, when the power of heaven was His to command? He wrestled in the Garden of Gethsemane, facing a torturous death, but chose to endure the pain and shame of the cross in obedience to the will of the Father. Through His death and resurrection, He made a way for us to live with God, and His self-control can become ours.

We have daily choices and wrestle with conflicting desires. In this we are not alone, we have the Spirit of Christ in us, the Spirit of self-control to show us the way and help us to choose it.

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Questions:

What choices do you have before you today?

What might God be asking you to do?

What areas of your life require self-control today?