7/27/08 Self-Control
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Our study of the first chapter of Peter’s second letter

has brought us to the third progressive step

in our Lord’s growth design for us as His children.

And just so that I never run the risk of giving the wrong message

let me remind us of the reason why our Lord does what He’s doing in our lives.

He is doing it because it helps us to grow in our friendship with Him,

our epignosis of our God.

As we share with Him

this life-long process of becoming a partaker of the divine nature

we learn things about our Creator

that simply could not be learned any other way.

And our study of Peter’s words to us

has taken us through a close examination

of the first two steps in this growth process -

...to your faith supply moral excellence, and to your moral excellence knowledge...

And now, this morning,

we will move on to the third step in that process,

...and to your knowledge self-control...

But before we can understand what’s involved in this self-control thing

we’re going to need a little background

about the whole area of our emotions in our lives.

And actually I need to go back even farther than that

and begin with a few comments about the broken areas in our lives.

I see so much of what is done in the name of religion

falling off on one of two tragic cliffs

when it comes to dealing with those areas of rebuilding

that we all struggle with inside.

First, there is one branch of religion

that tries to drive God’s people into change

by heaping guilt,

and shame,

and fear of condemnation and judgment on them

if they fail to bring their lives up to standard.

The evils of sin

and the obligation of the believer

to try harder

and do more

and recommit one more time

are constant themes

that futilely attempt to equip the flesh

to perform the work

that only the Spirit of God

has the power to accomplish .

And then, on the other side, there is another whole group

who try to pretend

that the broken areas don’t really exist any more,

or if they do they don’t really matter.

“I’ve been sanctified,

I’ve been filled with the Spirit,

I’ve been transformed.

No problems here any more!

Everything is just great!!”

They’ll build a nice, tidy external image

that proclaims to all around,

‟Hey! Everything is great here!

No more problems,

no more pain.

It’s all under the blood of Christ.”

Neither approach brings healing, of course.

The first approach frantically tries to whip the flesh

into some reasonably acceptable level of performance,

while the other refuses to face the need for change altogether

until the whole mess explodes in their face.

Neither approach is pretty,

but it’s the stuff religion is made of -

emotion-based performance

and denial of reality.

God’s alternative is not difficult to grasp,

but it seems to be embraced

by so very few of God’s people.

It’s not complicated.

It simply calls us to trust

that we truly have been freed forever from the wrath of God,

and then begin building

the kind and quality of love relationship with Him

that allows Him to start changing us

from the inside out,

not driven by fear,

or shame,

or guilt,

and not living in denial

about the broken areas of our lives.

We are not a healthy society

when it comes to our emotions.

And we bring that unhealthiness

right with us into our relationship

with our Lord.

Our emotional mechanism as God designed it

is really the most remarkable system.

Our emotions add a richness,

and depth,

and dimension to life

that is a central part of the way God designed us.

Our emotions motivate us to action,

they protect us,

they warn us,

they turn a black and white snap-shot of the world

into a vivid three-dimensional reality.

If what we believe

doesn’t affect what we feel

we don’t really believe it.

If what we choose

doesn’t affect what we feel

we haven’t truly chosen.

Our emotions are no more evil or inherently hostile to true Christian living

than is our mind

or our wills

or our physical bodies.

They are a carefully designed part

of the total person God created us to be.

The problems arise

not in the fact that we feel,

but rather in the distorted ways

we tend to relate to our feelings.

Feelings are amazing things.

And it has been my observation

that the Christian community seems to gravitate towards two extremes.

First, there are those who allow their entire life to be governed by feelings.

The “Leading of the Spirit” for such a person

is virtually synonymous with whatever they happen to be feeling at the moment.

“I just feel it’s right”.

“I just felt this incredible peace about it”.

“I can just feel the Spirit.”

And then there are those who attempt to totally deny their emotions.

They may actually fear feeling anything

or certainly fear expressing what they feel.

Anything that involves feelings is suspect.

And it’s not just within our the church world

that these two extremes exist.

I think most people typically make two major blunders with their feelings.

For some it’s easy to let feelings lead their lives.

Choices are made on the basis of what they feel.

I feel afraid

therefore I should run away.

I feel hurt

therefore I should break off the relationship.

I feel angry

therefore I should attack.

It is essential that we never forget

that feelings have no reasoning abilities within them.

The feeling itself

cannot tell us why we feel the way we feel,

nor can it tell us what we should do

in response to that feeling.

Any approach to life that rests upon

setting a direction on the basis of our feelings

will ultimately destroy us.

Feelings are very much like our little dog, Pepper, who was a part of our family many years ago.

They both make tremendous companions in life,

but terrible leaders.

When I’d take Pepper for a walk

he saw the whole world as an exciting adventure.

He would sniff everything,

chase anything,

wander anywhere his little doggie impulses led him.

But the only way those walks would work

is if I was always ultimately the leader.

If I would have ever turned the leadership over to him

we would never have made it back home again.

And the second major error we make with our emotions

is to not listen carefully

to what our emotions are telling us

or even worse, to condemn ourselves

for what we feel.

That may sound like a contradiction -

don’t let them lead

yet listen carefully to them.

Let me explain.

There are times when our emotions

are very much like the gauges in a car.

Those gauges are designed

to tell us what’s going on deep inside the engine.

They tell us engine temperature,

oil pressure,

and whether or not our electrical system is working correctly.

There are times when what we feel

can give us tremendous insight into what’s really going on deep inside us.

In human relationships

our emotions have an amazing ability

to respond to the real message that is being communicated to us by another person

regardless of what words may be said.

I’ll give you an example.

You and a friend have arranged to go out to lunch together.

Your friend has said he will pick you up at noon.

You are at the appointed meeting place at noon,

and then you wait...and wait...and wait.

12:00...12:05...12:10.....12:25

Finally your friend shows up

and when you get into the car he says,

“Sorry I’m a little late - I had a few things to take care of in town and wanted to get them out of the way before lunch.”

Now, logically it’s no big deal,

but emotionally you would probably respond with feelings of hurt, anger, resentment.

Why?

Because your emotions are responding to the real message being communicated.

Your friend has just told you with his actions, “My to-do list was more important to me this morning than my friendship with you.”

In his priorities, you are just one notch below his junk mail at the Post Office.

That hurts!

And unless we’re alert to it

we can give these messages to those who matter the most to us.

Our child walks into the room asking us for help with their homework and we say,

“Don’t bother me I’m reading the paper.”,

or just “Wait until this program is over.”

Our emotions tend to hear and respond to the real messages in human communications.

Certainly we do at times misread the message being given,

sometimes even reading in messages that do not exist,

but frequently what we “feel”

is more consistent with what’s really being said then are the words that are spoken.

And unresolved emotions do not go away.

Ultimately they must be dealt with

or they will find some form of expression.

We all have our preferred ways of handling strong or unresolved feelings.

We may blow up,

or fall apart,

or just shut down altogether - we simply refuse to allow ourselves to feel anything.

On a scale of 1 to 10,

if we are dealing with our feelings on a regular basis,

we respond to situations with appropriate emotional responses.

A 1 or 2 situation

gets a 1or 2 response.

If someone cuts in front of us on the road

we get irritated,

but we don’t explode in uncontrollable rage.

This past week Sandee opened the entry closet in our house

and found that her coat was wet...

it was wet because water was dripping through the ceiling in the closet.

In my emotion response scale

that’s about a 4 for me.

It’s not trivial,

but neither is it a major life crisis.

And I’m pleased to announce that it got about a “4" response from me.

But if we don’t deal with our feelings as they enter our lives,

if instead we stuff them,

our gauge goes up,

and it takes increasing emotional energy

to keep the lid on.

And it isn’t long before, just under the surface,

we are living constantly at an 8 or 9.

Then, when a 1or 2 irritation comes along

it pegs our emotion level up to a 10

and we fall apart or explode.

I am a superb emotional stuffer.

In certain situations I’ll just shut down emotionally.

During the past 30 years

the Lord has used Sandee

to help restore emotional health

and balance to my life

by her giving me permission to feel

and a safe environment in which to do so.

And before we move on here,

let me mention two really stupid statements,

one that we make to others

and one that we make to ourselves.

The first is,“You shouldn’t feel that way!”,

and the second is, “I shouldn’t feel this way!”

Telling ourselves or others that we shouldn’t feel something

is like telling the gas gauge on a car

that it shouldn’t point to empty when there is no gas in the tank.

Often our emotions are our God-given gauges

that help tell us what’s going on inside us.

When I find some strong emotional response within me

I try to ask myself, “Why did I react so strongly?

What message am I really hearing here?”

And then hopefully I’ll be able to go on to the next essential question and ask,

“Is the message true? How should I respond?”

OK, with all of that background

let me bring us back to Peter’s progressive steps of growth

and apply some of this to step 3, self-control.

And let me first offer you a definition

of what self-control is.

Self-control is the ability to choose to do what we know is right at those times when our emotions are lying to us.

You see,

even though there are many times

when our emotional responses can give us tremendous insight

into things that are going on inside us or around us,

at the same time our emotions have no reasoning capacity within them,

no ability to know

whether what we feel

is really consistent with the truth.

And there are times

when our emotions simply lie to us -

times when we will FEEL something intensely that is simply not consistent with the truth.

You see, there are times in each of our lives,

in fact there are times every day we live

when our emotions tell us lies.

I remember years ago,

before they reworked sections of the road between here and Anchorage,

there was one long stretch

that had a tree stump right next to the road

that looked exactly like a huge bull moose from a distance.

I can’t tell you how many times I came around that corner,

saw that stump,

and reacted to it emotionally

exactly like it was a moose moving onto the road.

There was an instant surge of adrenaline,

heightened senses and reaction time,

increased heart rate as my emotions told me to prepare for a potentially life-threatening encounter.

Those kinds of emotional lies are relatively easy to deal with

because once we see the truth

our emotions fall in line with what we know to be true.

But there are other situations in which

our emotions do not respond so quickly

because our minds simply do not recognize and process the truth.

There are times when every Christian

feels intensely lonely,

or abandoned,

and or forgotten by God.

To judge by our feelings

we would say with certainty

that He does not even exist,

and if He does

He certainly does not love us

or care about us

or take notice of where we are

or the pain we feel.

I can remember well my own adult life

in the years before I met Sandee.

Loneliness during those years

was a constant companion.

In fact, I had a funny little phrase

I use to repeat to myself

because it so accurately characterized my life during my first decade as an adult -

‟And once a day I get lonely...”

If I would have operated on the basis of my feelings

during that period of my life

I would have proclaimed with confidence

that God either cannot feel our loneliness

or does not care about it

or is powerless to heal it.

My feelings during those times

were often intense,

but they were in no way consistent with the truth.

My Lord felt my pain with me,

and loved me deeply,

and was actively fighting for my healing and the growth I desperately needed

in order to prepare me for the future He had for me.

Those are only a few examples -

sometimes our emotions will tell us

we are trapped, with no way out.

Sometimes they will tell us

God’s pattern and design for relationships

is all wrong and will never work.

Sometimes they will tell us

that being honest will destroy us.

Sometimes we will feel like

selfishness or revenge or bitterness or hatred

are the only ways to even the score

or meet our needs.

Lies.

All lies.

And self-control as Peter discusses it here

is that ability to choose to act in harmony with what we know is right

even when our emotions are telling us lies.

By its very nature

it is a quality of life

that requires a significant level of maturity.

It requires us to have made at least some progress

in that knowledge level of grow that precedes it,

that level at which we begin to understand so many of the truths about our God.

And perseverance, the next level of maturity, is the ability to exercise self-control as long as God asks us to do so:

an hour

a week

a year

or a life-time.

And in saying this I certainly don’t want to leave you with the impression

that our emotions

are in any way evil

or ungodly

or bad.

Emotions just are -

they are a given in God’s design for us.

Our calling as Christians

is to allow Him to show us how to relate to them

in the context of what He has shown us is true.