Now for this very reason also, applying all diligence, in your faith supply moral excellence, and in your moral excellence, knowledge, and in your knowledge, self-control, and in your self-control, perseverance, and in your perseverance, godliness, ad in your godliness, brotherly kindness, and in your brotherly kindness, love (II Peter 1:5-7)
How can I say this delicately? Without being too offensive? Self-control is what we want babies to learn so that we not longer have to change their diapers. We want them to use a toilet, but effectively, we are hoping that they will learn to take care of their own dirty diapers (by not dirtying them anymore.)
Before we become Christians, we are like babies. After we become Christians, God causes us to begin to grow up. Oh, there are some people to whom God gives a gift of miraculous self-control. They walk away from the messes of their old life and never look back. Most of us continue to make a mess, and even to play in it. Over time, we learn that this or that is "cucky." Sometimes we just seem to grow out of it. Often, there is something that just seems to give us diarrhea and all our vaunted self-control is gone. We're just praying we'll make it to the toilet - or altar.
Self-control is sometimes another of the aspects of the fruit of the Spirit we aren't quite as enthusiastic about. We tend to think it means giving up everything. Perhaps if we thought about it as not messing our diapers (or pants, or life) we'd see the value a little more clearly.
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