Living the Self-Controlled Life

I love it when God does stuff that shows you He is at work. One part of my daily devotions is “Bite of Bread” by Andy Lee on Periscope – @wordsbyandylee. Every morning around 7:20 Central time, I get that whistle from Periscope. It is as if Andy is knocking on the door saying, “Are you ready to see what God has in store?” This morning, however, I was asking God how He wanted me to write about self-control when all of Titus 2 was about self-control. Funny thing is Andy was talking about the same section of Titus 2 that I was looking at. WOW! I could say here is the YouTube link and be done with it, but I’m not. I want to make sure you get what I got from it. So let’s take a look at Titus 2:11-14;

For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people,  training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.

Many of us think of self-control as in the picture with all kinds of cheesecake around and eating a salad. It seems that most teaching about self-control is around food and drinking. BUT is that what the verse her in Titus is saying?  To live a self-controlled life around food and drink? Or is there more than just those areas that we need to have self-control? What other areas do we need to have self-control in?

One area that comes to my mind is marriage. How fast are we to come back when we are in a disagreement?  Do we get defensive first thing or do really take the time to hear what our husbands are saying to us?

Or waiting to check out at the grocery store?  Standing there in line, longer than what it took you to get what you wanted, are you grumbling or making the best of it? What about the lady that cut you off as you were getting ready to go to a shorter line?

One more area is the freeway.  I don’t know about where you live but here in the Ft. Worth area they are working on the freeways to make traffic move better and currently traffic doesn’t move because of the work. It is more like a parking lot. My son raced my husband one time to see who could get home faster and my son taking side streets made it home before my husband did on the freeway. How is your self-control there?

What are we to do? How do we get self-control? That is what blew me away this morning in watching Andy. She pointed out that it is the saving grace that we already have when we come to Jesus, that grace teaches us how to live self-controlled lives. We don’t have to do anything except ask the Lord for His grace. He doesn’t tell us to do something without already giving it to us to walk out. That is truly GRACE!

If you would like to find out more about the “Bite of Bread”, go to; Andy Lee page.