Just imagine what your life would be like if you had an endless supply of self-control. No longer would you yell at your kids or binge on junk food or max out your credit card buying shoes you don’t need. No longer would you have to muster up the willpower to overcome your faults, only to fail at your goals again and again. Instead, you’d watch yourself climb mountains, tackle problems, and conquer any frustrating challenge that comes your way.
The thought almost seems too good to be true, doesn’t it? Deep down, it’s the life we all want to live—the life we keep trying to live, but for some reason, we just can’t do it. No matter how hard we try, we just keep crashing and burning. In our weakness, we give in and go right back to our same old bad habits and patterns. We’re often left feeling hopeless and helpless—like we’ll never be able to accomplish any of our goals or dreams.
But what if there really is a way to get unlimited self-control? And what if it’s been right under our noses all this time, only we’ve never opened our eyes to see it? It’s true, you know. The scriptures reveal it all in black and white. The gospel of Jesus Christ shows us exactly how to find all the self-control we’ll ever need to overcome every single bad habit or vice we may struggle with.
I think the reason we may have missed it is because our current culture has been trying to get us to follow its own ideas on mastering our weakness. There are plans and programs and counting calories and macros and willpower and accountability partners. While all those things may be well and good, they don’t always bring lasting change.
Because, you see, Christ has offered us a better way.
One of my favorite passages that outlines His plan is found in John 15. The setting is just a few short hours before the Savior’s crucifixion. As they leave the remnants of the Last Supper behind, I envision Jesus and His disciples passing a grape vine on their way to the Garden of Gethsemane, and in that moment, He stops, grasps a branch in His hand, and begins to teach:
“Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me. I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing” (John 15:4-5).
So, do you want to see abundant growth in your life? Do you want to see an epic explosion of fruitfulness and success and progress? If so, there’s only one way to do it. You must abide in Christ. In other words, you must soak up all the nourishment and strength and genius you can get from Him, or your life will just end up looking like a dead branch with nothing to show but empty, barren limbs.
Notice that Jesus tells us twice in this passage that we can’t do it by ourselves. As branches, we can’t bear any fruit on our own. In fact, He makes it quite clear that, without His help, we can do nothing. Left to ourselves, we’ll just go in circles—trying and failing and trying and failing and never really getting anywhere. Never becoming transformed and changed at all—just stuck in the same old rut and dealing with the same old problems. It’s a very different approach than what we hear from all the worldly cheerleaders, but an approach that’s filled to the brim with life-changing power and perspective.
In Galatians 5:22, we’re taught more about the fruit we can grow in our life through the enabling power of Christ. Paul says, “the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, [and] temperance.” It’s a wonderful list filled with all the things we know we need to become.
What we really need to do, though, is zero in on the last word on his list. It’s temperance, a term which isn’t used very often in our day and age. But here’s the cool thing: if you check out the footnotes for verse 23, guess what the original Greek word for temperance means? Self-control. Hidden right there in that one simple verse is the very thing we’ve been looking for all along.
More importantly, Paul tells us that self-control is a fruit of the Spirit. It’s not a fruit of our willpower or a fruit of our goal-setting or a fruit of our efforts to try harder to succeed. No, the only way we can get it is as a gift from the Lord through the power of the Holy Ghost. And the good news is, He can fill us with all the self-control we could ever need. Then we really will climb those mountains and conquer those weaknesses, but we’ll do it—not through our own genius and strength—but through His.
I know this is true because I’ve experienced it in my own personal life. For a very long time, I followed the world’s guidance in trying to conquer my stubborn addiction to sugar. I tried and failed more times than I can count. But then I read John 15 and Galatians 5:22 and other verses that taught me the Lord’s way to overcome my weakness. Long story short, I’ve now been free from my addiction for over 13 years.
I’m here to testify that unlimited self-control isn’t just a pipe dream. It really is attainable, but it comes to us only as a fruit of the Spirit. And it’s a fruit we can feast on with such abundance that it will change our lives—and hearts—forever.
All we need to do is ask for it.
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