It's become acceptable to have a vice of some sort. The problem is that those vices can take over our lives before we know it. I am guilty of failing to have self-control in many areas. I do what I hate. I yell at my children when I desire to speak gentle words to them. I speak harshly to my husband out of exhaustion rather than speak kindly to him. I eat the rest of the ice cream when I said that I was sick of feeling sluggish from eating unhealthy foods. I loathe myself at times for my lack of self-control. What can I do? I can look to scripture to see that it will take my whole body to exhibit this virtue rather than a feeling or desire to be better. Elisabeth Elliot says it best:
"More spiritual failure is due, I believe, to this cause than to any other: the failure to recognize this living body as having anything to do with worship or holy sacrifice. This body is, quite simply, the starting place. Failure here is failure everywhere else...We cannot give our hearts to God and keep our bodies for ourselves."
Worshiping God takes my entire self. I cannot have self-control without giving my entire body to Him. When I stay up too late watching a television program or surfing the internet aimlessly, I fail to wake up rested. Failure to get the rest my body needs leads to a grumpy mother and wife and so forth and so on. See Paul's exhortation to us in Romans 12: 1-2:
I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.
So may we use our whole bodies in His service; whatever sacrifices we have to make to have self-control will be well worth it.
