Galatians 5:23 — Self-Control
“But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against these things!”
Have you ever begged and pleaded and bargained with God to do something that you knew he could do? Something that would be totally within his will, like blind people seeing and lame people walking kinds of stuff. Maybe you’ve asked, “Why aren’t you unleashing your full power right now, God??” The answer: deliberate restraint.
We don’t often think about the fact that God has to use self-control. Imagine that you are watching a masterpiece to which you devoted an intense amount of work and creativity get slowly ripped into shreds piece by piece. Most of us would lash out and rush to stop the destruction. And then we would sit and weep helplessly over the ruined creation. But God, perhaps to us seeming indifferent to the suffering in the world, waits. He holds back. He restrains himself from snatching back what is rightfully his in order to think and act strategically. Far from helpless, he is containing his power until the timing is exactly right for the outcome he desires most.
The fact that God is loving and patient and kind and good means we can trust his self-control. His deliberate restraint is for reasons that stem from his deeply trustworthy character. This is made evident in God’s conversation with Job, in which he challenges Job’s questions with a reassuring but firm, “You weren’t there at the beginning so you don’t get why I do what I do.”
Here’s your freedom for today: God knows what he is doing in your life. He knows the timing of every step and every breath. When perhaps it seems like he is far away, he is deeply involved, waiting for the precise moment for the right kind of action. When we don’t get what God is doing, that’s okay. He can handle our questions and frustrations. But we can also remind ourselves in those moments that God is exercising tremendous self-control that benefits our lives when it is used in our direction to save us undeservedly. Will you trust in his goodness through that process?