Self-Control Is Important To Living A Virtuous Life

Self-Control Is Important To Living A Virtuous Life

2 Peter 1:5-7 “For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, virtue with knowledge, knowledge with self-control, self-control with endurance, endurance with devotion, devotion with mutual affection, mutual affection with love.”

Today’s verse came from the Ascension press app. They have a daily devotional, which I never listen to. However, today, the subject is about living with virtue. We don’t really hear much about this in this day and age, so it got my attention. The person who did the devotional was Hudson Byblow. He is a Catholic Speaker from Canada. He talked about how our faith proposes that we strive to live a life of virtue.

Hudson drew our attention to the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) paragraph 1803, which says, ”Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.” A virtue is a habitual and firm disposition to do good. It allows the person not only to perform good acts but to give the best of himself. The virtuous person tends toward the good with all his sensory and spiritual powers; he pursues the good and chooses it in concrete actions. The goal of a virtuous life is to become like God.

I like how this paragraph tells us to focus our thoughts on the things that are honorable, just, pure, lovely, or gracious—anything of excellence or worthy of praise. I also like that the description defines virtue in a way that we can all understand. It says a virtue is a habitual and firm disposition to do good. Do we have a firm disposition to do good? Do we focus our thoughts on those things that are good, or do we focus our thoughts on the fears and worries of the world? Do we focus our thoughts on those we don’t like and what they are doing wrong instead of focusing on ourselves and everything we could be doing right?

The CCC says that when we have virtue, it allows us not only to perform good acts but to give the best of ourselves.

The other part about what it says in the CCC is that The virtuous person tends toward the good with all his sensory or spiritual powers; he pursues the good and chooses it in concrete actions. This part of what the CCC says ties back into the rest of the verse above.

Remember the verse above says, “For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, virtue with knowledge, knowledge with self-control, self-control with endurance, endurance with devotion, devotion with mutual affection, mutual affection with love.” It starts with how we should supplement our faith with virtue, which we just defined. Then is says virtue with knowledge. How can we focus our thoughts on what is good if we don’t know what is good? We need to spend time in God’s Word and learn what is good and what is honorable because the world is telling us to live the opposite of how the Lord wants us to live. We need to seek knowledge if we want to live a virtuous life.

Next, it goes on to say, “Knowledge with self-control.” Self-control is a big one. I don’t think we realize how big of an impact self-control has on our lives and our ability to live virtuously. l struggle with self-control. This is interesting to me because a few years ago, I did much better. I think it is always a struggle for us, but at some points in our lives, we do better than at other points in our lives. When I was doing great with self-control, I was listening to a lot of personal development podcasts I was listening to a lot of religious podcasts, and Bible studies. This truly helped me have more self-control. I was listening to people telling me every day that I didn’t need to give into my every whim. They were telling me I could do hard things. They were filling my mind with the truth and the light of God.

Lately, I have been filling my time with other things, and I have not been listening to those same podcasts. I have not been in scripture as much as I was, and so it is no wonder I am struggling with self-control. I can really see what this verse is saying about how we need to supplement our knowledge with self-control and our self-control with endurance. I believe the enemy is tricking us all into believing that self-control is not important.

I know he whispers in my ear that God doesn’t mind if I eat those cookies or if I drink that soda. He tells me God wants me to be happy. This is true; God does want us to be happy. This is why the enemy’s lies work so well. He tells us things that are half-truths or things that are true but not relevant to the situation. For instance, yes, God wants us to be happy. However, He doesn’t just want us to be happy. He is more concerned with the state of our soul than He is with our happiness. Also, God knows that eating a whole package of cookies and drinking soda all day won’t make us happy. We are searching for something to make us happy instead of turning to the Lord to make us happy.

God cares about our self-control because it is needed to help us become virtuous people. It said above in the section of the CCC, “he pursues the good and chooses it in concrete actions.” We can’t choose good in concrete actions if we have no self-control. Choosing the good isn’t always easy. Often it is hard to do the right thing. If we don’t have self-control, we will not be able to do the hard thing. I heard a saying, I am not sure who said it but the saying is about giving money to the church. They say, “If you don’t give 10% of a dollar when you have no money, you won’t give 10% of a million dollars when you do have money. I think the same is true with self-control. If we don’t practice self-control in the small things, like eating too many cookies, then we will struggle to have self-control in the big things like keeping our word to others or keeping the commandments. If we go throughout our life giving in to every whim and every desire it will be very hard to live a virtuous life.

This is why this verse is so important. It reminds us that we need more. It reminds us to supplement our faith with things that will help us grow closer to the Lord and also closer to heaven. Let me leave you with the verse. How about we all take some time today and ponder this verse? We can think about the life we are living and see if there is anything we can take away from this verse to help us live our lives better! “For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, virtue with knowledge, knowledge with self-control, self-control with endurance, endurance with devotion, devotion with mutual affection, mutual affection with love.”

Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless each person listening to this episode today. Lord, you are amazing. We ask that you help us exhibit self-control. Strengthen us and give us the knowledge that through you, we can do all things. We ask you to show us what we need to learn from this verse and help us apply it in our lives. We ask you to help us live a more virtuous life. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!

Thank you for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. We are starting a new topic in Mentoring this month. We will be exploring what it means to surrender to the Lord truly. Surrender your problems, surrender your love, surrender all you have to the Lord. We tend to ask the Lord to fix our problems, then take them back from Him and try to fix them ourselves. This month, we will be looking at how to hand them over to Him and then not take them back again. If this is something you struggle with, I hope you will join us this month for mentoring. It is just $30 monthly with no commitment, so cancel anytime. Give it a try, what have you got to lose? I look forward to meeting you all here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!

Today’s Word from the Lord was received in January 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email [email protected]. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “You are my sheep. I have clothed you with the finest of wool. Fear not, for I always go before you.”

www.findingtruenorthcoaching.com

CLICK HERE TO DONATE

CLICK HERE to sign up for Mentoring 

CLICK HERE to sign up for Daily "Word from the Lord" emails

CLICK HERE to sign up for free audio training about inviting Jesus into your daily life

CLICK HERE to buy my book Total Trust in God's Safe Embrace