MEN ALIVE: Jim Cunningham & Paul Estabrooks' Podcast
Programs to help men become transformed to the image (character) of Jesus Christ.
MEN ALIVE: Jim Cunningham & Paul Estabrooks' Podcast
MEN ALIVE 218 - SELF CONTROL - Biblical Perspectives on Control Issues
Who's really pulling the strings in your life? Brace yourself for a deep dive into control - external, internal, and eternal - with Dr. Jim Cunningham, a celebrated consultant in adult education, director of Go Teach Global, and author of the book Men Alive. With Dr. Jim as our guide, we explore the spiritual battlefield that exists between God and the forces of evil, tracing the struggle for control back to the Garden of Eden and its implications for our modern world. This discussion will challenge your views, stimulate your thoughts, and hopefully inspire you to align your thoughts, intentions, words, actions, and habits with the character of Jesus Christ. Join us on this illuminating discourse about the potent concept of control and the role we play within it. Be prepared to rethink who is truly in control of your life.
Welcome to Men Alive, a biblical journey to help us conform to the image of Jesus Christ. I'm your host, paul Estabrooks, our teacher, is my longtime friend, dr Jim Cunningham, consultant in adult education, director of Go Teach Global and author of the book Men Alive, jim. Over the years of our friendship we were privileged to travel and teach in many countries. I recall us lining up with our passports to cross a border, reading a sign in English that said passport control.
Speaker 2:And we would jokingly say to each other life is a control issue and everybody wants to be in control. This appears true in every country we visited. Let's consider three factors that determine who is in control. First, external controls. Whether it is the government or our employer or a neighbor or a family member, it feels like somebody is trying to control us, to regulate the amount of freedom we have. Like birds in a cage, humans often desire to exceed their limits, to go beyond the horizon to check out the green grass on the other side of the fence. God knows we need some external controls.
Speaker 2:Scripture reminds authorities to balance control with justice. Fathers are told provoke not your children to wrath lest they become discouraged. Second, internal controls or self-control. This is the kind of control we exert over our personal actions, what we do or say or write, when we are in full, unobservable control. Verbs 23,7 says as a man thinks in his heart, so is he. When a man's thoughts, words and actions align with Scripture and he is filled with the Holy Spirit, he is able to control his responses to people and events. That is called self-control. When we are filled with the Holy Spirit, we will exhibit these nine character qualities of the Holy Spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.
Speaker 1:None of the countries we visited, as far as we know, have any laws against those nine character qualities. No country has a law telling their citizens they cannot exhibit joy or kindness or self-control this brings us to the third force that controls us.
Speaker 2:Let's call it eternal control. God works through the Bible, in the Holy Spirit, to guide our thoughts, intents, words, actions and habits to bring them into alignment with the character of Jesus Christ. This one is a challenge for most men to accept. Think about it for a moment. The Bible teaches that God is a relational God. He made the earth and all that is within it and he declares to man what are his thoughts. As Jesus said If you love me, keep my commandments. So we ought to desire, as men, to practice self-control because we want to please our heavenly Father, whom we love.
Speaker 2:God made every person on earth in his image. The food we eat, the oxygen we breathe are under his control. In him we live and move and have our being. Romans 2, 14-16 says Even Gentiles who do not have God's written law show that they know his law when they instinctively obey it, even without having heard it. They demonstrate that God's law is written in their hearts for their own conscience and thoughts either accuse them or tell them that they are doing right. And this is the message I proclaim that the day is coming when God, through Christ Jesus, will judge everyone's secret life.
Speaker 1:That trilogy helps us answer who is in control? Controls are internal, external and eternal. The ongoing battle for control began before God made man. He first created angelic beings, but one of those angelic beings decided he wanted to be in control and he led a rebellion against God. But the rebellion failed and that angel, called by a variety of names in the Bible, lucifer, our adversary, the destroyer, the evil one, the deceiver, the father of lies, was cast out of heaven and sent to earth.
Speaker 2:God then created Adam and Eve, male and female, in his image, and every human that lives on earth. No one is here by accident. God made you. He told Jeremiah I knew you before. I formed you in your mother's womb, before you were born. I set you apart and appointed you as my prophet to the nations.
Speaker 2:Ephesians 2 2 says you used to live in sin, just like the rest of the world, obeying the devil, the commander of the powers of the unseen world. He is the spirit at work in the hearts of those who refuse to obey God. We are in a spiritual war zone between God and the forces of evil. The earth became Satan's domain. That is why God sent his son Emmanuel, meaning God, with us to be born, live and die as our substitutionary atonement for our sins. We are born again into the God's kingdom of light, but we remain living on earth in the evil one's kingdom of darkness. Today, god will call us home to be with him in heaven, where he is in full control.
Speaker 2:Years ago, paul, you and I heard a speaker teach the difference between our rights and our responsibilities. In essence, we have no rights. We did not choose or control who became our parents, where we were born. When we were born, or our physical size, shape and color of skin. It was all beyond our control. So, in essence, we have no rights to be here. God made us and God chose us. Would it be theologically correct to say we have no rights as Christians, only responsibilities with privileges?
Speaker 1:Our responsibility as men is to be accountable to the God who made us. He is in ultimate eternal control.
Speaker 2:For several months the entire world was experiencing a pandemic called COVID-19. Debates raged across the globe over who caused it, who benefited from it, who used it to manipulate our behavior. People were asking who is in control. Ironically, the World Health Organization's initials in English spell W-H-O. But we know God works all things after the counsel of His will. God is ultimately in control. He can take anything our enemy does and turn it into His good and acceptable and perfect will. Joseph said it best to his brothers after spending time in prison you meant it for evil, god meant it for good. Many times in the Bible there was a control issue between what God planned and what man wanted to do.
Speaker 1:You are listening to Men Alive, with Dr Jim Cunningham from Go Teach Global. Be sure to take a look at our resources available on our website at goteachglobalcom. That's goteachglobalcom we're discussing today the ninth and final fruit of the Spirit, called self-control. Control issues actually started in the Garden of Eden. God was in full control and made the rules, but Eve rebelled and disobeyed God's rules. Consequences Genesis 3.16 says. Then God said to the woman I will sharpen the pain of your pregnancy and in pain you will give birth and you will desire to control your husband, but he will rule over you. Thus began the conflict of the ages between husbands and wives, the desire to control each other.
Speaker 2:Then, in Genesis 4.7,. Cain was jealous of his brother Abel's sacrifice being accepted and his being rejected. So God said to Cain you will be accepted if you do what is right, but if you refuse to do what is right, then watch out. Sin is crouching at the door, eager to control you, but you must subdue it and be its master. The first warning of the spiritual battle is anger and jealousy. Notice, it says we must exercise self-control. The evil around us is crouching like a lion to spring on us and destroy our reputation and our life. Cain had none of our modern evils to blame for his sin no Hollywood movies, no pornography, no TV, no gangs, no drug dealers. Cain was one man who gave control of his emotions to the evil one. If there was only Adam Eve, cain enabled, we could say Cain committed the first genocide on earth when he killed his brother and wiped out 25% of the earth's known population.
Speaker 1:David wrote in Psalm 4-4, don't sin by letting anger control you. Think about it overnight and remain silent. Anger is perhaps the best evidence that we have lost self-control. Proverbs 5.23 says the foolish man will die for lack of self-control. He will be lost because of his great foolishness.
Speaker 2:While we are to exercise self-control, the reality is that God is in ultimate control. We have freedom to make choices, to make plans, but God determines the outcomes.
Speaker 1:Daniel understood this very clearly when he wrote in Daniel 2-2, God controls the course of world events. He removes kings and sets up other kings. He gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to the scholars. He told the king in verse 38, God has made you the ruler over all the inhabited world and has put even the wild animals and birds under your control.
Speaker 2:And Daniel has the courage to tell a second king you have not honored the God who gives you the breath of life and controls your destiny. Daniel understood who was in control, but we need to keep in mind that Daniel had lost control in many areas of his own life. It appears from Scripture Daniel lost control of where he lived. He was taken captive from Israel to Babylon. He lost control of his name. Daniel's name in Hebrew meant God is my judge. It was changed to the Persian name Belt Shazzar, meaning Bill's Prince. Many sources suggest Daniel was made a eunuch, which means he lost control of ever having his own family lineage. But in all this, daniel still served the living God, our God, the maker of heaven and earth, the God who gives us the very air we breathe. For one more minute, our God Yahweh is in control. Paul, this is a good time to look at how the Holy Spirit helps exercise God's control in our lives. Can you read Romans 8, 5 to 11, please?
Speaker 1:Those who are dominated by the sinful nature think about sinful things, but those who are controlled by the Holy Spirit think about things that please the spirit. So letting your sinful nature control your mind leads to death, but letting the spirit control your mind leads to life and peace. For the sinful nature is always hostile to God. It never did obey God's laws and it never will. That's why those who are still under the control of their sinful nature can never please God.
Speaker 1:But if you are not controlled by your sinful nature, you are controlled by the Spirit, if you have the Spirit of God living in you, and remember that those who do not have the Spirit of Christ living in them do not belong to Him at all. And Christ lives within you. So, even though your body will die because of sin, the Spirit gives you life because you have been made right with God. The Spirit of God, who raised Christ from the dead, lives in you, and just as God raised Jesus Christ from the dead, he will give life to your mortal bodies by this same Spirit living within you.
Speaker 2:That is a powerful ass-age. Men, we are to be both self-controlled and Spirit-controlled. Why? Because God is in control. The Apostle Paul tells the Christians in 2 Corinthians 5.14,. Christ's love controls us. Since we believe that Christ died for all, we also believe that we have all died to our old life God is ultimately in control. Therefore, I have no rights to follow my own selfish agenda. I exercise self-control not by demanding my rights, but by fulfilling my responsibilities as guided by the Holy.
Speaker 1:Spirit. There you have it, men. Our goal is to become transformed to the image of Christ, to be men alive, filled with the Holy Spirit. There is no law against producing the fruit of the Spirit, including the three inner character qualities faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Men Alive is a production of Go Teach Global. Visit our website at goteachglobalcom for more programs and resources. Until next time, I'm Paul Easterbrooks, on behalf of Dr Jim Cunningham, encouraging you to become men alive, transformed into the image of Jesus Christ.
