HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!
Yeah, we made it into 2019 and that is another great assurance of God’s faithfulness. How was 2018 for you? Did you achieve all your goals? Well, if you didn’t, the good news is that 2019 is another opportunity to get better. So, instead of writing new goals while discarding old ones, you could bring back those old goals and blend them in with the new ones and watch yourself grow!
2019 has been a beautiful year so far (you would say it just started). For me, however, I have learnt about three things in this young year and I will be discussing on today, which is “Self-control”.
Something happened on the first day of this year which taught me two things “A patient answer turns away wrath” and “wisdom is better and greater than strength”.
Patience and gentle talk can convince a ruler and overcome any problem- Proverbs 25:15
Well, this was what happened. I had an argument with my dad and instead of being calm, I lost control of my emotions and of course, things didn’t go as planned. And in that instance, I agreed indeed that not only patience is a virtue, self-control is also a worthy attribute.
As humans at times, we may tend to want to have things our way, get angry because we feel cheated or that we are right while the other person is wrong. But then, we take the wrong approach to tackling the matter and in the end, the fault is thrown at us because we failed to be patient and have self-control.
We need to realise that the greatest victory we can have in a conflict is the ability to control ourselves better than the other person or the situation. See ehn, you can lose your brains over an issue and still not be able to achieve what you intended, so why not take a chill pill?
Most conversations that should have ended in a peace-loving manner escalated into a national crisis simply because a party lacked self-control.
Even Scripture says “A man without self-control is like a city without walls”. Proverbs 25:28
I like the way CEV puts it
Losing Self-control leaves you as helpless as a city without walls.
Now, let’s go back down memory lane. Do you remember Jericho? OK, good. Can you recount that the children of Israel had to through the Lord to bring down the walls before they could infiltrate the city? I am sure you can now imagine how the city became vulnerable to attack afterwards. That is the same way it is with a person who lacks self-control. He would be easily infiltrated, easily provoked and easily taken down.
In 2019, please learn to be in control of yourself, not only in terms of your temper but in other aspects like your tongue, emotions, stomach, actions, reactions and inactions.
Overcoming yourself is greater victory than overcoming a city- Pastor E.A. Adeboye.
How do you manage your emotions? Feel free to share in the comments below and don’t forget to subscribe to this blog to not miss a post.
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