Strengthen self-control

But God’s power must be used rightly June 5, 2025

Galatians 5:22-23 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!

Proverbs 16:32 Better to have self-control than to conquer a city.

Proverbs 25:28 A person without self-control is like a city with broken-down walls.

I’m writing today in lovely Meridian, Idaho, remembering the impact on me of previous experiences in this beautiful state and their influence on Treasure Hunt 1904, book two of the Cally and Charlie historical fiction series. My sister Jan and I are here for a few days visiting our sister Marsha and brother-in-law Vance. I’ve not been here before in June. The flowers are stunning.

Marsha’s roses

The themes of Treasure Hunt 1904 directly relate to the final virtue in Paul’s description of agape, the lovely fruit the Spirit produces in our lives when we give him freedom to garden our hearts.

Self-control, translated “temperance”—moderation, self-restraint—in the KJV, is enkrateia in Greek, derived from the word kratos, which means strength. Like praos (see the last blog about gentleness), enkrateia is a strong word. It calls us to the right use of power. That power, as we know, is the operation of the Spirit of God in our lives, which we will recognize and celebrate this Sunday, Pentecost.

Along with the other virtues, gentleness calls us to choose how we treat others. Enkrateia reminds us we have the ability and responsibility to choose how we manage ourselves, circling us back to “Love others as you love yourself,” as Jesus taught us (Matthew 22:39). The Spirit empowers us to do both with godliness (God-likeness, the God who is love) as we practice agape.

Paul uses enkrateia (as a verb): we must discipline ourselves to win the race of life. Not to win temporary earthly rewards, but an eternal prize: God’s “Well done, faithful servant” (see 1 Corinthians 9:24-27; Philippians 3:12-14; Matthew 25:21).

So, what’s the connection with Treasure Hunt 1904? Using the motifs of a multi-layered treasure hunt and of water (see John 7:38-39), so critically important to transform into fruitfulness the fertile deserts of Idaho, we see Cally grapple with the wounds of trauma in her life (book one), emerging from the grief and paralysis of victimhood into proactive purpose. As she grows into acceptance of the love the Malcomson family offers her, Cally begins to recognize her own power. She can make choices for herself, rather than being controlled, for good or ill, by others.

This book also includes scenes of the devastating, ongoing impact of previous decades of misuse of power, sometimes, tragically, in the name of God, as western settlers and the U.S. government claimed a “manifest destiny” over the lives and territory of native Americans and others. Is not this false equivalence, still plaguing the world today, a breaking of the third commandment and of Jesus’ command to love others as he loves us?

Pentecost Sunday initiates the liturgical season of “ordinary time.” Ordinary, for you and me and all followers of Jesus, means practicing the wonderful fruit of the Spirit, in the agape love of the Father, empowered by Jesus’ conquest of sin and death by his sacrifice on the cross and his resurrection. “Live clean, innocent lives as children of God, shining like bright lights.. your faithful service is an offering to God” (Philippians 2:15-17).

In ordinary time, let’s shine! Let’s bear fruit that adorns the world with joy.

Holy Spirit, today I offer you freedom to grow the good fruit of agape love in my heart, in all its dimensions. Pull out the weeds, heal the wounds, rebuild healthy boundaries, and water the fertile soil of God’s love. Amen.

Practice patience

But God gives us power for patience

Galatians 5:22-23 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!

Colossians 1:11 We also pray that you will be strengthened with all God’s glorious power so you will have all the endurance and patience you need. May you be filled with joy.

“What? It won’t arrive for two weeks!?”

This was my reaction when I recently ordered a birthday gift for a person I love. I own my part in our impatient society.

But patience with delayed gratification isn’t what Paul is talking about in Galatians 5:22.

Since the gift arrived, two more weeks have passed without me actually placing the gift in my friend’s hands. Her birthday was in April! I finally gave it to her yesterday.

My forgetfulness required patience on the part of my friend—not patience regarding the gift itself—she didn’t care about that—but loving patience with me in my impatience with myself.

This relational patience as a dimension of love is what Galatians 5:22 is about.

This week I’ve been deliberately noticing my own impatience. Here’s one example: I noticed I was frustrated when I realized my book The Giggly Bug might not be out by the end of May. Yet I hadn’t fully considered the impact on my publisher of the unexpected death of the person who had been scheduled to put my book together, a beloved man who had worked there for thirty years, who held the company’s history in his mind and heart.

My impatience became relational.

And their response? Out of love for me, they doubled up on my book so it can be out by the end of May—in fact, they sent me the proofs yesterday afternoon. I deeply appreciate the patience of the folks at EA Books, since I’m on an unending learning curve. While professional, they prioritize their relationships.

Until I started deliberately noticing my impatience, I might have thought I’m a patient person. Now I realize how much I need God’s power (glorious power, Paul says!) to strengthen me in my practice of love manifested in patience.

Please, Holy Spirit, grow more agape patience in my soul.

I think this is interesting:

Two Greek words are most often translated as patience in the New Testament. Hupomone is endurance under trials and undeserved affliction. Makrothumia (usually translated in the KJV as “longsuffering”) is self-restraint in the face of provocation, especially by other people. Colossians 1:11, quoted above, uses both words, translated in the NLT as endurance (hupomone) and patience (makrothumia).

In Galatians 5:22, Paul uses makrothumia. Vine’s says this kind of patience “does not hastily retaliate or punish.” It’s the opposite of both anger and despondency. It’s imbued with both mercy and hope.

Makrothumia has to do with our relationships. Hupomone relates more to resilience.

So, this reference surprises me: “Be patient (makrothumia) as you wait for the Lord’s return” (James 5:7). I would have expected hupomone in this context. Could James be more concerned about how we treat one another than about our endurance through suffering while we wait for the Lord to make everything right?

“Always be humble and gentle. Be patient (makrothumia) with each other, making allowances for each other’s faults because of your love” (Ephesians 4:2).

Wage peace.

But God’s “weapons” are mighty

Galatians 5:22-23 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!

2 Corinthians 10:3-5, 8 We are human, but we don’t wage war as humans do. We use God’s mighty [dunamis, Acts 1:8] weapons, not worldly weapons, to knock down the strongholds of human reasoning and to destroy every proud obstacle that keeps people from knowing God. … Our authority builds you up; it doesn’t tear you down.

A friend recently spent several days investing in a historically and potentially fraught family situation. When I asked her how it went, she said, “I decided my mission was to ‘wage peace’ as Lauren challenged in her sermon.” (This is the sermon I recommended to you in my last post.) By God’s grace, my friend was able to see wonderful results from her time waging peace.

Yesterday, Josh Bennett followed up on Lauren’s sermon, discussing the enemies we are fighting. You can hear his remarkable sermon using the same link—it should be posted today. I know I’ll be re-listening to both, since they resonate so clearly with how I want to live and grow. The “warfare” we face is impossible without the Spirit’s action on our behalf and without the fruit of the Spirit as Paul elaborates in Galatians 5:22-23.

“Fruit” in this passage is singular, not plural. We can say there is one fruit, agape love. The other virtues describe the Spirit’s love. In the last blog, I talked about joy. God’s love is joyful.

God’s love is also peaceful. How then can I associate it with warfare?

The response is counter-cultural, the dramatically different value system that Josh calls us to. This peace is eirene: agreement and harmony among parties, with a resulting internal sense of wellbeing. Loving ourselves and others is to live in concord with God, aligning ourselves with him, with his values and priorities. When you listen to Josh’s sermon, you’ll see how radically different this is from our culture and the way most people think about life and relationships.

When we’re centered in God’s love for us and for others, we will experience internal wellbeing that allows us to “wage peace” nondefensively. Our energy is freed to look outward in blessing rather than being preoccupied with our own needs. I’m sure you’ve experienced, as I have, the wounding that comes when we try to meet our own needs and ambitions through manipulation, domination, or other kinds of dishonoring of other people. When instead we “wage peace” in God’s way, empowered by the Spirit, we have the chance to see healing instead of destruction of our relationships.

And when we’re in harmony with the Lord, we aim not to align others with us, but with God. We desire that they experience God’s love, his healing, his direction, his—yes—his peace.

Counter-cultural. Not my way. Not the world’s way. The Kingdom way.

Father, Let Your Kingdom Come, Urban Doxology

May the works of my hands bring you joy.

May the words from my mouth speak your peace.

Father, let YOUR Kingdom come.

Eyewitness

But Jesus shows us the Father Lenten question #16

John 14:8-9 Philip said, “Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.” Jesus replied, “Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and yet you still don’t know who I am? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father!“

Colossians 1:15 Christ is the visible image of the invisible God.

Hebrews 1: 3 The Son radiates God’s own glory and expresses the very character of God, and he sustains everything by the mighty power of his command.

I’m trying to write a book to help kids understand the Trinity (right—as if I understand the Trinity!). Scriptures about the relationships between the Father, Son, and Spirit have fascinated me for a long time.

Bear with me here while I try to articulate a few thoughts. If you’re familiar with Karis’s story, you know that she loved to share her faith with Muslim people, in Arabic if that was their heart language. To the extent that she could, she became part of the Muslim community here in Pittsburgh, both in and out of the hospital. She had always wanted to live in North Africa. That was not possible because of her health, but God surprised her by bringing Arabic speakers here, in large part because her chief transplant surgeon was Egyptian.

When I think about Philip in this passage from John, I feel like I understand him better because of what I observed through Karis’s friendships. It seemed to me that our Muslim friends had an “Old Testament” faith, as of course did the Jewish people before Jesus came to earth. They talked about God in similar ways to what I hear even from Christians when they reference the “God of the Old Testament”: majestic, holy, distant, judgmental, punishing, strict, deserving of all our devotion but unknowable, too far above and beyond us to feel any true intimacy in relation to him.

My Old Testament professor in college tried to dissuade his students of this perspective of God as revealed in the most ancient Scriptures. He believed the Father’s love shone through just as much in the Old Testament as in the New. But I’m not sure he was very successful about changing our minds. After all, people DIED by even touching the Ark of his presence to keep it from falling onto a rough road (2 Samuel 6:6-7). Despite the passages describing God’s love and care, God in the Old Testament inspired more terror in us than affection.

If Philip carried some of these same sentiments about God the Father, it’s not surprising that he did not immediately connect Jesus—the Jesus he watched heal and gently care for people, the Jesus he walked, talked, ate, slept, laughed, and wept with—as being the same as the God he knew.

That’s largely the point of the Incarnation, right? That Jesus would give people a more accurate understanding of the Father’s heart and character. Without knowing Jesus, would Dr. Schultz have “read back” into the Old Testament the nature of God as essentially loving? I don’t know. “My Father and I are one,” Jesus said again and again.

John’s passion for this theme comes out in his three letters to the churches. Try to put yourself in his place—try to imagine for a moment that you have never understood these truths—and feel John’s excitement as he wrote,

We proclaim to you the one who existed from the beginning,

Whom we have heard and seen.

We saw him with our own eyes

And touched him with our own hands.

He is the Word of life.

This one who is life itself was revealed to us and we have seen him.

And now we testify and proclaim to you that he is the one who is eternal life.

He was with the Father; and then he was revealed to us!

We proclaim to you what we ourselves have actually seen and heard

So that you may have fellowship with us.

And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ.

We are writing to you so that you may fully share our joy.

1 John 1:1-4

Has YOUR idea of God been transformed by knowing his Son, Jesus?

Counter-cultural humility

But Jesus took on the role of a slave Lenten question #15 April 15, 2025

John 13:3-5, 12-17 Jesus knew that the Father had given him authority over everything and that he had come from God and would return to God. So he got up from the table, took off his robe, wrapped a towel around his waist, and poured water into a basin. Then he began to wash the disciples’ feet, drying them with the towel he had around him. … After washing their feet, he put on his robe again and sat down and asked, “Do you understand what I was doing? … Since I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you ought to wash each other’s feet. … I tell you the truth, slaves are not greater than their master.”

Philippians 2:6-8 Though Jesus was God, he did not think of equality with God as something to cling to. Instead, he gave up his divine privileges; he took the humble position of a slave and was born as a human being. When he appeared in human form, he humbled himself in obedience to God and died a criminal’s death on a cross.

I’ve always loved books like The Prince and the Pauper and The Scarlet Pimpernel and Zorro, in which a person appears ordinary, concealing the fact that he or she is playing a grand role in a lifesaving, history-changing endeavor. The bumbling Clark Kent, aka Superman, is another example, as is Rand (the Dragon Reborn) in The Wheel of Time. Do you have favorite stories with this theme?

Perhaps my fascination with these characters stems from the ways they mirror the greatest story of all: Jesus, King of kings, giving up the privileges of Heaven to live as a man from a poor family, raised in an obscure village as a carpenter’s son, with the scandal of his mother’s premarital pregnancy hanging over his head.

In the narrative of John 13, which we will commemorate on Thursday, Jesus knowing the Father had given him authority over everything washed his disciples’ feet, usually the task of a slave. And then he challenged his disciples to serve as he had served them.

Knowing we are beloved by the Father, we are called to care as he cared. I love this quote from Mother Teresa: “If you are humble nothing will touch you, neither praise nor disgrace, because you know what you are.”

After asking “Do you understand what I was doing?” Jesus told his disciples, “Slaves are not greater than their master.” What our master was willing to do for us is so much greater than anything we can ever do. Let’s not let pride get in the way of whatever our Lord asks of us. May the Spirit daily grow his love in us.

The plow’s blades are sharp

But God’s planting produces a harvest of love

Hosea 10:1-4, 12 The richer the people get, the more pagan altars they build. The hearts of the people are fickle. … They spout empty words and make covenants they don’t intend to keep. So injustice springs up among them like poisonous weeds in a farmer’s field. … The Lord says, “Plant the good seeds of righteousness, and you will harvest a crop of love.” Plow up the hard ground of your hearts, for now is the time to seek the Lord, that he may come and shower righteousness upon you.

In April 2013, I asked Karis how she wanted to celebrate her 30^th birthday. By then she wasn’t very mobile and often rested in the recliner we positioned for her in our dining room, looking out on our back yard. Most Pittsburgh yards slope either up or down. Ours curves up with a flattish strip along the back fence.

For her 30^thbirthday (May 5, 2013), Karis requested turning the grass strip into a perennial garden, created with transplants from her friends’ gardens. As she enjoyed the flowers, she would remember their amazing and beautiful love for her.

A Notre Dame friend, Georges, offered to take on the project of transformation. With a borrowed rototiller, he broke up roots and plowing the grass under.

Once Georges declared the space ready, we invited friends to come over and plant something from their gardens. Spring brought a profusion of blooms to delight and encourage Karis as her kidney failure worsened.

All this came to mind when I read this passage from Hosea. Weeds (in our case, grass) can be dealt with several different ways. The most gentle and time-consuming is to pull them out. They can be killed with chemicals. Or they can be plowed, like Georges did to create Karis’s perennial garden, using sharp blades to destroy both the plants and their roots.

Through Hosea, God asked his people to plow up the hard ground of their hearts, so the seeds of righteousness could flourish. Georges’ rototilling illustrates for me how painful that work can sometimes be, when it’s not just a weed here or there, easy to pull out by hand, but rather a whole section of my heart given over to bad habits, attitudes, and behavior because of neglect or resentment or idolatry (something else becoming more important to me than loving God and others).

I’ve had to do some painful plowing of my heart the last couple of weeks. You too? I can’t wait to see the beautiful crop of love God promises to grow from his seeds of righteousness.

Yikes!!

But God will hold us accountable for our choices

Hosea 8:1, 4, 13; 9:17 My people have broken my covenant and revolted against my law. … By making idols for themselves they have brought about their own destruction. … To me their sacrifices are all meaningless. I will hold my people accountable for their sins. … My God will reject his people because they will not listen or obey.

Strong words from God through a prophet who himself was ordered by God to forgive and welcome back a wife who betrayed him, don’t you think?

And what about God’s words in the last chapters about God’s unfailing love and compassion; his desire to forgive, redeem, and heal his people?

Here’s another question: How DOES God hold together all the dimensions of his nature? His holiness and his mercy. His justice and his compassion. His gracious patience and his truthfulness. His forgiveness and our need for accountability.

Rather than suggesting trite responses, I invite you to sit with these questions.

One resource I recommend again is Jen Wilkin’s books. In a very approachable way, she takes on some of these questions in None Like Him (God’s unique character traits—ways he is different from us) and In His Image (ways we’re called to be like him, to reflect his character).

Why does it matter that we be held accountable for our sins? Can that be considered an act of care for us?

Another resource is what Scripture has to say about God’s discipline, for example in Hebrews 12.

Do we want the supreme Gardener to pluck the weeds from the gardens of our hearts?

Shutterstock: Kostenko Maxim

I would love to hear your thoughts!

Press on

But God says our love matters more than sacrifices

Hosea 6:1-3, 6 Come, let us return to the Lord. He has torn us to pieces; now he will heal us. In just a short time he will restore us, so that we may live in his presence. Oh, that we might know the Lord! Let us press on to know him. … [The Lord says] I want you to show love, not offer sacrifices. I want you to know me more than I want burnt offerings.

Over the last week and a half, as we marked eleven years since Karis left us, I have re-read Karis: All I See Is Grace. I couldn’t remember which parts of her life—of the three thousand pages of my first draft—had made the editing cut and into the book. I hadn’t remembered how often she referenced this passage from Hosea.

To understand this, it’s necessary to know that Karis had a high view of God’s sovereignty. She believed that NOTHING happened without the permission of God. He, all-powerful and all-knowing, could end or cause anything at any time. Often, she believed, he did not act when he could have because he so honors human free will. He wants us to choose him of our own volition. He wants us to obey him because we love him, not from force or manipulation. He gives us more latitude in our choices than perhaps we are wise enough to handle. Yet we learn from our mistakes. Painful as their consequences may be, God doesn’t usually step in to shield us from the results of what we have chosen. But this doesn’t mean he doesn’t see, or know, or care what we are going through.

A harder concept for me is Karis’s belief that her birth defect, with all its mosaic of positive and negative impacts on her life, was chosen for her by God. That his purposes for her required the suffering she endured. That had she not spent so much time in clinics and hospitals, she would not have met the people with whom she was meant to share God’s love.

I tend to think that Karis was born without functional intestinal nerves not because God so willed, but because we live in a fallen, imperfect world in which this kind of thing can happen. The question for me is whether we allow God to act within our circumstances to accomplish his desire to love others through us.

Either way, it’s clear God longs for us to know him. To personally know his heart of love toward us. To put ourselves intentionally in the way of knowing him better, in every way we can “pressing on” to know him and to love him, not whatever image of him we have inherited or invented. This, for Karis, was her lifelong quest.

Sovereign by Chris Tomlin

Dog and cat theology

But God still loves his people

Hosea 3:1, 5 The Lord still loves his people, even though they have turned to other gods and love to worship them. … But afterward they will return and devote themselves to the Lord their God. … In the last days, they will tremble in awe of the Lord and of his goodness.

You feed and walk your dog and give it affection and shelter.

Your dog thinks, “You must be God.”

You feed and care for your cat and give it affection and shelter.

Your cat thinks, “I must be God.”

We, too, inevitably worship. If not ourselves, then something or someone else.

We worship what we most prize or most fear, that which at our core orients and motivates us, that which we count on and build our lives on. Our highest value may be our own pleasure or happiness or “fulfillment,” which we think we can obtain on our own or we manipulate others into creating for us.

Hosea talks a LOT about the misplaced worship of the people of his day—which doesn’t end well. Yet he keeps repeating this message of hope: God still loves you. He invites you to turn to him, so that he can heal you and share his goodness with you (Hosea 3:5; 5:4, 15; 6:1; 7:10; 11:5; 14:1-2).

Humans fight with each other over what or whom they worship, fearful, often, that if others get more, we will get less. We take sides to defend what we have and are often aggressive in taking from others what we tell ourselves the “others” don’t deserve or have obtained unjustly. We even claim God is on our side (making him into our image, rather than God making us into his) and decide the others are not only wrong; they are evil.

Thinking about this, I received an email from Jim Hobby (houseofgladness.com). Jim wrote, “The question for us is never whether the Lord is on our side. Human “sides” will never circumscribe the Lord’s side. Every human ‘side’ will always fall short of God’s kingdom. The question is whether we are on His side. Are we following Him, imitating Him, listening to His voice, being transformed by His presence, transcending our ‘side’?”

God keeps on inviting us to his side. Not because we deserve it. Simply because he loves us. And when we choose to worship him above all else and all others, including ourselves, we may discover those “others” aren’t so very different from us. We all need God’s provision and care and affection and shelter. And forgiveness for our arrogance.

Advent 3, Joy: and darkest night

Hebrews 12:2-3 … keeping our eyes on Jesus, the champion who initiates and perfects our faith. Because of the joy awaiting him, he endured the cross

Hebrews 5:7 While Jesus was here on earth, he offered prayers ad pleadings, with a loud cry and tears, to the one who could rescue him from death. And God heard his prayers because of his deep reverence for God.

Psalm 116:10 I believed in you, SO I said, “I am deeply troubled, Lord.”

My daughter Rachel invited me to a “Darkest Night” gathering at her home tomorrow evening. Here’s part of her invitation:

“As we approach the longest night of the year on 12/21, we remember that in the midst of Christmas joy we also hold distress, loss and longing – sometimes especially at holiday times when there’s a face missing from around the table or we recognize distance from those we love or we realize that there is darkness just outside the candlelight of our world.”

How does joy fit together with grief and trauma?

The first Christmas week after Karis died, I lay on the couch where she had so often rested, trying to get myself together enough to do my part toward making Christmas happy for the rest of my family.

While I still had not managed to overcome my grief enough to pull out the Christmas boxes, a friend came to visit me. She looked around at the absence of decorations in my home, and said, “Debbie, I am so disappointed in you. I always thought you were a woman of faith.”

On that note, she left me. Oppressed by an added layer of guilt and shame, and the sense that I had another loss to grieve—the loss of trust in my friend—I returned to the couch.

In stark contrast, another friend appeared at my home. She quickly discerned my condition, and said, “Debbie, talk to me. Tell me what you’re feeling.” She wasn’t shocked or offended by my outpouring of grief and tears. She didn’t say, “If you only had faith, you would get your act together.”

She said, “What is the most important thing you want to do for Christmas? I have time. I’ll help you do it.”

This friend understood and shared my grief. She didn’t take it on herself, but she walked with me through it.

After she helped me put up my family’s stockings, each with their name, including Karis’s, my friend left me. The comfort of her presence and compassion lifted my spirits enough that I continued decorating my house. Later, my two daughters completed what I didn’t manage to do. I hold their kindness in my heart as the most precious gift of that Christmas.

The invitation to lament, to acknowledge and express grief, can open space in our souls for joy.