Is comfort far more than your character.

How are you doing with your knowledge? Have you been working harder and harder to understand God, understanding the truth about God, understanding the Word of God? How are you doing with your studying the Word of God? Life is so busy and scattered and the fast pace of living makes it so hard to do. You’ve made a lot of effort towards the fast pace of living, but how much effort have you made towards knowing God better? How much effort have you made toward knowing the Word of God better? Maybe you are living that godly life. Are you adding to it knowledge? Start making effort towards that. And it’s more than just facts. This knowledge has to do with thinking about those facts, many know a lot about the Scriptures, and then you look at their lives, and it’s obvious that they haven’t internalized those things. It has to do with the wisdom of internalizing. It’s about growing in Gods knowledge and wisdom that actually directs you in life.

Then add to your knowledge self-control. Self-control has to do with mastering your sensual desires. And sometimes when you think about self-control, it’s easy to just talk about the extremes, but you have to understand the word. It’s about things in natural life and being moderate about those desires. All have natural desires, and those aren’t all bad. It’s about being able to control them and being moderate in them. All desires like eating. Ok, that’s normal. That’s the way God made you. It’s ok, but do you show self-control even in that? With sexual desires, it’s normal. It’s God given, but are you moderate in that? Are you in control of those urges, those desires? You need clothes to stay warm, but how many clothes do you need? It’s self-control, there’s a weakness you can get. Many would say they’ve got way too much, but what are you going to do this week? Go buy more. Why? You desire all these things and you see the Flesh wants you to go to the extreme. Can you say I’m not doing this- and then make every effort towards self-control. This is one of the parts many mess up in their life is you get to this point that you start comparing yourself to other people with your type of character. And you start thinking, ‘Well, I’m a lot better than them.’ But it’s the idea of where you almost feel like you’re good enough in this area. Many do have self-control in many of these areas. Are you making efforts? Are you making strides? Are you diligent towards this? Because you can be diligent toward a lot of things and then neglect your character.

And then you’re to add to your self-control this idea of steadfastness. Steadfastness is a word for patience. Steadfastness is the word for when you have a weight on you, and you just keep holding up under that weight. He says you need to have this to endure. When you’re going to hold on longer But this idea of steadfastness, you don’t become steadfast. You don’t persevere unless there’s some weight on you, and there’s some pressure on you. And you’re going to feel like quitting. It’s going to get more and more difficult, and you’ll feel like quitting, and you’ll want to collapse. And so most, pray and say, ‘God, get rid of that weight,’ When’s the last time? Have you ever? Think about this. Have you ever in your life asked God to make your life a little more difficult so that you could develop steadfastness? Have you ever in your life thought to yourself, ‘You know what, I’m kind of weak? Every little trial comes my way, and I fall apart,’ and you say, ‘God, I want to work on that because I want to become this person who is steadfast. So keep it coming.’ You see, you care more about your comfort far more than you care about your character.