A Woman's Wisdom: How the Book of Proverbs Speaks to Everything (11 page)

Whether the issue is weight or something else, yo-yoing with any behavior is a tip-off that we are in the midst of an internal war. We have a love-hate relationship with a thing or a desire or a substance. We don’t want to be ruled by this thing, but at some level we don’t want to give it up either. We don’t like the negative effect it is having on us—our bodies, our relationships, our spiritual walk—but at some level, in some way, we are getting a pay-off from indulging in it. A woman who stress-eats hates the outcome—she gains weight, her clothes are tight. At the same time, she doesn’t want to give up the escape from stress that food provides her. She cannot master self-control over her eating because her desire to lose weight competes with her desire for the instant, if short-lived, stress relief that she experiences while eating. Jesus said, “Every kingdom divided against itself is laid waste, and no city or house divided against itself will stand” (Matt. 12:25). If we are torn between two desires, we won’t get anywhere.

2) Wrong Motives

Sometimes self-control remains elusive because we seek it for the wrong reasons. If we have been asking God to help us cultivate self-control in a particular area, yet we don’t seem to be making progress, perhaps God is answering in a way we haven’t considered. He might be directing us to examine our hearts. Why are we praying for self-control? If it’s solely because we are sick and tired of the consequences of our overindulgence, or because we want to feel better about ourselves, we are leaving God out of the equation. God isn’t interested in helping us with our self-improvement program; he is interested in our holiness. James wrote, “You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions” (James 4:2–3).

Self-improvement doesn’t necessarily bring us closer to God or glorify Christ. It usually has more to do with self-glory. Holiness, on the other hand, enables closer fellowship with God and brings glory to him, and a by-product of personal holiness is the very thing we were looking for in the first place—general well-being and freedom from the destructive effects of sin. We will find self-control much easier to come by if we desire it because we want to remove obstacles in the way of our relationship
with God.

Besides, self-improvement attempts that aren’t motivated by love for God aren’t likely to be successful in the long run. In his parable about an unclean spirit, Jesus was painting a scary picture of what happens to those who attempt to earn their own righteousness, but it can also apply to those who try to manage their lives in any way apart from a vital relationship with God. When the unclean spirit returns to its place, it finds the house swept clean and put in order. “Then it goes and brings with it seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they enter and dwell there, and the last state of that person is worse than the first” (Matt. 12:43–45).

3) Underestimating the Destructive Power of Overindulgence

Something beneficial in the beginning will destroy us in the end if we do not exercise self-control over it. But all too often we don’t look far enough down the road. We overindulge because we crave immediate satisfaction. There are lots of things that provide an immediate fix—an escape from stress, boredom, or loneliness—but using God’s good gifts in creation as anesthesia for life’s difficulties doesn’t work for very long. Before we know it, we realize that we’ve been tricked. What started out as an enjoyable diversion has become something we don’t know how to live without. “Whatever overcomes a person, to that he is enslaved,” wrote the apostle Peter (2 Pet. 2:19), and Proverbs
tell us:

Alcoholics and drug addicts never intended to become enslaved. In fact, it’s safe to say that they assumed they never would. Discussing such things in a book for Christian women is not misplaced, because Christians are not exempt from the ever-growing population of those caught in these snares. And just consider how much the Bible—written to and for God’s people—has to say about the dangers of alcohol abuse. No, Christians are not exempt. I recently heard someone joke, “The difference between Presbyterians and Baptists isn’t drinking or not drinking; it’s that Presbyterians drink in the open, and Baptists drink in secret.” I was saddened by her cynicism, especially because she was a relative newcomer to the faith, and this is what she had observed in her short tenure in the church of Jesus Christ.

There is always a demonic component to substance abuse. Drugs and alcohol numb the conscience, quashing the inherent restraint to sin that our conscience affords us. That’s why people do all sorts of horrendous things under the influence of drugs and alcohol, things that their consciences would otherwise hold in check. Many a fall into sexual sin is fueled by alcohol, as are relational disagreements, rash spending, and hastily uttered words. Additionally, the abuse of drugs and alcohol leads to personal and relational destruction—the Devil’s goal for everyone. All sin destroys, but there is something about substance abuse that reveals this so clearly. Proverbs paints a picture of how alcohol destroys:

We want to think that Christians are less susceptible to the enslavement of alcohol or drugs, but if that were true, Paul wouldn’t have found the need to instruct, “Older women . . . are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers or slaves to much wine” (Titus 2:3). There he was speaking specifically of Christian women. We also must not kid ourselves that overindulgence is only about having too much at any one time. It can also be about imbibing
too often
. If you enjoy wine with your dinner, can you take it or leave it? Indifference is key. We are free to enjoy something only to the degree that it doesn’t matter to us one way or the other.

John Piper doesn’t drink, but he is clear that Scripture doesn’t prohibit the consumption of alcohol. He gives four basic reasons why he chooses not to imbibe: (1) his conscience won’t let him, and he knows that while drinking may not be sinful, violating one’s conscience is (Rom. 14:22–23); (2) alcohol is a mind-altering drug; (3) alcohol is addictive; and (4) he wants to make a social statement. About this last one he writes:

We all know that alcoholism in our society is rampant indeed, whether or not we handle it the way John Piper does—with total abstinence. If we relish our biblical freedom to enjoy a drink, we are only free to the degree that we can take it or leave it. Therefore, if we find that we are unable to deny ourselves an indulgence—alcohol, or food, or television, or spending, or romance—and refuse to face that fact and deal with it, we will eventually experience the truth
of this:

4) Failure to Know Ourselves

Are you savvy about the things that trip you up, those particular temptations that suck you into the pit of sin again and again? Sometimes we don’t know because we don’t want to know. But this refusal is the kiss of death where self-control is concerned. It is also pride. Women who grow strong in self-control are those who humbly acknowledge their particular weaknesses. Only the humble can recognize and admit to their weaknesses, and it is this same humility that finds grace to repent of self-sufficiency and lean on Christ for the routine practice of self-control. Paul said, “Let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall” (1 Cor. 10:12).

Sometimes, however, rather than acknowledge sin and temptation, we point instead to our “addictive personality.” But that’s a weak argument. We’ve all got an addictive personality to one degree or another because we are all sinners in whom the “desires of the flesh” clamor to be fulfilled. Knowing where we are weak is crucial in the battle for holiness because only then will we develop an effective strategy against it. Such self-awareness is also a vital component of wisdom.

Wise women learn to recognize their personal triggers. Does boredom compel you toward food? Does stress drive you to drink or to painkillers? Does loneliness suck you into hours of repetitive and mindless television? Does sorrow drive you out the door to the mall? Whatever it is, name it for the God-substitute it is and commit to turning
from it.

5) We Think That Self-Control Should Be Easy

Another reason that self-control remains elusive is that we think it should be easy because we are Christians. A motto in Alcoholics Anonymous is “Let go and let God,” but the slogan is theologically inaccurate. “Wait a minute,” some argue. “Aren’t we supposed to depend on God for everything?” We are indeed. And one of the things we depend on him for is the personal exercise of self-control. All too often we are looking for effortlessness, not strength. The strength God gives is the enabling to overcome, but the enabling will likely require vigorous work, all the same. Paul wrote, “For this I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me” (Col. 1:29). He also wrote, “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure” (Phil. 2:12–13). And we saw in Galatians that we are to crucify the flesh, which is not exactly the picture of a quick and painless death. We also saw in Galatians how we are to go about it: “Walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh” (5:16). That is the theologically accurate slogan. The AA version leaves out Christ, and it is only in him that we have the Spirit to
walk by.

Christ is key

The fruit of the Spirit, which comes out in us through our union with Christ, includes self-control. So, if we are in Christ, we have all we need to be self-controlled women. Concerning the fruit of the Spirit, one characteristic of which is self-control (Gal. 5:23), Don Matzat writes:

All told, there are four factors that give wise women their
self
-
control
. First, they live for something greater than themselves—Christ—and as a result, they desire to be like him. Those who live for Christ find that he is what makes life worth living.

Second, wise women depend on Christ in order to be made like Christ. They live out Jesus’s words: “Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me” (John 15:4). Third, wise women apply themselves to putting sin to death with sustained effort. Fourth, they pray for a spirit of moderation, as we see modeled in Proverbs:

God in Christ wills that our walls be strong and fortified against our triad of enemies: the world, the flesh, and the Devil.
Yes, it can be
this way
!

the world . . .

“It’s sort of cheesy, but having a
que sera, sera
sort of outlook has pulled me through a lot—and I’ve always come out chipper on the
other side.”

—Maridel Reyes,
Glamour
magazine

the word . . .

Desire without knowledge is
not good,

and whoever makes haste with his feet misses
his way.

—
Proverbs 19:2