self control: expertise

Tape, mud, texture, and paint.  How hard could it be?  My mother-in-law was coming to live with us, so we decided to enclose part of our basement to make a bedroom for her.  Time was short, so I tackled the sheetrock finishing by myself.  We installed a dim switch for the lights in that room.  If we keep the lights really, really low, to quote my friend, the mud and tape job “looks pretty good to a man riding by on a horse.”

If I take on home improvement, you will always be able to tell I did it myself.  I sometimes imagine if we were to sell this home that people would walk through with the realtor shaking their heads -making comments about how the pathetic owners should have hired out their improvement projects.  I once had a friend come over to see how I was doing on a project.  He looked at me with compassionate eyes, as if I were a handicapped child, and said, “Oh, you should have asked me to help you.” 

Peter tells us God’s “divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness, through our knowledge of him who called us…”  (2 Peter 1:3).  Gaining self-control is one project we shouldn’t try to do by ourselves.  Bring in the Expert. 

Asking God for help with self-control means the difference between “pretty good” and a professional finish.