THE BATTLE FOR CONTROL

                        Romans 7:14-25A

     Have you ever battled for control of your own life? Some of

us fight that battle every day. The discouraging truth, however,

is that our main adversary is not someone in our family or

someone at work or someone who is angry at us. As Pogo once put

it: "We have met the enemy and he is us."

     I was encouraged to read that the French writer, Victor

Hugo, author of the book on which the Broadway hit LES MISERABLES

is based, had a habit of asking his servant to steal his clothes

every morning. This meant Hugo could not go outside, and so was

forced to carry on with his writing. Battling for control.

     Trochilus, a disciple of Plato, was on a ship that sank at

sea. Somehow Trochilus survived. When he reached home, he

ordered his servants to wall up the two windows of his home which

looked out upon the sea. He didn't want to look out on those

waters some beautiful summer day and even be tempted to venture

out again. The battle for control.

     A little boy scraped a chair across the kitchen floor and

climbed on it to reach the cookie jar on the top shelf. His

mother heard the noise and called out, "What are you doing in

there?" With his hand in the cookie jar, the child replied, "I'm

fighting temptation." Battling for control.

     It's been said that there are only two pains in life--the

pain of discipline and the pain of regret, and that discipline

weighs ounces while regret weighs tons. There are many of us who

can sympathize with St. Paul when he writes,

     "For I fail to practice the good deeds I desire to do, but

the evil deeds that I do not desire to do are what I am [ever]

doing...For I endorse and delight in the Law of God in my inmost

self. But I discern in my bodily members a different law at war

with the law of my mind and making me a prisoner to the law of

sin that dwells in my bodily organs. O unhappy and pitiable and

wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from [the shackles

of] this body of death?" (THE AMPLIFIED BIBLE)

     Can there be a more relevant passage of Scripture for many

of us? The battle for control. Plato once said, "For a man to

conquer himself is the first and noblest of all virtues." The

writer John Milton put it like this: "He who reigns within

himself and rules his passions, desires and fears, is more than a

king."

     The question is, how is it done? How do we become more than

kings? How do we win the battle for control of our own desires

and actions?  

     WE BEGIN BY ACKNOWLEDGING THAT NOBODY

CAN DO IT FOR US.

The battle is our own. Nobody can fight it for us.

     This doesn't mean that the world does not lure us. A

familiar ploy of slave traders before the Civil War was to lure

unsuspecting Africans onto ships by using red cloth. It was a

familiar story among slaves.

     A group of children would be playing. They sight a red flag

flying at a distance. They become curious as to what the red flag

is and run to it. On approaching, they are grabbed by some white

men and put on a ship. This ship takes them to Virginia where

they are sold. One former slave said that she always hated

anything red because that was the color used to lure her forever

away from home. She often was heard saying, "Oh that red rag,

that red rag brought me here."

     There are many red flags in the world that lure us. The

decision to give in to their lure, however, is our own.

     Anthony Evans in PREACHING TODAY tells a great story about a

forester named Sam. Old Sam would be out chopping down the tree.

You could hear him say one phrase: "Oh, Adam. Oh, Adam." Every

time he hit that tree, he'd say, "Oh, Adam."

     One day the foreman came by and asked him, "How come every

time you hit the tree, you say, `Oh, Adam?" Sam said, "Because

Adam, my forefather, sinned against God. God cursed him and said

that he would have to work from that time on. So every time I hit

this ax against the tree, it reminds me that if Adam hadn't

sinned, I wouldn't have to work."

     One day his supervisor came and said, "Come here, Sam." He

took him to his big, plush, palatial ten-thousand-square-foot

mansion. He said, "It's all yours. You can live in it; you can do

whatever you want. You've got a swimming pool, a tennis court,

servants--everything. Everything in this house is yours. I'm

giving it to you because I don't want you to struggle with that

Adam mentality. I ask only one thing: Don't lift up the box on

the dining room table. Enjoy everything else in the house, be

what you want to be, do your own thing, but that box on the

dining room table, do not touch."

     Sam said, "No problem. I can handle it." So Sam played

tennis every day, went swimming, ate three meals a day. But after

about five months, he saw that box. That bothered him. He wanted

to know why, if he can have everything, that box was so

important. He said, "No, I'm not going to touch it; I'm not

going to jeopardize my time here."

     After a year he had tried everything. He had gotten used to

everything. There was nothing new anymore. There was only one

thing new in that house, and that was that box. And so one day,

when nobody was looking, he lifted up the box just a little bit.

Out of that box ran a little, teeny mouse that hid, and Sam

couldn't catch it and couldn't find it. The supervisor came and

noted that the box had been lifted. He went to Sam and said,

"Now Sam, I warned you. Go back out into the forest and pick up

your ax and chop again." The next time the supervisor came by he

heard Sam saying, "Oh, Sam. Oh, Sam." (1)

     Sam came to see that he couldn't blame his predicament on

Adam. Only on Sam. We begin to win the battle for control, first

of all, when we recognize that nobody can do it for us.

     WE BEGIN TO WIN THE BATTLE, IN THE SECOND PLACE, WHEN WE ACKNOWLEDGE THAT WE CAN DO BETTER.

We are not genetically defective. We are not hopeless cases. We are capable, competent, conscientious folks who have been fashioned in the image of our Creator. This means that we have the power of choice. We can decide. And we can follow through with our decisions.

     A man went into Saks Fifth Avenue to buy some pajamas. He

noticed on the pajamas a label that said, "Shrink-resistant." He

wondered, "What does that mean? Do they shrink or don't they? He

asked the sales lady: "What does it mean when a garment says,

`Shrink-resistent? Does it shrink or not?" The sales lady said,

"Sir, it means that it will shrink, (pause) but it really doesn't

want to."

     You and I are not a pair of pajamas. We are free moral

agents. We can decide. We can set goals. We can do better.

     Paul Charlap puts it like this. He says that everybody

should spend a year in the Marines. Then we would learn that we

can march that extra fifteen miles with a pack on our back.

That's discipline, he says, like a checklist in your head. If you

are a salesman, for example, "You say to yourself, the night

before, `I'm going to do this amount of work, make this number of

phone calls, this number of calls knocking on doors, this number

of demonstrations, and you don't go home until you do it. After a

while...it becomes automatic. At a level where somebody else has

to put out all kinds of effort, you pass by like it's nothing."

(2)

     That's one man's experience. Of course, most of us have

never been Marines. We don't possess that kind of trained

experience. But we can do better than we are doing! We can take

one small step at a time with our eye firmly fixed on the man or

woman God has created us to be. The battle will never be easy,

but it can happen.

OF COURSE, WE ARE MORE FORTUNATE THAN MOST

 PEOPLE. WE HAVE A DIVINE ALLY.

 Dr. Kenneth McFarland was a Superintendent of

Schools many years ago. He had under his supervision the

Coffeyville Jr. College.

     It was the day before their Annual Commencement. A girl came

into his office. He recognized her as one of those ready to

graduate. She was an honor student--a bright, attractive girl

named Nancy Hollingsworth. Nancy told Dr. McFarland a fascinating

story. It seems her father was killed when she was small child.

Her mother worked in factory to support her and her two brothers.

Her only other living relative, Uncle Ben, had a drinking

problem.

     One night while Nancy, Jim, and Tommy were still children

their mother died very unexpectedly. Uncle Ben came to the house.

"Uncle Ben," the children asked, "What are we going to do now?"

Uncle Ben answered, "I love you kids. I'll go down to court and

and get you assigned to me. I'll get down on my knees every night

and ask God to raise you right."

     "And he did!" said Nancy. He hasn't had a drink since. He

hasn't missed a day of work since. Jim graduated from Medical

School. Tommy's graduating from MIT this Spring. I'm going to

teacher's college. Tomorrow night will be 6 commencements Uncle

Ben has attended.

     "There's only one problem. He won't sit in the parents'

section. He feels it would show disrespect for Mom. Could you

mention something about Uncle Ben at the Commencement?" Nancy

asked. Ken McFarland said of course he would. He did. An an

enormous ovation erupted when Uncle Ben came forward. Many in the

graduating class obviously knew Uncle Ben's story. It was a

beautiful and memorable moment.

     Later McFarland asked Uncle Ben this question, "When you

went down to court that day, what did you say? You didn't have a

very good case as I understand it."

     Uncle Ben said, "You're right. I was scared to death. And

when the judge asked me why I thought the children should come

and live with me, I said `The Master said, A man can be born

again. He can change. He can change completely. And he can stay

changed. I believe the Master meant any man. Even a drunken

ne'er-do-well. I believe that when the Master said, `Whosoever

will,' I believe he included me."

     The judge looked at him a long time and said, "I believe

that deal includes you, too. I'm going to let you take the

children for 30 days. We'll come check. If everything's going all

right, you can keep them permanently." "The 3 kids and I got

home," said Uncle Ben, "and we got down on our knees, and I

promised God that if he'd hold onto me, I would hold on to the

kids, and the 5 of us have been going along together all these

years."

     That's how it works. There is a battle going on within each

of us. Nobody can fight the battle for us. We must do it

ourselves. It is a battle we can win, though. We are children of

the King. He will be with us.

     St. Paul asks, "Who will deliver me from the shackles of

this body of death." Then he writes, "O thank God! - He will!

through Jesus Christ, the Anointed One, our Lord!"

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1. PREACHING TODAY 2. Cited in Robert Shoenberg, THE

ART OF BEING A BOSS (New York: J.B. Lippincott

Company, 1978). pp 31-32.