by Samuel Rainey
"Better is the end of a thing than its beginning, and the patient in spirit is better than the proud in spirit." ~ Ecclesiastes 7:8
One of the most significant differences between adolescents and adults is their impulse control. Adolescence is not about a person’s age, but about their emotional maturity. So many of us are walking around in adult bodies controlled by an adolescent inside that has yet to fully grow up. This is quite understandable given how much hardship many endured in childhood and early adulthood.
If you have a goal in your life that you put off, ignore, or outright refuse to do the necessary work to accomplish, chances are that is the adolescent in you running the show. I’ve seen 50-year-old women behave worse than a 15-year-old girl (same with men/boys, too).
The ability to wait on fulfilling a desire until it is the right, honoring, and correct time is one of the greatest gifts you can give. You will be able to resist the “flesh” that Paul talks about in Romans 7:5 as “our sinful passions.” Impulse control requires that we have a really strong patience muscle. And just like our physical muscles, its growth takes practice and exercise.
Every instance of broken trust in a relationship stems from the inability to delay gratification. The man who has the sexual affair with his neighbor gave into gratifying his sexual fantasy. The woman who copes with stress by drinking too much wine at night gives into gratifying her desire to numb out to the pain.
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