• Paul talks in 1 Corinthians 9-10 about being as disciplined as Olympic athletes in every area of your life.
• 3,000 years ago in ancient greece there was this belief that the secret to discipline, to self-control, was will power.
• Paul talks about the athletes of the times. Don’t they want the ben and jerry’s?? Yes. of course they do. Don't they want to party, not work out, not train, stay out late? Of course they do but. they want to pursue excellence in sport MORE, they want the medal of competition MORE.
• This is an amazing conclusion for us MEN.. why? Because self-control is not a matter of the mind. It is a matter of the heart. It is setting our heart on a higher object. On something greater than the ice cream, the temptation of our heart.
• Jacob worked for 14 years for a terrible boss, Laban, in manual labor, doing a horrible job but yet scripture says…”And Jacob served seven years for Rachel; and they seemed unto him but a few days, for the love he had to her.” Genesis 29:20
• Isn’t that amazing. Think about all that work, waking up at sunrise, the 7 years of toiling and it was “but a few days” because of what? The love he had to her. The great object of his heart. He set his on a greater prize, the passion of his life. Experienced self-control EVERYWHERE. 
• The Bible teaches us one thing consistently. Self-control is not a matter of the will, it is an issue of the heart. Setting your heart and desires on the greatest thing. 
• Self control - heart matter , not will matter.
• We don’t have a self-control problem, we have a heart problem. 
• We all have self-control in certain areas of our life. How do we know that? Well, where are the passions of our heart? Where do we currently have self-control? Career? You are showing up, doing things you do not want to, delivering because you have self-control in some areas of your life. The problem with this is that when the object of our heart is anything other than God, then we will have self-control in some areas in our life and no control over some areas AT ALL.

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• What is the passion of our heart? 
• Well according to 1 Cor 9-10, it’s this.. It is the fellowship of the joint gospel. It is the passion of my heart to have others see the gospel and it is the passion of my life to have every area of my life to be affected so that it points to what? The gospel.
• It is not the passion of my life to enjoy the Gospel ALONE. Paul easily could have said this.
• The passion of his life is that OTHERS can take part and witness the joy of the gospel.
• The order of everything in his life was so that others could see his life and see God. 
• No one saw anything in him that could point to anything other than Christ!

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