The Holy Spirit groans with us. He intercedes for us in our helplessness. And not only that, we know that God is going to turn everything into good. And if he’s sovereign, then we have hope. And if we have hope, we have patience. We work in the midst of hardship, in the midst of difficulty. But not only do we have patience, but we also have the love of God to help us which nothing can separate us from. We are people in love. Guard that relationship. That love is more precious than all the pain that your ministry will bring. It gives you the strength to embrace the pain of ministry.

We’ve been making our way through the second half of Romans 8, and have gone over the first three of six words: frustration, groaning, and fellowship. We now come to the fourth word: sovereignty. And that’s in verse 28. “We know that for those who love God, all things work together for good.” God is in control. He’s sovereign, and he works even the greatest tragedies into something good.
In verse 37, after listing a huge set of problems in the previous verses, he says, ‘In all these things, we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.’ So this is another reason why we are not bitter in the midst of our suffering: he’s turning it for good. We accept that in faith. So when the apostles heard that their task was made illegal, the first thing they did was to get to their group of friends. And the friends got together and they prayed. But their prayer is most interesting. They made just two short requests: consider their threats, and help us to proclaim your word with boldness, and demonstrate your power with signs and wonders. Those are the two short requests they made. The rest of the prayer is an affirmation of the sovereignty of God—of how God worked through history, how people rose up against the Lord and his anointed, and then finally, how everybody who was somebody in Jerusalem—the Jews, the Gentiles, the Romans, the Pharisees—everybody got together, and they killed Jesus. But what they did was what God had already predestined to take place, so that the greatest tragedy became the greatest triumph in the history of the world.
So we believe that God is sovereign, and you know in 1983, when we had the big riot that started off the war in Sri Lanka, this is the passage that God gave me that sustained me through total confusion that we are going through in our country. We knew that God will work through us in the midst of this, therefore we have to keep working. That’s why after reflecting on the sovereignty of God, the disciples requested and said that they wanted to continue to do their work to proclaim the word with boldness.
This brings us to the fifth word: patience. And we go back a little bit. If God is sovereign, we look at life with hope. Even hope is faith in the dark times when things are not going well. But because we know that things are going to be well, we have hope. And if we have hope we have patience. Verse 25, ‘If we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.’
In the Bible, the word patience, there are two words for patients, macrothumia, which has more to do with people being patient with people, and hupomone, which is often translated as endurance, which has more to do with circumstances. Hupomone is used here. Now, hupomone is an active word. It’s a word that is almost one of triumphant fortitude. It’s a word that Leon Morris in his commentary says is used on the battlefield. When things are going tough, we try to see what we should do. How can we get out of this situation? How can we solve our problems? It’s an active word, it comes from the battlefield, where Christians are working. You see God is working. We don’t defeat ourselves and adopt an attitude of resignation: what can we do, this is God’s will. Or as people say, this is my karma. No, that’s not what we say. We say God is working for good. Therefore, we have hope. Therefore, we must join him, dressed by hope, and we work.
There was a Japanese professor, who in the middle of his career, went blind with a detached retina. And when he was getting blind, he wanted to find out the mystery: why did this happen to him at the peak of his life? He could not agree with what his religion said, that he was suffering for things he had done in his previous life. So he started looking for an answer. Somebody encouraged him to look at the Christian answer. And he began to read the gospel. And he came to the place in John, where the disciples asked why a man had been born blind. And Jesus said, “It was not because his parents sinned, or because he had sinned, but he had been born blind so that the works of God may be revealed.” And he said, “Could the works of God be manifested through my blindness? Then that is the answer. I will use this blindness.” And he became a Christian. He became an evangelist, and later went to Scotland, did his theological studies, and became a theological professor at Kobe Theological college. That’s Christian patience. God is working, and I will work knowing without giving up: triumphant fortitude in the midst of difficulty. So, that’s our fifth word.
So we have frustration, groaning, fellowship with the Holy Spirit, sovereignty, and because God is sovereign, patience.
Now I want to tell you one more word. And that is the word love. That’s our great source of joy.
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Over the course of Paganicon, our little team had opportunities to have conversations. Some went deep, sharing the overlap between John 1 and Genesis 1, bringing forward Bible prophecy as a touchstone to what is authentic (and, in doing so, landing on the Gospel). Sometimes, it wasn’t about the conversation per se but about respectfully asking probing questions during workshops. In a few cases, and one that happened at the end of the last session on the final day, it was about building a relationship.

The start of Paganicon, was three weeks ago, tomorrow. Pagonican is a large gathering of Witches, Wiccans, Druids, and an assortment of others – including Hoodoo practitioners – in the heart of Paganistan, as it is affectionately referred to by the local Pagans in the Twin Cities region. Now, this wasn’t my first kick-at-the-can; I’ve been to Paganicon before, and I have traveled to other Pagan events such as Pantheacon.
So why attend? First, as a Christian researcher and author on worldview issues, I take that task seriously. And like any other profession, it’s imperative to stay abreast of issues and changes. I happen to cover a wide swath of subjects, from transformational culture (think Burning Man) to transhumanism, global governance and world federalism, interfaithism, new religious movements, and Paganism. Therefore, attending events in these categories is an essential part of my work, with the information and knowledge gleaned being used in a variety of ways.
Secondly, when possible, as an Ambassador for Christ I want to engage in meaningful conversations. Not all events are conducive to this, but it does play a major role in my engagement at Burning Man and at the Parliament of the World’s Religions, and it’s happened at Paganicon and elsewhere. Although I normally travel as a solitary researcher, my time at Burning Man and the Parliament – and at this year’s Paganicon – has been with a small team of dedicated and like-minded friends.
What then, are some of the takeaways from this latest venture? Keep in mind that I sat through eleven workshops and panel discussions and observed other aspects of the event, so to relay everything would require producing a small book… In any case, here are a few important points that were reinforced from this trip to Paganicon:
1) The rise of neo-Paganism is, in many respects, a reflection on the state of the Christian community and a microcosm of what John Daniel Davidson, senior editor at The Federalist contends is America’s Stunning Embrace Of Paganism Signals The End Of This Country As We Know It. From the standpoint of the Christian community, it would be safe to say that a majority of the participants have a church background.
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The Bible urges us to exercise control over our minds and bodies. We should be deliberate and intentional, and maintain control rather than being controlled and led astray by our passions and desires. What do you and I need to do to get control over that which we currently don’t control?

“The fruit of the Spirit is self-control.” We’ve arrived at the final fruit of the Spirit in Paul’s letter to the Galatians. It’s been a joy and privilege to walk through this list of important character traits in the Christian life with you. The most important bedrock principle in this entire series has been that each one of these attributes is a fruit of the Spirit. It is the Spirit who works in us each of these attributes, and he does so in increasing measure as part of his work of sanctification.
If, as a next step, you’re interested in working through a good book on the Spirit’s sanctifying work, may I recommend my wife Marny’s short but substantive study, Sanctification as Set Apart and Growing in Christ. As you read this book, you will develop a deeper appreciation for our holy God and the way in which he works holiness in us. That said, let’s now tackle the final fruit of the Spirit, which most English Bibles render as “self-control.”
An Interesting Observation
When I recently taught a life group lesson on this passage, I was in for a surprise: The word used for “self-control” in Galatians 5:23 is not the more common term for self-control in the New Testament, sōphrosynē, which Paul uses when writing to Timothy and Titus with reference to women (1 Tim. 2:9, 15; Titus 2:5) as well as older (1 Tim. 3:2; Titus 2:2) and younger men (Titus 2:6; cf. 2 Tim. 1:7), but the rare word egkrateia, which occurs in the New Testament only four times.
Apart from Galatians 5:23, egkrateia occurs twice in the virtue list in 2 Peter 1:6 (“For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love”; note the reference to the Spirit at 1:4) and in Acts 24:25, where Paul speaks to the Roman governor Felix about “righteousness, self-control, and the coming judgment.”
Exercising Self-Control
This observation raises a set of important interpretive questions: Why did Paul not use the more common word for “self-control” in Galatians 5:23 but instead employed the rare word egkrateia? And what is the difference in meaning between those two Greek words, both of which English translations render as “self-control”?
The verb form, “to exercise self-control” (egkrateō), is used in two important passages in 1 Corinthians. In 7:9, Paul writes about men, “But if they cannot exercise self-control, they should marry. For it is better to marry than to burn with passion.” In 7:5, he says a couple should not refrain from sex so Satan won’t tempt them due to their lack of self-control.
And in 9:25, Paul writes, “Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? … Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. …
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