Virginia and Tom Boles

Romans 13: 8-10

But I keep under my body, and bring it into

subjection: lest that by any means, when I

have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway.

By Thomas M. Boles, PhD., DMin., D.D.

The discipline of desire is the background of character.

In “Sin, Sex and Self-Control,” Norman Vincent Peale

writes: “Martha took the kids away to the

mountains for a month, so I was a summer

bachelor. And about midway through that month

I met a girl, a beautiful girl looking for excitement.

She made it clear that I had a green light, so for one

weekend I put my conscience in mothballs and

arranged a meeting with her for Saturday night.

“I woke up early Saturday morning with a bit of

a hangover; I’d played poker until late the night

before. I decided to get up, put on my swimming

trunks, and take a walk on the beach to clear my

head. I took an ax along, because the wreck of an

old barge had come ashore down the beach, and

there was a lot of tangled rope that was worth

salvaging. There was something about the freshness

of the morning and the feel of the ax that made

me want to keep on swinging it. So I began to chop

in earnest.”

As he chopped, a strange thing began to

happen. He said, “I felt as if I were outside myself,

looking at myself through a kind of fog that

what I had been planning for that evening was

so wrong, so out of key with my standards and

my loyalties and the innermost me that it was

out of the question.”

He canceled the date.

Step back and take a good look at yourself. Is

there something you need to get a clear view on today?