You need to apply yourself to that. If you cry for understanding, you lift up your voice for knowledge, the Holy Spirit will teach you; but to do that, you've got to want to, and put yourself reading the word of God. You see, there are many different kinds of knowledge, and let me just give you a scripture in Colossians 1, Verse 9 and 10. It says: be filled with the knowledge of His will, in all wisdom and spiritual understanding. So God wants you to know what His will is. How am I going to find out? I'll give you it in more detail, because you can't find the will of God and be filled with knowledge and understanding, except you pursue Him, and get to know Him better; study the life of Jesus, study what He taught, begin to start to apply what He taught to your life. Hunger for the Holy Spirit to show you things, and He will begin to increase your knowledge of God, and your spiritual understanding.
A lot of people seek for - now there's wisdom in the world. There is a lot of wisdom to be found in secular society, but you will not find the wisdom of God there. You'll find the wisdom of God in the word of God, and with the Holy Ghost; so ensure that in all you're seeking, that you place wisdom of God in relationship to life at the highest level. You can be helped or coached in this and that, but if you lose spiritual wisdom and understanding of where God is wanting you to direct your life, all of that will actually count for nothing in the long term of eternity.
Here's the next thing He says: so add to your pursuit of purity, add knowledge. Then the third one says: add to knowledge. Oh, I've got to add some more things! Self-control. Oh my! That means control yourself, manage yourself. So what is that? Let's just give it really clearly, really simple: He's saying: do not let anything get a hold of your life; so that there's a part of your life in bondage. So in other words, control your tongue. Stop gossiping, stop cutting people down, stop backbiting, stop bickering, control your tongue. Control your body. Don't eat until your body is so big, you're going to have a heart attack. Don't leave your body so neglected, that it now can no longer carry you through the course God wants you to toe. Deal with your soul. Manage your soul. Deal with anger issues in your heart. Anger's a big issue for people today, a lot of angry people around. Doesn't take much to fire up - someone cuts across in front of them. Next minute they're yelling [speaks loudly - blah, blah, blah, blah, blah!] And that's just on the way to church you know...
Congregation: [Laughter]
...and then they're going to come and hold their hands, and you know [laughs] Jesus, I love you, you know? Jesus says: I saw what you did down the road. I was watching, see. So self-control, managing your emotional life, managing the areas of your inner life. That's not controlling everything, suppressing. It's actually developing healthy emotions, and learning how to address issues of anger, and various other things that come up in our emotional life and physical life. Okay, self-control. There we go, managing your money, managing addictions or dealing with addictions in your life; addictions to food, addictions to internet, addictions to anything. Anything that's got control over your life, deal with it. It's about bringing balance to your life. Get the idea? Bringing balance round your life: managing your money.
Okay, next one, so add to self-control, got to add something else. Add to self-control perseverance. Now that word perseverance, literally it means to maintain a positive attitude during setbacks and disappointments. Now how do you develop that? You actually develop it in life. You know one of the areas you most have to develop perseverance? That's being involved as a leader, in a small group. Anyone committed to discipling people, anyone's who's serious about the great commission, that gets involved with people - perseverance is a must. People do stuff. That's why self-control is needed, because you get angry, take it personally and think you're rejected by them. No, they're just doing stuff.