When we respond to a given circumstance by blind impulse, our hungers can control our lives over our minds. I hope today’s lesson can be of use to youth ministries, family devotionals, family counselors and home evening groups. I would like to discuss the advantages of us bridling our impulses.

It’s easy to want to yell at someone who is yelling at us. The manner we respond to an impulse is a great way to determine who or what is control of our life. For some of us, it might be the affection for food that makes us overweight. For others it might be the obsession of money that becomes more important than integrity and honor in business. Many of us often live our lives to the satisfaction of the moment rather than the long-term. There are advantages for us to manage our impulses and thus avoid potential negative consequences.

Object lesson: Place the lip of a rubber hose over the mouth of a faucet. If you don’t have a rubber hose, cut the opposite, end of a long balloon and put the mouth over the mouth of faucet and let the loose end hang in the sink. Turn the water at a high volume, and you will most likely spray water everywhere in the kitchen because the hose is unrestrained. This could be compared as not restraining our impulses. We can douse the kitchen because we don’t control the end of the tube while the water is on.

There are advantages to restraining our impulses.

Responding to provocation may make us vulnerable to manipulation. Our tendency for us to succumb to our desires with no restraint results in our hungers controlling us rather than our minds. This might be a good time to talk about how drugs, smoking, or pornography, etc. can easily manipulate our lives.

As a family or class, discuss various impulses of the body, spirit, the mind and emotional impulses. Maybe discuss advantages and disadvantages of showing restraint and control.

Another way to illustrate control is restraining our temporary pleasure and site of the long-term goals. For example, by saving a little money each week that little bit of money builds up where we may have the necessary funds to buy something more significant.

There are multiple advantages for controlling our impulses.