Are you one of those people?
The kind that likes control.
The kind that throws around Christian cliches as if they were frisbees? Sometimes we
say those things because we feel compelled to say something positive to try to help, but
do they always help or do we say them to make us feel in control.
It’s easy for us to rattle these encouraging statements off – as if it’s someone inserts a
quarter into our mouths and then we begin saying things like that sound good to us.
We clear our throat and say:
“According to his purposes all things will work out” – wait, what did our friend hear when
we said that?
Did we really hear her – did we acknowledge her pain?
Were those words sweet or scary?
If we’ve been a Christian for a while, we may know that Christianity is not synonymous
easy living, but do they? I think too often we want them to know what we know and
change perspectives overnight.
I think too often we believe the underlying cultural lie which tells us that if we are
walking through heartache something is wrong with us.
Friends, what if I reminded each of us that striving to secure our good, comfortable,
pain-avoiding future is the way of death and soul-crippling anxiety.
The swirling and fretting over how to avoid hardship and only experience good is all a
manifestation of what is at the core: our desire for control.
In our culture today, there are more millionaires than ever before, and perhaps we think
those people don’t have problems. They do. They may have a lot of money, but they
also must deal with the issues of life we all have to deal with.
Today, let’s all be reminded that we can’t rescue ourselves or our friends.
Let’s make sure our support is useful by compassionately telling them that the good life
isn’t the absence of heartache; it’s the presence of God, by grace, in the midst of it.
Our hope during hardship is that Jesus doesn’t just work things out for our good—he is our good.
When we replace self-striving and control with life-transforming grace, we declare that
we are not our own, but God’s.
And when we are his, his purpose prevails for our good and his glory.
The unfolding of His ways is always more than we can ask or imagine for those who
realize that God has already done the impossible through salvation.
If he can cross the greatest divide to secure our place in his presence forever,
even the most difficult detours or unexpected changes of plan are not impossible for
God to redeem.
Let’s give up our pseudo-sense of control and invite God into our current mindsets and
situations – whether you on the one being ministered to or the one giving the
encouragement.
Control is like the wind friends, it’s hard to secure. It’s best to allow God to hold the
reigns of our lives knowing He knows what His girls need – and that is not an
understatement – it’s Bible truth.
