This is actually one of my favorite lines from a favorite song by Switchfoot and Lauren Daigle. The song title is “I Won’t Let You Go.” But the message has spoken volumes more about control to me than the title suggests.
Some of us are control freaks. Some of us aren’t, this is true, but all of us want some control of the circumstances or our life. If we suddenly lost all say in decisions regarding our future, we would struggle to accept that, wouldn’t we?
But as I said in my last post, God gave His creation choice – human creation, not the animal or plant kingdoms. But He did NOT give us control. The only control we have is over how we are going to act or react to the truth He has given us.
That choice might be stuck in the middle for a time when we are questioning, doubting, deciding, but eventually there comes a day when we will decide or lose the choice to decide at all. Either we believe God or we don’t.
Abraham is one of my heroes of faith—all except for one pretty big misstep he made when he listened to his wife’s faulty advice and slept with her maid to produce a child rather than wait on God’s timing. That lack of trust in God’s timing has cost the world a host of struggle between nations of the Middle East ever since. And I bet given the chance, Abraham might have done things differently—if he could have seen that God really did mean He was going to give him a child through Sarah.
The trouble was, Abraham couldn’t see the future, and neither can we. We might hold a promise from God in our hearts, but we can’t know for sure that He’s going to fulfill it because we can’t control it or see it. Thomas doubted Jesus had arisen from the grave because He hadn’t physically seen him yet. Once he did, he believed. And I think, probably too often, we feel the same.
I want to see Him work in my life and my situations, don’t you wish the same for you?
But God has reserved the future for Him to determine, not for us to determine. We can make plans, but that doesn’t mean they will happen. We can set goals, but they might be squashed. We can work ourselves to distraction in an attempt to reach a future we envision, but our labor might be in vain.
Even our prayers might not be answered the way we intended or hoped they would be. Sometimes God answers them better than we could possibly have imagined. Sometimes He answers the exact opposite of what we expected. And we can feel bitter and defeated by God’s decision or we can accept that control was never ours in the first place.
You know what I’m talking about, don’t you? No one ever expects their child to become so ill that life becomes a series of doctor visits and unanswered questions. No one ever expects their parents to go through a bitter divorce. No one ever expects to be the one fired or let go from a job that they are really good at doing. No one expects rejection, defeat, financial loss, earthquakes, floods, fires, drive-by shootings, and any number of bad things to happen to them or to people they love.
That is NOT to say that God is sending bad things our way. We live in a broken, sinful world, and things happen that shouldn’t because of sin, because of brokenness, because of man’s inhumanity to man.
God will put an end to the evil, the sin, the brokenness one day, but in the meantime, He has asked those who believe in Him to trust Him with their future. To trust Him when the bills can’t be paid, when the doctor says something we don’t want to hear, when we lose a loved one or a relationship we never wanted to lose.
We have a choice to trust Him with the future of our lives on this earth. We have a choice to trust Him with the answer to our prayers. We just don’t have any control over how other people will treat us or how God will answer those prayers. Or when.
None of this is in our control. And the control freak in me doesn’t like to hear that, though it is exactly what I need to hear. In listening to that song, I have been able to let go of my hold on a lot of things. And those that I can’t control, I pray for and give to God. I can’t control God through prayer either, by the way. But I can let Him control me. I can give Him the rule over my heart and practice waiting on His timing. That takes trust.
Abraham hoped against hope in God’s promises because He believed God would fulfill them. He trusted God to do what God said He would do. I think if Abraham can do that, I can too. I cling to that hope against hope in times when I can’t do anything but hope.
But you know what? Hope in God is all I need. Hope in God and you will yet praise Him, the psalmist told his soul. Hope is a powerful word when it’s placed in a powerful God.
All of this is in His control. And one day, all that is wrong will be made right. Are we willing to trust Him in the meantime?
#hopeinGod #weshallyetpraiseHim #NoneOfThisisinyourControl #ControlFreak #trustGod #alwayshope #alwaystrust #livegrace
