CONTROL: ITS COSTS AND BENEFITS

I am a control-freak (CF) and so is my spouse. But so too is your spouse. Wanting to be in control of our lives – the desires, threats, and fears – is a good and normal thing. We are now trying to control against infection from the coronavirus, and I think that that’s a good thing. We prepare against the threat of a cold winter and the possibility of starvation, and that too is a good thing. In light of the very real threats, fear and our control strategies should be regarded as needful reactions.

Our nations also try to control against the treats of lawbreakers, invading armies, drug dealers, and sex-traffickers, and this too is good.

But what happens when our control tendencies and strategies are calibrated in different ways from our spouse? When my wife wants to do the wash, she wants me to give her the cloths off my back, but I have different concerns and don’t want to be bothered. However, I have learned that this doesn’t constitute a major threat to my well-being, and so I have learned to comply, even though grudgingly.

However, what happens when Anita’s control strategy conflicts with my own? For example, she loves to travel, but traveling presents me with threat and triggers my control response, which says, “Don’t travel.” This becomes a sure prescription for a conflict of wills where our CF reactions swing into full play.

As we have all learned, there are many threats that we can’t control. Computers represent a major threat to me. Why? There are many problems that I cannot control and confidently address. What do I do? I call my specialist, Anita. If she cannot handle the problem, she calls another specialist. Problem solved!

However, there are problems that even the specialist cannot solve, and so we turn into CFs, and our poor minds race non-stop looking for a non-existent answer.

Perhaps the most disturbing kinds of threats are the internal ones – a failing body, mind, or our many stubborn emotional inadequacies. What then? I can only recommend one answer that can restore my peace. I have to pass the football to the One who is able to run with it:

·       Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you. (1 Peter 5:6-7)

Our fears and anxieties force us to cast our fears upon Him, the One who truly cares for us, but how? By humbling ourselves, admitting that we cannot shoulder the weight of our own lives, and that we have been moral failures who need His mercy, that we are sinners in desperate need of the Savior.

For those of us who have already “arrived,” we need to grow in trust of our Lord. To help us, our faith is always thrust into the crucible of suffering, where our outer self is given over to death:

·       So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal. (2 Corinthians 4:16-18)

“We do not lose heart” because we have become confident of the love of the One who has proved His love for us by dying for us, even while we were His enemies (Romans 8:28).

Meanwhile, we “look towards the things that are unseen” by meditating on the Word both day and night (Psalm 1:1-3), recalling how He had delivered His people consistently from hopeless situations. Moses had called upon Israel to remember what He had done for them, lest they lose heart and turn away from their Savior:

·       “For ask now of the days that are past, which were before you, since the day that God created man on the earth, and ask from one end of heaven to the other, whether such a great thing as this has ever happened or was ever heard of. Did any people ever hear the voice of a god speaking out of the midst of the fire, as you have heard, and still live? Or has any god ever attempted to go and take a nation for himself from the midst of another nation [Egypt], by trials, by signs, by wonders, and by war, by a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, and by great deeds of terror, all of which the LORD your God did for you in Egypt before your eyes? To you it was shown, that you might know that the LORD is God; there is no other besides him. Out of heaven he let you hear his voice, that he might discipline you. And on earth he let you see his great fire, and you heard his words out of the midst of the fire.” (Deuteronomy 4:32-36)

There is only one way that this CF can give up control along with its fearful obsessions, which CFs know all too well. We need to know that our Savior is in control, and that He is working out everything for our good (Romans 8:28). When we know this, we can begin to let Him run with the ball.