To Control or Not Control, That is the Question!

[HKHaugan]

Who's really in control? That is one of the big issues in our lives as we go from moment to moment. One of the major goals of the devil's spirit, sin, is to get us to be constantly concerned about being in control. That is, control of how we look to the rest of the world around us, how we respond in unexpected moments, how we set up our lives in a way that gives us the least problems and the most security. Relational control involves knowing how to act and react to others in every next moment. Can we ever really be in control of ourselves; our emotions, our thoughts and our relationships?

The need to be in control results from the basic flaw in every person called sin. Sin is the alienating force within that separates us from God and one another. Sin is the cause of our aloneness which in turn makes us vulnerable to the spirit of fear which motivates our behavior. It was that vulnerable aloneness we all share that Jesus took on Himself to live among us and offer Himself as the way to live and rise to eternal life. What He really showed by His life, death and Resurrection were two kinds of reality, temporary and eternal. Temporary reality is the society where we are right now. It's engine is sin. It is simply a sputtering, stuttering, muttering copy and shadow of the eternal reality which is its source. Eternal reality is ultimately spiritual, personal and relational perfection. It's engine is the Lord Jesus operating according to the Father's will through the Holy Spirit in grace, love and truth.

Therefore, if we are realistic we realize that reality is really something over which we have no real control. Because of our sin-inclined individuality there are so many variables that influence the way we respond to every next moment's challenge. The very fact that self-discipline, self control and being right are constant concerns has to impress on us that we need help adjusting. Since these are invisible processes who and what do we trust to navigate them?

Let's list a few things that we may not realize control us: fear, pride, resentment, insult, indifference, apathy, anonymity, fame, politics, relationships, economics, envy, jealousy, hate, lust, health, physiology, inner drives, identity, security, past experience, parental and cultural conditioning, all of which are inside us. All of them unseen. All of them adapted to according to the uniqueness of our personalities.

Then there are strongholds which are really attitudes. They are our personal concepts about life we compile apart from God to handle daily life. You know, the ones we use apart from God to control the moment; our internal secretly kept biases, prejudices, opinions and personal judgments. They're all bundled in us and uniquely used to meet the moment. Attitudes are unseen and we allow them to control us. We give them authority over us. They give us the illusion of being in control but actually they control us.

Then there is the physical universe. Think about that one. Each of us are specks in an enormous physical space. We are subject to a physicality governed by laws outside of us. If we look carefully at this huge environment in which we live there is a very clear message given us. The forces that hold the universe together are unseen. Our local physical force is gravity. Magnetism, light, energy, electricity; their source is unseen. What better question than the one posed by the King David, “When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, that moon and the stars which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him (Ps.8:3-4)?” It is the invisible in each of us that reaches for answers and Jesus stands alone as the personal answer in the invisible dimension. For it is the spiritual that describes the invisible. “So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. So we don't look at the troubles we can see now; rather, we fix our gaze on things that cannot be seen (2Cor.4:18).”

When you come right down to it there is nothing over which any of us have ultimate control. We can only control how we adjust to the moment. The real question is, “What and who do we depend on in those adjustment moments?”

Everything I've described up to this moment is ultimately the province of what the Bible calls grace. Grace is the attitude of God. This is control beyond control. God is our ultimate reality. Grace is God's spiritual ability to hold His Creation together, maintain and sustain it. Grace is the spiritual gravity, the spiritual magnetism, that holds physical creation in order. It precedes everything physical. The physical universe and everything in it is covered by the pre-Creation reality of God. He precedes everything and came in the flesh to show spiritual reality in its true nature. Grace is the quality that energizes the universe and how He adjusts circumstances to meet the goals He has set for it. Grace involving His people is His attitude of acceptance and love that He has shown in His Son Jesus. Each and every one of us is important to Him. Grace reveals destiny is a matter of faith in Jesus and the choices it fosters. And destiny is the record of our character development when faith is the basis of our adjustment in every next moment. This is what makes grace amazing. Grace is the new understanding of control.

This combined goal of grace in the spiritual and the physical, the seen and the unseen, was in the mind of God before Creation and continued in Creation. Paul is its clarion spokesman when he says to the believers in Ephesus, “Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ (1:2)...for He chose us in Him before the creation of the world (1:4)...to the praise of His glorious grace (1:6).” Then he says “For it is by grace you have been saved through faith...(2:8).” So the enormous and limitless grace of God is personalized for each of us in a relationship with His Son Jesus. The length and breadth of God's Creation is defined relationally in Jesus. Grace is God's patience, compassion and freedom to choose love instead of fear, humility instead of pride, forgiveness instead of resentment. These are the elements of the new control. Being gracious is the new control. Jesus is the picture of the new control.