Control is a funny thing isn’t it.  I find it’s something we all take for granted that we have in our lives. Control over our daily routine, control of our own decisions, control of our money our time, control over or own pain, we even find ways to control our faith don’t we.  And isn’t it just a funny thing that in the moments when we feel we lose control, often when crisis strikes, or we lose something or someone, or we just get overwhelmed with the weight of maintaining our grip on life we find that control isn’t really what we are after.

You see control, I believe,  is merely a symptom of our need to define our own purpose in life… Think on that one for a second.  All my efforts to keep everything in line, to juggle everything I have going on from week to week, especially on weeks like the one I’m currently in, all of the struggle, the time and energy that I put into being who I think I should be and doing what I think I should be doing, all of them symptoms of my deep seeded need to know and define my own course.  It makes me almost laugh at how quickly I can even convince myself that my path is synonymous with the path God has in mind for me. I’m pretty good at convincing myself of the fact that what I’m doing and how I’m living must be what God wants for me.   What about you?  I think if we all took a snap shot of our lives, our moment to moment activity we would begin to see the fingers of our own control wrapped around most of what we do.  It’s a need inside all of us that drives us to live in constant tension, holding on to the steering wheel, white knuckles straining to keep our life on course.

Entering a week where I have more than usual going on, I have been consumed with a feeling of being overwhelmed.  And as I sat thinking about all that I have to accomplish in the next few days I began to be challenged in my heart that maybe I was missing the point of all this.  Why do we need control?  Why do I have this need to define my own purpose, to set a standard for myself of how I should be and live.  And in having all this control why then am I feeling so overwhelmed with the purpose I have set for myself?  I think it shows a deep truth that the more we are in control, the more we are following our own determined purpose for life the more out of control we become.  In my office on my computer monitor there is one solitary post-it note hanging and this morning it again caught my eye.

“Do not fear, for I am with you, do not anxiously look about you for I am your God.  I will strengthen you, surely I will help you, surely I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.”  Isaiah 41:10

At first glance this has always been a verse that has brought me comfort in struggle or pain, to know that my God was and is always there for me no matter what.  But today it’s meaning matured in my heart.  Maybe God is speaking of a greater purpose that He desires for us.  A dangerous purpose, one that is out of our control completely.  A purpose that is unknown, mysterious and fraught with danger!   Today I believe God is calling me to a shift in perspective.  Instead of holding on to my own perception of purpose and living in the overwhelming flood of maintaining that purpose, (especially in weeks like these) I would step out into His dangerous unknown.  Maybe today God is calling, “why don’t you come with Me?  Do not fear, do not worry, trust me and follow.”  I wonder where God will take me?  I wonder where God will take you?