Greetings!  Through our family’s current venture, I have had a cool realization that the Lord has grown me in an area that I have always struggled with – control. My need for it, that is. This is so exciting to me! Turns out all I had to do to deal with this sin issue was to jump whole hearted into something so unmanageable that the idea of me controlling it was a joke. 😉

For so much of my life I have made my plans, and then when things didn’t go as I wanted, I began to manipulate from every angle. I would try to change my circumstances instead of changing my perspective. I didn’t consider that maybe the Lord had different plans, and that even if they weren’t better for me, it didn’t matter. Because it wasn’t about me. It isn’t my story. It is His story. If some injustice happens to me, it doesn’t mean that isn’t how things are supposed to fall. I am not guaranteed a happy ending here on earth. He is. My happy ending is in eternity in Heaven with our Lord.

Well, it has been so cool to see that in our obedience of stepping into the Lord’s plans for our family that He is refining so many other areas of our lives, as well.  Because we are stepping so far out of the norm, we are pretty much forced to trust the Lord. We have followed Him into a situation that is so far beyond anything we can control, that honestly, it’s pretty silly to even try. It has dawned on me that probably one reason that I have so struggled with control is that I have kept my life in such a safe, neat box that I have been able to control it, to some extent. Rather than living a life of reckless obedience to what the Lord would have me do, I have lived a safe and secure life following the American dream, with my hands steering the ship.

I am so grateful that the Lord is continuing to refine me and chip of the edges of me that don’t conform to His son. I pray that I would not rely on myself in this life, but would continue rely on our sovereign Savior. I pray that I would not seek out my safety over God’s glory. That as the church, we would recklessly walk in obedience and care for the orphan, the widow, the stranger, the unreached and the least of these, no matter the cost to our comfortable lives.

Do you struggle with having to control things in your life?  Why not sincerely ask the Lord what He would have you do for Him, and then jump in with both feet?  I bet you find it easy to let Him steer.  🙂

I will leave you with a great quote from David Platt in his book Radical.

“The dangerous assumption we unknowingly accept in the American dream is that our greatest asset is our own ability. The American dream prizes what people can accomplish when they believe in themselves and trust in themselves, and we are drawn toward such thinking. But the gospel has different priorities. The gospel beckons us to die to ourselves and to believe in God and to trust in His power.” (pg. 46) emphasis mine