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Archives: May 2009
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Archives: May 2009
Remote control
By Kate Forrester
They call us the ‘control freaks’; a select few people who just can’t take the back seat and let go of the handlebars. Put me in the passenger seat of the car and you’ll hear me squeaking every time I see a potential road hazard and stretching my right foot towards a phantom break pedal if I see the traffic lights turning red. I prefer to be doing the driving. I like to be in control.
On a plane it’s even worse, I almost need to be sedated, and it’s strange because even if the pilot handed me the keys to the cockpit I wouldn’t have a clue what to do. Then there’s the more simple matter of going to the hairdressers, I can get preee-ty tetchy when someone I don’t know or trust is hacking away at my locks, though once again the only hair I’ve ever cut was on a Barbie doll when I was five, and she ended up bald.
God does like us to be in control. One of the fruits of the spirit is ‘Self Control’, which I used to think of as being able to look at a whopping bar of chocolate but having the willpower not to unwrap it, or even try to sniff at it through the foil. But really the fruit of self-control is about so much more than a simple chocolate bar analogy. It can be really hard to control yourself against sin when it’s all around you. From taking drugs to just not going to church, self-control stretches even to being able to control our emotions, like dangerous bursts of anger, with God’s help.
This fruit of the spirit is so important because with self-control we’re able to recognise the way God wants us to act, react, think and speak, and when we’re faced with the temptation or instinct to do the opposite, we’re able to resist and control ourselves.
It really is a type of control that comes from being filled with the Holy Spirit, because let’s face it, self-control doesn’t really come naturally now does it? We just love to do what we want, how we want, because we want to, and in some ways it even takes self-control not to be a control freak.
Being a Christian isn’t about always ‘controlling’ your fun, but it is about controlling yourself against those things which we know are sinful, and thankfully when we’re filled with God’s spirit, we’re empowered to do this through Christ.
Control-freakiness however, is not the same as self-control. Being self-controlled is a good thing, it’s being clearheaded and guarded against things that are sinful or could lead us down a sinful path. In 2 Timothy it says that people who don’t follow Christ will ‘have no self-control’ and Proverbs 25:28 says:
"A person without self-control
is like a city with broken-down walls."
Yup, without self-control we’re not really great ambassadors, in fact we’re debris, but at the same time if we become control-freaks we’re also guilty of approaching ‘control’ unhealthily. Though it’s important that we control ourselves, God doesn’t want us to try to control everything around us. That’s His job remember. Being controlling is especially bad when it invades on our relationship with God, because it makes us think of ourselves as God.
In the past when I’ve been praying I’ve found myself giving God ‘helpful suggestions’ on the way he could handle situations: ‘It’s only an idea God, but how about you get my best friend to do this and then my tutor to do that and then my Mum to suggest this...’ is this really the right way to pray? I don’t think so. In 1 Chronicles 5:20 during a big scary war, a tribe of Reuben:
"cried out to God during the battle, and he answered their prayer because they trusted in him"
When we pray we should make sure we’re surrendering all our control-freakishness to God, and most importantly: we have to let God be God. It’s what He’s best at doing.
Though my ‘helpful suggestions’ could be useful, God knows what He’s doing way more than we do. When we try to control the way He acts in our lives it reveals that we don’t really trust Him, and that we think we know best. I definitely don’t know best.
What makes it even worse is that we should know God, and realise that He is God. It might be acceptable to get a bit nervous around a hairdresser that you’ve never been to before, or when you’re boarding a plane piloted by someone who’s only just qualified, but we do know God, and remember He’s not newly qualified at His job; He’s got work-experience that pre-dates Adam and Eve.
Go on, surrender your control to Christ and ask Him to be God over your life: He won’t be remote.
About the writer...
Kate is an English student. She really likes reading and writing, as well as art, whistling, and all things kitsch. Oh, and she heart Jesus.
This is the first time she's written for us, and we think she's done a great job. What do you reckon? Let us know!
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