Tuesday, May 06, 2008

Control-Part 2

Our nature is to control. Married, unmarried. It’s mostly a woman thing.

I would suggest that our motivation to control is divine; even holy. After all, we’ve been made in God’s image. And we want people to do well. We want our families to be safe. We’re fearful of what might happen, or what has happened in the past. We want our husbands to succeed. We want….. We want….

However, I think it’s our method where the problems arise.

-We use things like emotions, manipulation, and many, many words to control.
-We justify.
-We get in the big middle of things.
-We’re afraid what might happen if we do this, or don’t do that.
-We misuse our power of influence, and rather than taking everything to Christ, we want to help make it “better”, fix it; stop the problems before they arise.

You see? Those problems will likely be our problems and we don’t like problems, so we’ll just make sure they don’t ever happen…and…and... And we end up making a mess and alienating our husbands, our families, our friends, our God. We wonder why our husbands shut down and won’t talk anymore. We wonder why God seems so far away. We’re actually setting ourselves up for a fall.

Hard words, I know.

But, I challenge us all to be aware of our nature. To allow this knowledge to cause us to stop and think before we use our God-given giftings and abilities to do anything more than taking our thoughts to Jesus in prayer and supplication. Does the Creator of the Universe really need our help?

I’m thinking He can do a much better job than me! Maybe I just need to get out of the way.

Do you have some control issues?
What areas in your life and heart do you need to relinquish?
Think about it….pray about it. Ask Him. He’ll tell you.

8 comments:

  1. Wow! What a smack in the face. I needed this. Thanks so much for waking me up Robin!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Wow... I needed that really bad! I DO like to fix things. I told my step dad that once and he said to replace fix with control. I got pretty offended with that one! Thanks for the wake up call!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thank you for your consistent wisdom.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Yes, I have some control issues...both learning to let go of my own, and trying to get out from under others' control. You know enough of what's go on in my life over the past year to know what I'm talking about...

    Speaking of: I also thought of a few other forms of manipulation that I've either used to had used on me: Passive-aggressiveness, micromanaging, and reverse psychology. UGH.

    ReplyDelete
  5. That is so true that the METHOD we use is what makes us stumble. The main thing we should do when we see a scary situation is PRAY . . . and pray some more & more & more! I have seen countless times in my life when I didn't intervene & just prayed for a situation & it worked out way better. In that prayer it should be a letting go. Once I've prayed I can't take it back - I've given God the control.

    ReplyDelete
  6. I am a recovering control freak...There is so much more freedom on this side!

    ReplyDelete
  7. Thanks for this post. Keeps me on my toes

    ReplyDelete

Leave a comment!