Quotes about Control

He is not only its omega but also its alpha, and he is and can be its omega only as he is its alpha."1

Likewise, consider the statement of Benjamin Franklin delivered at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787: "I have lived, Sir, a long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth: that God governs in the affairs of man.

Sweating bullets to line up the Bible with our exhausting expectations, to make the Bible something it's not meant to be, isn't a pious act of faith, even if it looks that way on the surface. It's actually thinly masked fear of losing control and certainty, a mirror of an inner disquiet, a warning signal that deep down we do not really trust God at all.

Doubt is God's instrument, will arrive in God's time, and will come from unexpected places—places out of your control. And when it does, resist the fight-or-flight impulse. Pass through it—patiently, honestly, and courageously for however long it takes. True transformation takes time.

We have practically been conditioned to expect God to be our helicopter parent. And if for some reason we don't run to God to solve every little problem, from finding our car keys to deciding on color schemes for the nursery, we are told there is something deeply wrong with us spiritually. Phooey.

I like a prayer book and liturgy to guide me in my faith rather than falling back into my comfort zone of controlling reality with my learned and carefully chosen words, and without leaving it up to me to come up with what to say here and now when I just may not feel like it.

Trust does not cancel our mind but circumscribes it and tames it—and so we do not succumb to fretting or anxious thoughts of being unsure.

Doubting God is painful and frightening because we think we are leaving God behind, when in fact we are only leaving behind ideas about God that we are used to surrounding ourselves with—the small God, the God within our control, the God who moves in our circles, the God who agrees with us.

Trust like this is an affront to reason, the control our egos crave. Which is precisely the point. Trust does not work because we have captured God in our minds. It works regardless of the fact that, at the end of the day, we finally learn that we can't.

Physical death is the final letting go that we all experience with loved ones and that we will ourselves experience one day. Dying now the way Jesus says to means letting go already of every comfort, familiarity, joy, and sorrow—and of the false sense of control those things give us. Letting go of these things is a dying process. Jesus sounds more like a mystic than an intellectual lining up correct thinking.

Sweating bullets to line up the Bible with our exhausting expectations, to make the Bible something it's not meant to be, isn't a pious act of faith, even if it looks that way on the surface. It's actually thinly masked fear of losing control and certainty, a mirror of an inner disquiet, a warning signal that deep down we do not really trust God at all. A

And all this talk of dying and being crucified and hidden doesn't describe a one-time moment of conversion when we "become Christians," as if that's final. If things were only that easy—a one-time transaction of "accepting Jesus" and then it's over. Dying describes a mode of existence we agree to once we enter the holy space of being a follower of Jesus—surrendering control, dying, all the time.