OVERCOMING THE FEAR OF LOSING CONTROL
Freedom From Your Fears - Part 9 of 10
Selected Scriptures 11-20-11 sermon
Have you ever gone away for a short time and when you come back your yard and flower gardens are completely out of control? Even if there was no rain while you were gone, the weeds grow just fine. Or you get all the leaves raked in your yard and a big windstorm comes along and they’re back. Your yard is out of control again!
Oftentimes life gets out of control. And the fear of losing control is a real fear. Actually, although we think we can get our lives under control, most of our lives are out of our control. Life happens! And we react to it rather than controlling it.
There's a better way. The answer ultimately to overcoming the fear of losing control is not self help or more self management. It's self surrender. It's saying "I'm giving it up. I can't control this thing but I'm turning it over to the one person who can. God almighty."
I want to give you a crash course in God's sovereignty. I'd like to build a picture for you of how big God is and how qualified He is to run your life.
God's sovereignty is His kingship over everything based on His infinite power, wisdom, and authority. It's God being God. God's kingship over everything based on His infinity, His infinite power and wisdom and authority.
God's sovereignty over nations. "The most high is sovereign over the kingdoms of men and gives them to any one He wishes."
God's sovereign over people. "Many are the plans in a man's heart but it is the Lord's purpose that prevails."
God's sovereign over circumstances. "The Lord works out everything for his own ends, even the wicked for a day of disaster."
God's sovereign over nature. "Worthy, Oh Master! Yes, Our God! Take the glory! the honor! the power! You created it all because you wanted it."
God’s sovereign over spiritual powers. Ephesians 1:21 tells us that Jesus sits enthroned above all principalities and powers-- that's in the natural realm and that's in the spiritual realm.
God is sovereign over all of it. As a theological proposition, you might say, "I'll buy that. God's sovereign over all of that. He made it all. He's in charge."
***But it leaves you with a question of, "If God's in control, just how in control is He? Did He just wind this thing up and is now sitting back in heaven, sort of presiding over the big picture? He doesn't sweat the details but He watches the big stuff? Every once in a while He reaches down and makes a mid course correction or works a miracle just to keep things going on an even keel?” Is that the way it is?
Or is God really in control? This is where providence comes in. God's providence is simply God's sovereignty in action. When you get a feel for how active God is, not just in the big picture but in the details it will knock your socks off! God is providentially in charge of everything. Providence is not “Christian luck.” That's what most of us think. Something good happens to me and I'm a believer so I don't just chalk it up to chance, God did it. God was provident there. That's true but it's way bigger than that.
It's like in Hebrews 1 "Jesus upholds all things by His powerful word." In Colossians 1 it says the same kind of thing, "Jesus is before all things and in Him all of creation holds together." Acts 17 "In God we live and move and have our being." God is passionately into the details of life. The fact that this whole place holds together, the universe holds together, the fact that you're alive here today is because Jesus, right now and at every moment, is actively upholding all things by His powerful word.
All the hairs on your head are numbered. That doesn't mean that God knows how many hairs you have. He does, but it means that He has assigned a number to each one of your hairs. Jesus said that. Every hair on your head has a number. If you're losing your hair or pulling out your hair because you're losing control, God has to recalibrate your head! Because every hair has a number. That's how into the details He is.
Jesus said a bird doesn't fall without God's will being involved. Jesus said take the most common of all birds, the sparrow. You can buy two of them for a penny but not one of them dies apart from God's will. The Bible says that dewdrops don't just happen. God fathers the dewdrops. They are birthed by God almighty who is into the details. The Bible says that sunrises don't just happen, but that God gives orders to the morning and causes His sun to shine. Storms don't just happen. The Bible says that God calls up clouds from the ends of the earth. He cuts a channel for the thunderstorm and a channel for the rain that falls. The Bible says that rainbows don't just happen. Rainbows have less to do with light refracting through water than it has to do with God wanting to remind you of a covenant He made in the Old Testament to His servant Noah. The Bible says that animals don't hunt their own prey. The Bible says that God hunts the prey for the lioness. The Bible says that when the doe gives birth to the fawn that God is there overseeing the process.
The Bible says that God is looking over all the details of your life. He has set out for you the exact number of days that you should live. You can read it in Acts 17:26. And not only that, He's determined the place you should live. You might have thought you went out and bought your house and you made the decision. God was in that decision too. He determined the length of your days and exactly where you should live. If you catch hold of that truth, that God's not just presiding over the big picture but that He is passionately into orchestrating the details of all of life. That's a truth that will set you free from having to control your own life. I'm not qualified to control my own life but God sure is. He can do it.
How do we respond to that picture of God? I like the way Psalm 115:3 sums it up, "Our God is in heaven; He does whatever he pleases." Not just sometimes but all the time, everywhere, at every moment. How do you respond to that?
Basically what we need to do is get out of control for good. We've got to respond to God's sovereign claims on our lives and yield control to Him. As you sit here today, whether you're a Christian or not yet a Christian, God's got an awfully big claim on your life. Half or more of who you are today, you had nothing to say about. You were handed a package from your parents -- a physical and psychological package that you can't change. The software was programmed into you and you're running on it ever since. No amount of psychotherapy or self help or exercise or plastic surgery can change it. You are you and you've always been and you had nothing to say about it. But God's got a claim on your life. How are you going to respond to it?
There are three basic things I think we need to do in response to God's sovereignty.
A - We need to COOPERATE with it.
God's sovereignty allows me to participate in a life full of certainties. This is a mystery. Are you a robot? Did God program everything and you have no free will? No, not at all. The Bible says that God is sovereign over all the details and yet somehow you're still a moral free agent with choice and responsibility. In God's universe, both of those principles operate. We don't know how to reconcile them. We're too finite to know that. But they both operate. So you have a role. You have a response to make to God's sovereignty. The first response is to cooperate with it.
Ephesians 1:8-10 (The Message) "He thought of everything, provided for everything we could possibly need, letting us in on the plans he took such delight in making. He set it all before us in Christ, a long-range plan in which everything would be brought together and summed up in Him, everything in deepest heaven, everything on planet earth."
That is a certain life. Most people think life is uncertain. We've got good news for them. Life is certain! We don't know all the certainties but God does. He has let us in on a whole lot of them. We know what life is about, as believers. Life is about loving God with all your heart and loving your neighbor as yourself. It's about glorifying God with your life and sharing the good news with people in a lost world. We know how everything is going to wind up. We know Jesus is coming back, justice is going to be served, you're going to receive your ultimate and final salvation. You're going to party in heaven with God for all eternity.
We know a whole lot of His program to get us there. We know that He's trying to conform us to the image of Christ. He's making us like Jesus. He does that by putting us in a family of believers where we can share our gifts together. He also does it through problems and difficulties that come in and test our faith and build our character. We even know that when life gets out of control and we're not even sure what God is doing, we sort of know what God is doing.
That's the whole lesson of Job. Job was a righteous man. He had no need for any tragedy to come into his life to teach him a lesson. He was righteous and blameless and humble. Yet, God in His sovereignty, allowed Satan to wipe Job out. He lost ten children to death. He lost all his wealth. He lost his health. He was just left with his nagging wife. And Job never knew why. But we do. God put it in his Word for a reason, so that we would know. All God was doing with Job was making a massive display before all heaven and hell of how faithful a person can be and how he can keep a person in His grip even when his life is out of control. Job never renounced His faith. God got in satan's face and said, "You're trying to kill this guy's commitment but you can't. I'm too big! And Job is too tightly in My grasp. You can't take it away." Even when life doesn't make sense, maybe God just wants to use you to make that kind of open display before all the spiritual powers in the world and say, "Look at how close this son or daughter of Mine is. Look at how much they love Me. Look at how much they believe in Me." I'd be willing to do that. If I've got to suffer so God can get in satan's face and make His point that's great.
Life is pretty certain. We don't know it all but we know a good bit of what's going on. That calls us from us two specific responses. We obey in response to God's sovereignty. "In all your ways acknowledge Him and He will make your paths straight." We pray in response to God's sovereignty. "I cry out to God most high, to God who fulfills His purpose for me."
When I obey I align my actions with God's will and sovereignty. When I pray I align my own will and my own thoughts with God's will and sovereignty. The fear of losing control, the stress that comes from that comes from two different agendas operating. I've got mine and God's got His. They are cutting across the grain of each other and creating friction and difficulty and stress and fear. But when I cooperate with God's sovereignty and I obey and I pray, just like Proverbs 3:6 says, "He makes all my paths straight." He makes things a whole lot smoother than they would be otherwise. James 4 says "When you say today or tomorrow I'm going to go do something, you boast and you brag." Instead, James says, you say, "God willing, this afternoon I'm going to the mall.... God willing, tomorrow morning I'm going to go visit a client...." That's how in tune with His will we're called to be.
B. A second response we make to God's sovereign claims on our lives is we CONTEMPLATE it.
God's sovereignty allows me to relax and see the big picture. If you're like me when difficulties strike and your life is going out of control you make two responses: anger and action. When something bad happens my initial reaction is "What is going on here? Why is this happening?" My second response is to take action. I want to jettison that problem out of my life. I want to smooth over that hassle as fast as I can and get it out of there.
Two better responses are: rest "He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty." Psalm 91:1
and reflect "Be still and know that I am God." Psalm 46:10
Biblical illustration: King David was traveling along at a time of turmoil in his life. Things were out of control. His son, Absolom, prince of Israel, led a insurrection, was trying to grab the kingdom for himself. David is traveling with some of his companions and a punk of a guy named Shime-i comes out to meet him. This guy Shime-i, while this little civil war is going on, is pelting David with rocks and calling out insults. "You're a man of blood! You're getting what's coming to you! You're a warrior! You've caused a lot of grief in other people's lives and now it's all coming back on you. Get out of here. You're cursed. You're a man of blood." Abishai, one of David's right hand men, responds with anger and action. He says two things (2 Samuel 16) "Why should this dead dog curse my Lord, the King." And then he says, "Let me go over and take off his head." That's action. Abishai is saying, “I'm going to jettison this problem right out of your life.”
David, a man after God's own heart, turns to Abishai and says, "Sometimes you and I have so little in common. Let's not do anything. Let's not get angry. Let's rest. Let's not take action. Let's reflect. How do I know that God didn't send Shime-i into my life to tell me something I need to hear?" Shime-i, was still responsible for his actions and he was still wrong for doing it but David saw God behind it may be sending him a message he needed to reflect on a bit. There was truth in what Shime-i said. God didn't allow David to build the temple because he was a man of blood. He was a warrior. There was some truth in what Shime-i was saying. David was wise enough not to take action and get angry but to rest and reflect on what God might be doing with this circumstance.
C - A third response we need to make is critical. If all we have to do is cooperate and contemplate we can easily give way to fatalism. "God's going to do whatever He wants so I have to go his way when He dumps a truckload of trouble on me, all I can do is sit there and contemplate." It gets real fatalistic.
It's like a guy a who, the first time he was confronted with God's sovereignty, he stormed out of the church, went home and fell down his stairs. He got up, brushed himself off and looked up to heaven and says, "I'm glad that one's over." Like, “God's just laying in wait. He's waiting to ambush me with a truckload of pain. I'm glad that one is over, I'll move on to the next one."
That might be the way it is if all we had to do was cooperate and contemplate but there is a third response that is so key to God's sovereign claims on your life. That is to CELEBRATE it. You can look back, if you're a Christian, and you've been through some good times and some bad times but can't you look back and see that God was in control of it all the way? Aren't you thankful for it? Aren't there some tough lessons you've learned and some tough rows you've had to hoe that you're glad God gave that to you because it worked some character into you? It gave you a bigger image of God than you had before. We need to celebrate God's sovereignty over our lives. A lot of you, as you look back over your life you've seen God's hand in it all the way. His handwriting is all over it. You celebrate God's sovereignty. Even when you have gone through tough and painful times God has brought you through. He's led you to this point safely and He's making you into the image of Christ. Why fear the future? Why fear losing control? He's just going to keep you on the same program He's got you on.
Some of you need to get on the program. You are not qualified to run your life. If you think you can get it all under control it's not ever going to happen for you.
Romans 8:28 "We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose."
Are you afraid of losing control of your life? I'm afraid of being in control of mine. I can't do Romans 8:28. I can't work all the things in my life for good. But God can. I hope today your image of God has been expanded just a little bit. Christianity is about serving a big God. Not a knee high God or a head high God or even a sky high God. It's about serving the most high God who sees the big picture but is passionately into the details of your life and He wants to run it for your good.
Abdicate the throne! Get out of the cockpit. Get off the bridge! God's the only one who can control your life.
Prayer:
Father, I love the verse that says, "Our God is in heaven and He does whatever he pleases." I'm so proud of that because You're my dad. God, I pray for me and for all of us here that we would be able to say, "God, do what You please with me." And that we'd get off the throne, get out of the cockpit, and put You in charge. You're the only one qualified to control our lives. I pray, Lord, You'd help us to cooperate with the process, to contemplate just how big a God You are and to celebrate all the things You do for us. You work all the things for our good. We love You and thank You for it. In Jesus' name. Amen.
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