“I think our need for control interferes with our trust in God.” – Sheila Walsh
I recently heard a pastor tell a story of a lady he sat beside on a commercial flight. Upon settling into his seat, he noticed that she acted very nervous, displaying white-knuckled fear over having to fly. As he engaged the lady in small talk, it became more apparent to him that she was truly terrified of flying. After asking her several questions regarding her concerns (an a attempt on his part to bring calm to her by discussing the safety of air travel) he asked her what would make her feel better and bring calm to her. She replied, “I’d feel better if I was flying the plane.” Fortunately for all the other passengers, that wasn’t an option.
EdmondsWe laugh at this story because it is obvious to us that this lady doesn’t need to be flying a plane. She has no aeronautical training and does not possess the right credentials. She really doesn’t want to fly the plane; she just wants to be in control of it. She wants to know that it lands safely without incident. Somehow she feels that if she is in control of a situation, even if she has no idea what she’s doing, she can affect the outcome.
Aren’t we the same way about many areas of life? We take our worries and problems to God’s altar in prayer, and then we take them back. We say, “I surrender all,” but we don’t. We have the opportunity to turn over everything to the Creator of all things, who is more than sufficient – and fully credentialed.
I believe the more desperate our situations are, the more we must rely on the power of the resurrected Christ that lives within us. In other words, the more we are able to recognize that a particular thing is out of our control, the more apt we are to trust God with it. I once heard a well-known Bible teacher say that if we could just begin the day at the end of ourselves, we could save ourselves a lot of stress.
We’re not in control – never have been, never will be. What if we started our day with this prayer: “Lord, this day belongs to you. I am not in control of the outcome of the events of today, but you are. Help me to be faithful to follow your lead in all that I do today. Give me wisdom to know what I can do and what I can’t do. But in all that I do, I trust you with the outcome. Help me, as Scripture instructs, to ‘not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus’ (Philippians 4:6-7).
“And help me not to try to fly any planes that I’m not qualified to fly.”
– Edmonds, a member of Shandon Baptist Church in Columbia, is a director with a financial services firm. This article first appeared in the author’s “Weekly Winning Thought” series of e-mail devotionals.