The Roots of Control

I was going to write about something different today- I actually have a series up my sleeve- but in my Bible Study this morning, another issue sprang up that I really want to talk about from seriously personal experience.

And that topic is CONTROL.

“Controlling people” may or may not know this about themselves, but what they/we truly need is safety. They have some unresolved pain, fear, and sense of responsibility they may not know how to satisfy. They need assurance and clarity. They need encouragement and peace. They need to learn again to trust. They need to know they aren’t all alone up there keeping the world together.

We become controlling when we live out of a place of fear for too long, fear that settles in when we feel like no one is leading well and no one is meeting needs well and one day we wake up and we hate where we are. Subconsciously or right-out-loud, we say, “This is changing here and now, and I’m going to make it happen my way!” Sometimes this leads to healthy assertion, and sometimes it leads to trying to control things and people that are simply not our’s to manage. When this happens, there will almost always be anger as a result. If anger is turned outward, we know what that looks like: if anger is turned inward, it becomes depression.

Whether it is “real” fear, like major disruptions of trust and physical/emotional danger, or it is “felt” fear, like being constantly disappointed by someone’s lack of love and help, we develop defense mechanisms to protect ourselves from the memory of that pain as well as future pain.

But just like with all defense mechanisms, love can overcome the need for them! How can we best love people who constantly have to know what’s happening, seem to have to have it their way, or are never truly satisfied?

One, they need to know they aren’t alone. Understanding of how their minds work, communication of plans and ideas, and the reliability of team members can go a long way in being in a great relationship with someone who tends to be controlling. Believe it or not, “controlling people” don’t necessarily want to be in charge and they can handle being led—many are crying out to be led if they can relax and know they can trust their team to talk them through something when worries or questions come up. They might act like they want to be a Lone Ranger, but I don’t buy it. Fear is the driving factor in choosing to be an island.

The second way we can love people who struggle with this is, well, love. Not judging and being irritated by their high strung, frustrated, or critical behaviors will be hard, but we can choose to see behind those sin habits to the frantic person inside. We can help calm and soothe, we can help bring peace to those restless waves, and these behaviors might change quite quickly when those inner needs are addressed. We can also, in love, share the way their behaviors make us feel. We can encourage them with small challenges and insights. While we cannot change anyone, I’m gonna be a hippie here and say I believe in love and its power to change people!

SO. I can relate to both sides of this coin. I have controlling people in my life that I am beginning to see in a new, more compassionate, light. Also, in my fleshly, un-redeemed nature, I grew to be very controlling in my first couple years of marriage because those years felt chaotic after my structured, safe, tightly-held-together childhood and college years. It was a paradigm shift and a new type of relationship I did not have any skills to handle well. I had a strong sense of wanting to do everything in my newly adult life “right”, but felt a power struggle with my husband as his opinions of “right” didn’t always match mine. Also, I had major health problems that made me feel like I was in a power struggle with God!

My first session of counseling, to my remembrance, was with a very insightful woman when I was maybe around 35 years old. After probably starting out our session with a 20 minute personal monologue (verbal processor here!) she said, “So when did you start believing you had to be God?”

I remember feeling like the wind had been knocked out of me…and that I was talking to the right lady.

Control is ultimately fearing that we have this responsibility to do God’s job yet overwhelming pain comes when we realize we are failing. Of course we would be failing; the whole premise is wrong! God alone is God and God alone is good at being God, and we must understand the difference in our roles.

Will we let Him be Lord over every part of our lives or will we keep holding some things very, very close and out of His reach?

Will we trust Him to be Savior for our kids and loved ones, when we know there is nothing else we reasonably and prayerfully should be doing to protect and guide them?

Will we “be still and know that He is God”? (Ps. 46:10)

The possibilities of failure and pain will always be there.

But the pressure we put on ourselves to keep that failure and pain far from our personal doorstep can be relieved.

We can exhale. We can stop living from a place of fear and live from a place of love – knowing God will give us and our loved ones the perfect amount of help from on high when we need it, come what may.

Knowing Who He is gives us the sense of safety we need to bear with one another and dissipate our personal hold on all the things we carry.

“When anxiety was great within me, your consolation brought me joy.” Ps. 94:19

What the Spirit Desires: A Cure for Worry?

All semester I have longed to truly trust God and see the effect of that trust in my feelings. I wanted His peace that everything was going to be okay, but constantly the concerns of my life were on my mind like if I forgot them, He would, too.

Then several weeks ago, this happened. I had no intention of blogging about this, but I kept feeling like I should share. In a nutshell, the Lord said to me:

“Lyndsay, thank you for going to the nations, learning languages, loving and serving your family, and being so concerned about obeying Me with your life. But dear one, I have this one thing against you and you desperately need to hear it. You do not trust Me. You don’t relax under my care and power as a child of Mine would. While you’re physically obeying, you’re worrying. You’re wondering if what “you’re” doing will be enough and if you yourself will be enough for all the problems surrounding you. It’s a shame. I have peace and life for you if you’ll just allow Me to accomplish in your life all I said I would in My way and in My time. You do not need to be or do anything except trust and abide in Me.”

I had to just think on that for awhile and then repent, all the while knowing I could not fix myself. That’s the awesome thing about repentance. It’s not saying, “I agree with You, Lord, I am wrong, and I will do better.” Nope. It’s “I agree with You, Lord, I am wrong, and I am completely bankrupt in every. single. area. of. my. being.” And HE promises to take that heart and make it clean; He also promises to bring solutions by the power of His Spirit once we realize our inability to live His way.

He wants me to live at peace and enjoy life as I follow Him. But how, if this (sadly) doesn’t come as easily as it should?

 

Romans 8:5-17 has our answer. Reading the whole text would be great, but the gist is that our minds can either be controlled by the Spirit or by our natural, sinful nature. 

The things I usually am all in a tizzy about, needing desperately for them to work out soon, are not bad things. They are actually all things that I believe by His Word to be His will. So that led me to skim over this part of Romans 8, because I never realized that my sinful nature can take over even in the midst of daily obedience and doing things HE has led me to do.

My mind constantly on these things working out in my way and my time, adding a smidge of “I better get this right or it’ll all fall apart” made my so-called obedience a big fat adventure in missing the point. Repentance truly was the step to take, not a self help book on worry, and the next step after that was to let God show me how to have a mind ordered by His Spirit.

We can choose at any time to set our minds on what the Spirit desires instead. Let’s get specific if we’re going to do it, right? What does the Spirit desire? Here’s just a short list…

*That we would know the character qualities of God and trust His heart

*That we would know the Word of God as a comfort and a sword

*That we would know and claim personally the specific promises of God for each individual trial we face

*Full surrender in prayer, acknowledging we don’t even know what to ask, and rely on His intercession (Rom. 8:27)

*That we would know how to praise and worship God, being lifted above this realm for healing, relief, and transformation

 

And lastly, back to Romans 8, the Holy Spirit who is such a good friend and wants so much for us in the Lord, He longs for us to know that we did not receive a spirit that makes us a slave again to fear, but we received a spirit of sonship. “And by Him, we cry ‘Abba Father’. The Spirit testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. Now if we are children, then we are heirs–heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in His sufferings in order that we also may share in His glory.” (verses 15-17)

What are we supposed to set our minds on? What the Spirit desires.

What does the Spirit desire? That we would receive our spirit of sonship!

 

Three out of four of my children were once orphans.

That’s not an easy title to break free from, even after the adoption papers are signed. I can love them, show them my intentions, and care for their needs all day long, and they blossom, and I begin to think Ah, they are beginning to see themselves as daughters! But the moment I say “no”, or even “not now”, I see it in their eyes. They’re orphans again. The trust isn’t there yet. It’s all sight; no faith. It’s every man for himself; this supposed caretaker, this supposed parent, is not what I hoped for because they will not bow down to me and bend at my command!

When we are disappointed with God’s decisions in our lives or when we don’t see His power working quickly enough, we can easily take on a spirit of an orphan–bitter, untrusting, fearful, self-protective, focused on losses, controlling, angry!

No matter what I do for my girls, I cannot make them receive their new status as daughter…but it is still their’s, like a gift all wrapped up, waiting to be opened and enjoyed.

The same is true for us.

It’ll take time for my daughters to trust me enough to relax and go with the flow. It may take years, but I know the first step would be for them to really know me and their dad, and what we’re all about, to be immersed in our heart for them.

For us as believers to truly be just that–believers–we are going to have to know God, get past the little verses taken out of context and truly eat His Word, and get in step with the beat of His heart. We’re going to have to immerse ourselves in His heart for us, which is revealed through His Word, prayer, worship, and community. There’s a “new normal” the Spirit longs for us to embrace!

Right now for me, to abide means (a) to live in a place of knowing my bankruptcy, my inability to be who God is calling me to be and (b) to constantly be filling my eyes, ears, mind, and heart with what the Spirit desires.

I’m the type that needs to know what my job is.

This—abiding—this is my job. And the more I do it, the easier it is to see how very, very well He is doing His.