Control Freak?!Sample

Losing Control

What do you call your TV control? The remote, duffer, doer, doodah, zapper, doobrie, switch, the buttons?

I’m team ‘doer’, but I appreciate you may well strongly disagree. I hope we can still be friends, it’s not even remotely a good idea to fall out about such trivial matters! We may well differ in what we call the long black gadget that changes the channels, but I think it’s fair to say that a common human trait we do share is we tend to like control. We like things our way. We can be ‘control freaks’.

This was highlighted to me in church recently. A new guy rocked up, who it’s fair to say was just a little (a lot) under the influence of alcohol. He plonked himself right in the middle of the congregation and proceeded to take a remote control out of his rucksack. He stood up with great enthusiasm pointing it all around the room as if he had control over the lights, sound and who knows what else?!

In some ways it’d be nice if we had the luxury of having that much control. If we were bored in life, and had a remote in our hand, we could fast forward a bit to a more exciting day. Or if we made a mistake we could quickly rewind and have the opportunity to re-record our mess up.

Over the next few days, we are going to look at different functions of the TV control. We’ll examine what we can learn from it, and how we can ensure we surrender our ‘control freaky’ ways to our father God. He is by far the best one to be trusted to hold the control in our lives.

Reflection - In which areas of your life do you particularly find it difficult to relinquish control?

In what ways do you see similarity between yourself and the mystery man at church with the remote in his rucksack?

Prayer - God, help me as I begin this devotional, to honestly evaluate my levels of ‘control freakiness’. I want to develop a deep trust in you, where I truly hand over the control to you. I want to submit to your will as my loving heavenly father, but in honesty I can often struggle to do so. Help me on this journey of learning to lose control. Amen.