No Control for You! - June 20, 2008

Good Friday morning! I am glad the weekend will soon begin. We had another heavy rainfall last night; I think the church's new parking lot will soon be some blocks down the street. The College World Series is well underway, I missed much of the beginning this year due to traveling. I hope to spend some time watching a few games this weekend.

Have you ever wanted more control? I think that part of the curse on this world is a realization of our own powerlessness. However, like many other parts of the curse, many people refuse to face the fact that God is in control and not each individual person. Throughout society we see attempts to control populations, events, and even individual behavior. Others try to rewrite history, sometimes through scholarly research and other times through increasingly wild guesswork. What is our housing but an attempt to control a small piece of the environment? Dams to control flooding, highways to control travel, rules for this and that, are all attempts to control something. That is not to say that laws are bad, or that we should all go try to sleep in the pasture. However, at some point we come to recognize the sovereign place of God in our lives. This is part of our sanctification process. We come to realize that we can control very little apart from God. You might think that you controlled when you got up today. On the other hand, a little touch of illness and you wouldn't get up, or a call of "fire" at 3:00 am and you would get up quickly and much earlier than you had planned. The best part of realizing God's sovereign power is that we are no longer blown about like flotsam in this sea of life.

People in the world will plan and scheme, work and train, and hope that believing in their own self will cause them a long and happy life. Then some life-changing event occurs and all of their hard work and planning is out the window. Isn't it much better to realize that every dark valley has an end and that God will lead us through? In the world, there is no such Good News, only success as measured in worldly terms or failure, which comes all too often. This dark world needs to know that God is in control and that He has sent Good News of eternal life through His Son, Jesus.

Believe it and receive it today! Have a wonderful weekend!

Bucky