Good morning!
Welcome to your morning coffee! May our Heavenly Father remind us of the depth and breadth of his power over our lives! Father, you are in control over all things. What you allow sometimes confuses us and is often hard to bear, but the truth remains, you are in control. Father, you are perfect. You are all knowing, all powerful, all present, and all good. In the name of your son Jesus, and by the power of he who is within us, the Holy Spirit, help us to submit ourselves to you, submit our desire to be in control, to your undeniable, ultimate control. Father thank you for the days you've given to us! Help us to entrust them to you!
Your Morning Song: "The Power of a Moment" by Chris Rice
Your Morning Scripture: Psalm 139:16
Your eyes saw my unformed substance;
in your book were written, every one of them,
the days that were formed for me,
when as yet there was none of them.
Perhaps more than at any other time in the history of the entire world, we have the ability to control our own lives. The thermostat. Cars. TV. Smart phones. Hot and cold water. WiFi. Streaming. Doctors of all shapes and sizes. Pictures. Refrigerators and freezers and microwaves. Schools, some online. We live in a world of luxury without precedent. There was even a study done that revealed that the average secretary position in the corporate world had access to far more luxuries than even the pharaohs of ancient Egypt.
Control. It is an illusion. God formed us in our mother's womb and formed even the days we are each going to live. God is in control.
Do we still have to make choices? Do we still have some measure of ownership of some of the stuff in our lives? Of course. But having a measure of responsibility within God's ultimate control is not the same thing as we ourselves being in control.
I'm under no illusion that this distinction I'm making is easy to read and agree with. Of course, you might respond. God is in ultimate control and he calls me to be faithful in the measure of choice I am given within his control. Sure. Sounds good. And?
Easy to affirm, easy to amen, but do we actually live this way?
God knew us before there was an us for anyone other than God to know. He knows and has total control over how long we will each live. Do we live our daily lives with this in mind? If I am daily mindful of and submitting to God's ultimate control over the very number of days I will live, how does that change me?
If I trust God in this ultimate way, I can rest in the security of his sovereignty. I can diet and exercise with the joy of stewarding my body well. If I do not trust God in this way, then my diet and exercise are just insecurity and fear of aging, making me desperate, panicked, obsessed, depressed.
If I trust God in this ultimate way, I can rest in the comfort of his control. I can love my children well with the peace of knowing that if I am faithful to love them God's way, he will help me and cover over my failings and shortcoming as a father. If I do not trust God in this way, then my parenting will be a grasping, desperate, wounding, selfish thing, and my children will not see and know and love God, they will only see me.
If we trust God in this ultimate way, as the one who has formed and decided our each and every day, how are we changed? How are we not changed? What area of our lives is not transformed? What relationships are not enlivened and enriched? What suffering can we not endure?
God's ultimate control over our lives is real. it is undeniable. It is unescapable. And yet, if we are not careful, we can quickly fool ourselves into thinking that we control our lives. But we don't. And that's great!
Comments