life on planet earth on Controlling God

He may have been the hardest person I ever counseled. He was self-assured and controlling. He argued for the rightfulness of everything he had ever done. He acted like the victim when in fact he was t...

Divine Creator, your ways are above our ways. No matter how hard we try, you will always confound us. Too often we try to reduce you into something we can fully comprehend, or something we can control...

Lord Jesus—the same yesterday, today and tomorrow, and the author of change, who’s constantly doing “a new thing,” which makes us sit up and take notice. We admit, we’d be more comfortable with a pred...

Gracious Spirit, you are at work all around us. You prompt us to follow you, and you convict us when we have missed your leading. Please forgive us for the times that we miss your presence. Please hum...

Lord of all, you are in control. We live under the illusion that we have control, yet all life is sustained by you. We live for our own purposes, we try to become gods over our own lives. We unjustly ...

This is the beautiful community that Herman Bavinck gets at when he writes, The image of God is much too rich for it to be fully realized in a single human being, however richly gifted that human bein...

We have set our hope on you, our living God, as those who set course for home from distant places. But we need your help if we are to keep on course: we need fresh sight of you, on which to check our ...

In Luke Norsworthy’s book, God over Good , he describes the curiosity of a new friend whose bedroom was, to use his own words, “immaculate.” At the time this seemed strange, but in hindsight, and wit...

We must never underestimate our power to be wrong when talking about God, when thinking about God, when imagining God, whether in prose or in poetry. A generous orthodoxy, in contrast to the tense, na...

We are so accustomed to relying upon words to manage and control others. If we are silent, who will take control? God will take control, but we will never let him take control until we trust him. Sile...

So how can we form deep Christian convictions without dividing the church? Let’s take a deeper look at convictions themselves. Convictions are like light: they come in many colors and form across a sp...

As long as we continue to live as if we are what we do, what we have, and what other people think about us, we will be filled with judgments, opinions, evaluations, and condemnations. We will remain a...

We all go through desert seasons and have the opportunity to determine how we will respond. The cyclical frustrations I faced in regard to my desire for control, fear, and the longing to feel chosen w...

Lord, though you should guide us, we inform ourselves; though you should rule us, we control ourselves; though you should fulfill us, we console ourselves. We think your truth too high, your will too ...

The point is this. If you want to know what it means to talk about God being ‘in charge of’ the world, or being ‘in control’, or being ‘sovereign’, then Jesus himself instructs you to rethink the noti...

I will not try to run my own life or the lives of others; that is God's business.

Please forgive us, O Lord, for we often forget how powerful you are. You are the potentate of time, yet we think we rule our lives. We are sorry for creating images of you that are smaller than realit...

Whatever controls us is our lord. The person who seeks power is controlled by power. The person who seeks acceptance is controlled by acceptance. We do not control ourselves. We are controlled by the ...

Loving and gracious God, we know we do not always live the life to which we are called: We turn away from You, and from our true selves. You command us to shine Your light, but we often hide it instea...

God of all times and places, we confess that we try to limit our exposure to you. We try to limit your presence to a tidy little box, safely tucked away where we can pull you out as needed. We try to ...

God's terrible insistence on human freedom is so absolute that he granted us the power to live as though He did not exist, to spit in His face, to crucify Him.

I was sitting in a hotel lobby in Orlando, Florida, having a conversation with my friend K, from Germany. Her world-class young athlete friend was recently paralyzed as a result of an on-camera stunt ...

In their excellent book Invitation to a Journey , M. Robert Mulholland and Ruth Haley Barton describe the foundation of life as being spiritual in nature. This means we are constantly be “formed” s...

The God who loans you life sees your every move, hears each word you speak, knows your every thought. You are seen by God. Noticed. Known.

If we want to turn in the direction of what is life giving, we are going to have to let go of Winter. “’Let go’ of the dark, which you wrap yourself in like a straitjacket, and let in the light. Stop ...

Curiously enough, it is a fear of how grace will change and improve them that keeps many souls away from God. They want God to take them as they are and let them stay that way. They want Him to take a...

If I were going to begin practicing the presence of God for the first time today, it would help to begin by admitting the three most terrible truths of our existence: that we are so ruined, and so lov...

Sometimes trust takes time. We all love to be in control, but when you start to give some of that up, it's freeing. Start with some of the little things. Give those things up to the Lord.

Dear God, Sometimes fear is an idol that we believe will help us control our lives. Sometimes fear is a companion that we let take the place of You. Sometimes fear is the enemy that tells us You are n...

The modern way with God is to set him at a distance, if not to deny him altogether; and the irony is that modern Christians, preoccupied with maintaining religious practices in an irreligious world, h...