Sermon quotes on control
Mark Batterson
The circumstances we ask God to CHANGE are often the circumstances God is using to CHANGE US.
Corrie Ten Boom
Never be afraid to trust an unknown future to a known God.
Francis Chan
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.
Philip K. Dick
The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use them.
Jean de La Fontaine
A person often meets his destiny on the road he took to avoid it.
Abraham Kuyper
There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, Mine!
qtd. in Abraham Kuyper: A Centennial Reader (Eerdmans, 1998)
Martin Luther
Faith is a free surrender and a joyous wager on the unseen, unknown, untested goodness of God.
Eugene Peterson
I will not try to run my own life or the lives of others; that is God’s business.
Rebecca Pippert
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 lord of our lives.
Charles R. Swindoll
When you accept the fact that sometimes seasons are dry and times are hard and that God is in control of both, you will discover a sense of divine refuge, because the hope then is in God and not in yourself.
John Mark Comer
The opposite of faith isn’t doubt; it’s certainty and control.
Carl Honore
When mechanical clocks began to spring up in town squares across Europe, the line between keeping time and keeping control blurred further.
In Praise Of Slowness: How A Worldwide Movement Is Challenging The Cult Of Speed, Harpercollins.
Dan Allender
Crises serve to remind us that we are fundamentally not in control.
Leading with a Limp: Turning Your Struggles into Strengths, Waterbrook Press, 2006, 29.
James Baldwin
Nothing is more desirable than to be released from an affliction, but nothing is more frightening than to be divested of a crutch.
M. Robert Mulholland and Ruth Haley Barton
The difference between forming ourselves and being formed is the vital issue of control.
Taken from: Invitation to a Journey: A Road Map for Spiritual Formation by M. Robert Mulholland and Ruth Haley Barton. Copyright (c) 2016 by M. Robert Mulholland and Ruth Haley Barton. Published by InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, IL. www.ivpress.com
Skye Jethani
Fear and control are the basis for all human religions. From this common beginning the paths diverge dramatically, splinter, multiply, and finally terminate in different places. But each one is an attempt to overcome suffering, fear, and death by exerting control over natural, and sometimes supernatural, forces.
With: Reimagining the Way You Relate to God (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2011), 18.
David Benner
Fearful people live within restrictive boundaries…. People who live in fear feel compelled to remain in control. They attempt to control themselves and they attempt to control their world. Often despite their best intentions, this spills over into efforts to control others…. Fear also blocks responsiveness to others. The fearful person may appear deeply loving, but fear always interferes with the impulse toward love. Energy invested in maintaining safety and comfort always depletes energy available for love of others.
Matt Haig
Let’s state the obvious, because the obvious is easy to take for granted and forget. You are not other people. You are you. You have no control over other people. You have no absolute control over what they think of the world or of politics or of you. You have no control over what harm they may have done.
N.T. Wright
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 notion of ‘kingdom’, ‘control’ and ‘sovereignty’ themselves, around his death on the cross.
God and the Pandemic: A Christian Reflection on the Coronavirus and Its Aftermath, Zondervan, 2020.
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