Control

I have discovered something about myself...I am a control freak! It's not an issue in every area of my life but I have to admit that I do like a lot of things done a certain way in a specific time frame (just ask my husband!). But sometimes that can really cause problems!

As I was thinking about this I remembered an older post i'd written on this subject. It's from March of this year and i've gotten many new followers since then so I decided to share it again with all of you. If you struggle with control, I hope you enjoy this post and know that you're not alone!


Struggles

I have been going through a very hard time lately. It feels like my mind and emotions have just been under a huge attack. It seems like no matter what I do or how much I pray, I can’t get past it. My husband even talked to me about it and said he’s been feeling the same way and seeing the same thing. In fact, it was him talking to me about it that showed me what’s really been going on. See at first it just felt like a pity party. How many of you girls have ever felt the need to just sit down and have a good old fashioned pity party? You know the one, it makes you want to sit in the corner and sing “Nobody likes me, everybody hates me, guess I’ll go eat worms!”.

But after feeling this way for very long, I started to feel like it was getting out of my control and my emotions were beginning to get control of me. Ever felt that way?

But control just began to add to the problem. See I felt that if I could just get control of it, instead of allowing my emotions to have control, I could get rid if the attack. If I could just understand what was happening I could control it. Have you ever felt that way? Like you could do it yourself, control it yourself? I’ve found out that as soon as I start feeling that way, the problem only gets worse. And it did.

Thankfully I serve a mighty God who sees me exactly where I am and meets me right there and knows exactly what I need to get through.

Yesterday morning I read 4 little verses that changed things for me. For some reason I decided to read Jeremiah 29:11, it’s a very familiar verse and one I’ve prayed over my children on several occasions. But this time I read it with myself in mind and I also read the verses after it which are not often quoted with it but are very powerful.

11. For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end.
12. Then shall you call upon me, and you shall go and pray unto me, and I will hearken unto you.
13. And you shall seek me, and find me, when you search for me with all you heart.
14. And I will be found of you, saith the Lord…

I love how this is said in the King James version. The thoughts God thinks towards me are of peace. Peace was exactly what I needed. Peace over my mind. Peace to my need to control. Peace over my pity party. Peace. Perfect peace.

I love how the Amplified version says verses 12 and 13.

12. Then you will call upon Me, and you will come and pray to me, and I will hear and heed to you.
13. Then you will seek Me, inquire for and require Me [as a vital necessity] and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart.

How comforting is that? Here I am, feeling like I’m doing all this by myself , like I have to figure this all out by myself, and God used these familiar verses to show me that I’m not. All I have to do is simply call on Him. All I have to do is pray with all my heart, with everything I have. He’s right here, just waiting for me to call out to Him.

See, by me trying to take control of the situation I was effectively making the problem worse. I wasn’t only fighting myself in this situation, I was fighting the One who needed to be in control and just making a mess of the whole thing.

Once I was able to turn the problem over to Him, and once I began to “seek Him, inquire for and require Him [as a vital necessity] “ the peace that He wanted for me the whole time began to take over.

Now that’s not saying that the desire for control will never creep up on me again, but I do know what to do with it when it does. I can’t face attacks on my own. I can’t solve the problems I face on my own. I can’t survive my day to day struggles on my own. So each time I face a problem, attack or struggle, I’m going to seek, inquire for and require Christ as a vital necessity. And I know that as soon as I do that I’ll be ok.