Giving up Control

My last entry asked who is in control of your life. The desire of my heart was to show that we truly aren’t in control of anything. The rest of that thought is, who or what is controlling your life?

Maybe it would be good to explore what happens when we surrender to something other than God’s love and guidance.

Take a look around you. Read the headlines of any newspaper, turn on any news cast (you can always find news), or watch some of the more popular television programs. What do you read, hear, and see?

Recently, we’ve learned about a serial killer who was a church member and now calmly describes the murders he's committed. We’ve also been witness to a sexual predator who allegedly killed three adults in order to kidnap two children for his own twisted pleasure. Hundreds of thousands watched planes fly into the World Trade Center towers, the Pentagon, and a field in Pennsylvania killing hundreds of people and forever changing the landscape of our hearts. London is now dealing with the same thing. CEOs of large corporations allegedly diverted funds for their own personal use, robbing employees of their future retirement. Highly rated television programs promote promiscuity, adultery, homosexuality, lying, cheating, and just about anything other than Godly principals and beliefs. The entertainment industry even recognizes they can target more people with cartoon-like programs promoting the same things.

Movies, video games, and popular music sometimes go even further.

And we wonder, what’s the world coming to?

Several books in the Bible are prophetic but Timothy is eerily so. Consider Paul’s guidance to the one whom he considered his “son.”

"But realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come. For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power …"

Paul uses nineteen appalling characteristics in the first five verses. He then goes on to say in verses 6-8: "For among them are those who enter into households and captivate weak women weighed down with sins, led on by various impulses, always learning but never able to come to the knowledge of truth, … men who oppose the truth, men of depraved mind, rejected in regard to the faith. And then, in verse 13: But evil men and imposters will proceed from bad to worse; deceiving and being deceived." The New American Standard Bible, 2 Timothy 3:1-8

Those verses are chillingly close to describing our world. Moreover, if we look even further into words written almost two thousand years ago, we find something even more frightening.

In the first chapter of Romans, Paul writes of the sinfulness of humankind and in the last half, he specifically addresses unbelief and its consequences. The Message, Romans 1:21-32, puts it in the cold, harsh reality of today:

"What happened was this: People knew God perfectly well, but when they didn’t treat him like God, refusing to worship him, they trivialized themselves into silliness and confusion so that there was neither sense nor direction left in their lives. They pretended to know it all, but were illiterate regarding life. They traded the glory of God who holds the whole world in his hands for cheap figurines you can buy at any roadside stand.

"So God said, in effect, “If that’s what you want, that’s what you get.” It wasn’t long before they were living in a pigpen, smeared with filth, filthy inside and out.
And all this because they traded the true God for a fake god, and worshiped the god they made instead of the God who made them—the God we bless, the God who blesses us. Oh, yes!

"Worse followed. Refusing to know God, they soon didn’t know how to be human either—women didn’t know how to be women, men didn’t know how to be men. Sexually confused, they abused and defiled one another, women with women, men with men,—all lust, no love. And then they paid for it, oh, how they paid for it—emptied of God and love, godless and loveless wretches.

"Since they didn’t bother to acknowledge God, God quit bothering them and let them run loose. And then all hell broke loose: rampant evil, grabbing and grasping, vicious backstabbing. They made life hell on earth with their envy, wanton killing, bickering, and cheating. Look at them: mean-spirited, venomous, fork-tongued God-bashers. Bullies, swaggerers, insufferable windbags! They keep inventing new ways of wrecking lives. They ditch their parents when they get in the way. Stupid, slimy, cruel, cold-blooded. And it’s not as if they don’t know better. They know perfectly well they’re spitting in God’s face. And they don’t care—worse, they hand out prizes to those who do the worst things best!"

These are perfect examples of people who are trying to control their lives. Sounds terrifying, doesn’t it? Sounds like it could come from today's headlines or top news alerts the media likes to use. More importantly, it should illustrate the disturbing examples of people living without God.

But, life doesn’t have to be that way. The good news is that God can take a surrendered life and create something of beauty. More about that next time.

I pray you will come back and discover how the Creator of the universe wants a personal relationship with you. God changes hearts, spirits, and lives.

Blessings, Francine



2 comments:

    Great topic, Francine. I pray many read your blog and it proves a blessing to them as well.

     

    rhodi alers de lopez ... Thanks for leaving a comment. It truly is my desire to speak the Truth in love. Blessings to you

    Francine

     
 
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