My wife and I just returned from a trip to the Midwest for a Memorial Service for a family member. Every airport along our journey shared one specific and common site: a control tower. Every airport had one of those tall, concrete obelisk-looking towers that rises several stories above runways. Men and women sit in those high control towers watching monitors filled with countless blips representing airplanes needing to land, or waiting for permission to take off. The pilots are flying those planes, but the controllers are in … control.

“Control” is a word we hear in news now, all the time, have you noticed? There’s a frantic rush to develop a vaccine for the Corona Virus going on right now. And in order to be safe, developers must insist on careful documentation of ‘control groups’ for accuracy in successful drug development.

To be in control is to accept the weighty responsibility for directing some course of action or direction. In that sense, we’re all responsible for establishing some degree of control for our lives. In Galatians, Paul listed ‘self-control’ as a key element in the Fruit of the Spirit in our lives. And in Paul’s letter to Titus, self-control was one of the qualifiers for serving as an overseer of God’s people in the church. Self-control is a very important quality to possess, for sure.

But, in a very real sense, the wise person understands that human beings are never truly in control. To put it simply: “Being in control is out of our control.” It is certainly true that we may act as if we are in control; we may even assume we are in control. But when confronted with the way things ‘really are?’ We who name the Name of Jesus as our Lord understand that He, the Sovereign Who Reigns On High is in control. The psalmist declared it: “Whatever the Lord pleases, He does, in heaven and in earth, in the seas and in all deeps.” (Ps. 135:6) And in Ps. 115:3 he writes, “But our God is in the heavens; He does whatever He pleases.”

Q:  “Who sits at the control panel of your life?”

If you are a child of the Most High God, I can promise you, whether you know it or not, whether you even act like it or not, God is in control. No, He’s not sitting in some high tower pushing buttons and manipulating human beings, as if he were some air traffic controller of our lives. He’s committed to honoring our free will. But His sovereign control of my life is never threatened by my stubborn heart or some immature action I may take.

And, on days when disaster seems to have visited my life, or some un-foreseen circumstance clouds the horizon of my flight path, God faithfully monitors my every challenge, providing hope, peace, direction. It’s impossible to acknowledge control without embracing ‘trust.’ If I don’t trust the pilot of the plane, don’t count on me climbing onboard. Conversely, if I trust in the Lord with all my heart, and lean not unto my own understanding (or control) but in all my ways acknowledge Him (and His rightful place of control) He will do what pleases Him. And what pleases him is to guide my every step and mark my every path and make known to me the way that I should go.

There is no better way to live life than to live it … trusting The One Who Is In Control.

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