Control Issues
I remember when I was a little girl, I liked to be in charge of everything... My mom told me that I would come home and tell her about a new game we played at recess that I had made up. She would ask me who was in charge of different parts of the game and how we decided who would play each part and I would matter-of-factly tell her that I had told everyone else what to do! Type A personality to a "t".
As I got older, my naturally domineering personality got me into trouble as my peers stopped falling into line with my directions and started to push me into the fringes of their clicks and groups. It turns out people don't like being told what to do by someone without any actual authority over them no matter how old they are.
Even though I learned to stuff my controlling behaviors after that and tried to shut down that part of my heart as best I could, I still have a deep seated need for control that still manifested itself in less obvious ways. I don't know why, but for some reason, I feel the need to try to manipulate conversations, situations, people, events, and even God almost every single second of every single day so that they will all fall into line with what I want them to do and how I want them to be. And it seems like over just the past couple of weeks my deep need for freedom from my impulsively controlling behaviors and thought patterns and beliefs has become incredibly evident to me.
I have a major problem.
Here's an example of what I'm talking about... This morning I was standing in church during worship and all I could think about was the people around me and why they were or weren't worshiping the way I "thought they should" and how I could get them to engage more with the Lord the way I hoped they would. Is that a bad thing to want to help people with - engaging authentically and passionately with Jesus? No. It's actually a spiritual gift I think that God has given me to intuitively understand people and where they're at emotionally and sometimes spiritually and I have a passion for people to have genuine encounters with the Lord.
The problem is, I can't control any of that. I can't make people seek God more than they already are, and I can't force God to move in a certain way at a certain time to do what I think He should do with the people around me. But there I stood, trying to worship "harder" and louder and more passionately so that somehow maybe God would move in and do something and the people around me would get more "into" worship... But it was all manipulation and made me feel empty inside afterwards.
Instead of genuinely worshiping God in that moment from where I was and just letting myself sit down and rest in my Daddy's lap for awhile, all I could think about was how to get OTHER PEOPLE to engage with God that way... And I missed out on meeting with Jesus myself because I was too busy thinking about how everybody else was or wasn't meeting with Him...Crazy right?
And that brings me to my next point and that is that I'm finding out that my tendency to try to control everything and everyone around me is actually all rooted in pride. On one hand, when I try to control other people or situations around me, I am doing it because I think I know better than everyone else and that if they would just do it my way, then everything would fall into place. And on the other hand, I think that I could handle the situations better than God already is and instead of trusting Him to move in His timing and in His own way, I start trying to do His job FOR HIM!!!
Anyways, I felt like today was a good day to share all of this with you because it has been a really big issue that God has been showing me lately and there are so many layers to it that I don't think I've even begun to fully understand it let alone find healing and freedom from it yet. But I've heard that admitting you have a problem is the first step to freedom so there you have it. I have a problem.
Hopefully in near future I will be able to start going to see a counselor (for this and many other reasons) and they will be able to help me talk through a lot of this so that I can have more clarity in all of this. But ultimately I know that only God can heal my heart so that I will fully be able to surrender control to Him.
So all I can do for now is to let go and let God...
As I got older, my naturally domineering personality got me into trouble as my peers stopped falling into line with my directions and started to push me into the fringes of their clicks and groups. It turns out people don't like being told what to do by someone without any actual authority over them no matter how old they are.
Even though I learned to stuff my controlling behaviors after that and tried to shut down that part of my heart as best I could, I still have a deep seated need for control that still manifested itself in less obvious ways. I don't know why, but for some reason, I feel the need to try to manipulate conversations, situations, people, events, and even God almost every single second of every single day so that they will all fall into line with what I want them to do and how I want them to be. And it seems like over just the past couple of weeks my deep need for freedom from my impulsively controlling behaviors and thought patterns and beliefs has become incredibly evident to me.
I have a major problem.
Here's an example of what I'm talking about... This morning I was standing in church during worship and all I could think about was the people around me and why they were or weren't worshiping the way I "thought they should" and how I could get them to engage more with the Lord the way I hoped they would. Is that a bad thing to want to help people with - engaging authentically and passionately with Jesus? No. It's actually a spiritual gift I think that God has given me to intuitively understand people and where they're at emotionally and sometimes spiritually and I have a passion for people to have genuine encounters with the Lord.
The problem is, I can't control any of that. I can't make people seek God more than they already are, and I can't force God to move in a certain way at a certain time to do what I think He should do with the people around me. But there I stood, trying to worship "harder" and louder and more passionately so that somehow maybe God would move in and do something and the people around me would get more "into" worship... But it was all manipulation and made me feel empty inside afterwards.
Instead of genuinely worshiping God in that moment from where I was and just letting myself sit down and rest in my Daddy's lap for awhile, all I could think about was how to get OTHER PEOPLE to engage with God that way... And I missed out on meeting with Jesus myself because I was too busy thinking about how everybody else was or wasn't meeting with Him...Crazy right?
And that brings me to my next point and that is that I'm finding out that my tendency to try to control everything and everyone around me is actually all rooted in pride. On one hand, when I try to control other people or situations around me, I am doing it because I think I know better than everyone else and that if they would just do it my way, then everything would fall into place. And on the other hand, I think that I could handle the situations better than God already is and instead of trusting Him to move in His timing and in His own way, I start trying to do His job FOR HIM!!!
Anyways, I felt like today was a good day to share all of this with you because it has been a really big issue that God has been showing me lately and there are so many layers to it that I don't think I've even begun to fully understand it let alone find healing and freedom from it yet. But I've heard that admitting you have a problem is the first step to freedom so there you have it. I have a problem.
Hopefully in near future I will be able to start going to see a counselor (for this and many other reasons) and they will be able to help me talk through a lot of this so that I can have more clarity in all of this. But ultimately I know that only God can heal my heart so that I will fully be able to surrender control to Him.
So all I can do for now is to let go and let God...
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