Everything's All Right As Long As I'm in Control

by David Hobbs

For years I’ve had this joke with my wife when I’ve returned home after being out. As I come through the door I announce, “I’m here now, everything’s going to be all right.”

It's such a common perception to see life as being a bunch of out-of-control events that we are always seeking to bring under our control. Things “under control” are good, while things “out of control” are… well, bad. As a painter working off a ladder, as long as everything is under my control, it’s good. But if I lose my balance, or the ladder collapses out from under me (as happened earlier this year), things progress “out of my control,” which always ends in disaster. What happens when a helicopter gets out of the control of the pilot? Safe landing or crash? What happens when an epidemic gets out of control in a population? A great chorus gets out of the control of the conductor? A locomotive gets out of the control imposed by the 2 tracks it rides on? Example after example could be made showing the essential ingredient of being under control and the disaster that comes when that control is lost; so much so that it's bred into our very system and affects everything we do. All our lives are spent trying to assert control over as many factors as possible to make our lives smooth and successful.
The result is that we are constantly at work trying to establish our kingdom on earth, with the explicit assumption that that will make for the best possible good. And yet that flies in the face of the fact that we and everyone else on earth are known sinners, and that all of our motives and desires are tainted with selfishness and sin. How could it be that bringing everything under our control would be a good thing for anyone but us?
The Bible specifically says (in the Lord’s Prayer), “thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” So we are to work for God’s will to be established on earth, not our own. This means bringing things under His control. There are things then we have to relinquish control over so He can control them according to His will.
This may sound easy, but it’s not. Many people, myself included, can remember being greatly hurt and taken advantage of at times growing up when things were out of our control. Many people have responded by going into protective mode and vowing never to let things get out of their control again, in order to protect themselves from future pain. You know them, people who seem to have an excessive need to be in control, a need based on fear and insecurity.
But what happens when that mindset is taken into spiritual ministry? I’ve been in services where the minister invokes the presence of the Lord, asking Him to come in and take control, saying that whatever He wants to do, we will yield to His direction. In some cases I know it’s false—the minister is too insecure to ever let the service get out of his control. If the Holy Spirit ever took him up on it and came in power, the minister would be the first to freak out and shut the whole thing down. “That’s not the Holy Spirit!”

While not everything is the Holy Spirit, one thing is sure: the Holy Spirit will never come and take over while man is still holding onto control—the Holy Spirit will not operate under the direction of man. So until we’ve dealt with our insecurities and obsessive desire to maintain control, the Holy Spirit will never come in the way He wants to.

Whatever Happened to Old Hadley?

By David Hobbs

I used to go to a weekly breakfast with a full gospel businessmen’s group. Someone usually read a passage from the Bible and led discussions on it. In addition, we talked of many things. One morning the discussion got around to personal prophecies that members had received. One of the older members there was a fellow I called "Old Hadley." He didn’t really look that old. There was still the trace of the boyish about him, with his smooth skin and ready smile, but the maladies he was struggling with, like high blood pressure and a heart condition, belied his 70 or so years of age.
When it came his turn, I was amazed as he trotted out a whole ream of fantastic prophecies of what God was going to do through his life: he would write books that would be sent around the world, people would be saved on every continent because of him, great wealth would flow his way which he would use to build the Kingdom . . . . I can’t remember all the details, but I remember being surprised at two things: the first was the amazing promises over his life, and the second was the matter-of-fact way in which he was recounting the information to us. I was thinking, “Could it really be this easy? All this is just going to happen to him some day?” It didn’t look like he was doing anything in particular to bring these prophesies to pass. His strategy seemed to be to wait in total assurance of faith, like the young heir waiting for gramps to die so he could inherit $20 billion.
During my months in the group I used to consider this from time to time. Old Hadley seemed to be perfectly at peace, no striving here. I didn’t notice anything changing as far as his outward circumstances that would indicate any of his prophecies were about to be fulfilled, but that didn’t seem to matter.
Then an unfortunate thing happened. I missed a meeting, during which they changed the meeting day from Wednesday to Thursday. Nobody told me about it, so when I showed up the next Wednesday, nobody was there. When a waitress told me the meeting was now on Thursday, I had problems: partly because Thursday was my fasting day; but worse than that, I thought I had become an accepted member of the group, yet nobody had asked my opinion on the change nor had anyone informed me. Maybe I wasn’t so accepted after all!
I quit going; nobody called; nobody seemed to care. “I guess I didn’t matter!” I bought into the lie of the devil.
Over the years I forgot about it. Then one day I saw Hadley’s name in the obituary column of the newspaper. “Wait a minute, he can’t die; he’s got to have that breakthrough first where all those prophecies come to pass!” But there it was in cold newsprint. "Old Hadley, R.I.P." “But Lord, He believed! He believed your promises!”
Did he?
Since then I have learned that prophecies are not predictions. Personal prophecies are faith visions, potentials of what can be accomplished in the will of God for our lives. They are what God wants us to have, destinations we will reach if we reach our potential in Him. As such they must be prayed into and followed after. They are by no means automatic or unilateral guarantees. Just remember Old Hadley.

... faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead. James 2:17 (NIV)