Yielding control

Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven (Matthew 6:10).

We all strategize for success. A man plans carefully how to win a girl’s heart; he gives a great deal of thought to each aspect of dating, like what he should wear, where he should take her, what sorts of things he should talk about, and whether it is too soon to give her flowers or look for a kiss. He’ll even think carefully about how long he should wait before he calls for another date. He approaches the conquest of her heart with the careful planning of a general on campaign.

Similarly, a woman entering college plans carefully for the life she wants in the future. She may wish to become a high-powered executive, or she might prefer to build a small business of her own; she might want to start a family early in life, later in life, or remain focused exclusively on her career. All these things she takes into consideration as she decides which courses to enroll in and what academic degrees to pursue. She plans for her future like an accountant designing an investment portfolio.

We like to be in charge. We want to have a firm hand in shaping our tomorrows. This makes it hard for us to follow Jesus. Our Lord expects us to follow Him with complete trust and full obedience. He expects us to be obedient because His Father gave us life and Jesus died to make us His own. Our Savior expects us to trust Him because He is God’s Wisdom made manifest to us, perfect understanding coupled with perfect love. As children of God, we have no right or reason to question Jesus’ leadership.

But that is not good enough for us. Trusting someone else, no matter how authoritative and trustworthy they might be, is often scary. So many times we have trusted, only to be hurt in the end. Not only that, but it hurts our pride to fall into line and follow. Each of us thinks, at least some of the time, that we know best what will make us happy. And when we are blocked from getting our way, we feel that an opportunity has been missed and we grow disillusioned with our leadership; it doesn’t occur to us that maybe we are better off for having been denied something foolish or ultimately harmful.

Jesus doesn’t give us all the answers that we want—often times He is maddeningly quiet. But He has told us where He is leading us—if we stick with Him, we will enter heaven. But to wind up there, we must do the hard thing: trust Jesus and obediently follow.