Season 1, Episode 4: Control vs. Trust
Our Biggest Worry and Greatest Hope
In 2021, APM research lab did a study on Americans and their hope for the next year. It found that going into 2022, 84% of Americans said they were either extremely worried or very worried about the country. Most of those that were polled said they were concerned about the economy, politics, and at the time, COVID.
If we did the same poll today in 2023. I believe it's likely we would get really similar results. It's not just because America is messed up and terrible that people are worried. Let's be honest, it does have some things wrong with it, but if everything was going good in the country, I feel like a lot of us would still be pretty concerned.
And, why is that? Why do we get worried? In a lot of our situations, it's because we're concerned with what could happen in the world. It might even keep people up at night thinking about what could happen. And me, sometimes I think I end up being kind of a control freak, because on the inside I wish I could control and handle every outside situation so that I would know that everything and everybody in my family would be safe and okay, but that's not how the world works. We know that.
So what do I do when I can't control everything that happens in life? Whenever I can't control every situation, every sickness, I worry about those things. I lay in bed and I think about them. I get in my drive to work and I worry about what could happen tomorrow. And I end up filling my life with concern and worry about what could happen.
And it makes me ask the question, and maybe you've asked this in your own life, how in the world are we supposed to live out the scripture, "do not worry about anything?" It seems like the farthest goal that is physically possible. Do not worry about anything, and as I've sat thinking and pondering some of this, I really believe that one of our greatest fears is the future. But where's the hope?
Who’s in Control?
Flashback to 2018, it was a Monday night and the college football national championship was on two teams, had fought all season long, given their best, won in the playoffs and made it to face each other. It was Alabama versus Georgia. Alabama had been carried all year long by their sophomore quarterback Jalen Hurts. After a tough fought first half, Georgia had gone up 13 points to Alabama's zero. It seemed like a really bad situation for Alabama. Nobody knew if they could come back, and honestly, it was pretty grim.
Nick Saban, coach of Alabama, came out with a difficult decision in the second half. He pulled the sophomore quarterback, Jalen Hurts, who had carried them all year long to put in the backup talented freshmen Tua Tagovailoa. For the fan at home, it was a huge question mark, what in the world is this decision?
Jalen Hurts had played well all season. Could he not turn it around in the second half? Even worse, what if Tua came out and played terribly? There would be a never ending list of what ifs. They really didn't know, if Nick Saban knew what he was doing in that moment, they just had hope.
What the fans at home didn't know, or didn't know for sure, was the preparation that Tua, the backup quarterback, had undergone. They didn't know his true talent. They didn't know what he could do under pressure. They didn't know the countless hours of training he had gone through to be in this moment. And so Tua went in the second half. And did the unthinkable. He began to bring Alabama back and score some points.
The game ended up going into overtime. Alabama had gotten the ball at the 25 yard line, and Tua ended up taking a really bad sack. It knocked Alabama back way out of the position they thought they would be in overtime, and it looked to many like the game was over. Tua ended up throwing a 41 yard pass to the corner of the end zone to beat Georgia in the national Championship. Nick Saban looked like a genius, but at the time, at halftime, , it seemed like an incredible risk when Tua came trotting out on the field.
I remember watching that game and thinking maybe Nick Saban was crazy. You know what was going to happen? It made me wonder for a minute if he knew what he was doing. Obviously, Nick Saban has a little more football experience than I do, but for just the casual fan, it was difficult to understand what the thought process was.
If you've ever looked at the news and been concerned at the headlines, maybe you know some of the feeling that I'm talking about. Obviously, there when there are wars and crazy things happening in politics it's much higher stakes than a football game. There are literally lives at stake. But whenever you flip on the news and you, you see all these concerning events and different decisions that people are making and how they're gonna impact lives all over America, all over the world, it can get you thinking for a minute, is there anybody controlling what's going on? Does anybody have a handle on this? Does anybody know what's gonna happen here? Like I mentioned in the intro, a lot of us worry about what's going to happen in the future. Why is that? It's because we can't control it. We can control the here and now we can look back on the past and see how things worked out, but the future, it's mysterious, it's difficult to wrap our fingers around. And we can plan and we can prepare, but we can't control everything in the future. We can't control every variable, and it can be concerning. And so just like how Alabama fans placed their trust in Nick Saban to handle winning football games
In our lives, we've made a choice to trust in God and to take care of our future. I talked some in the last episode about what you place your trust in, so I'm not gonna dive back into that. You can go check it out if you want to.
The Sovereign God
Whenever I face worry and anxiety about the future, I spent a lot of time thinking and praying about it, and there are two things that I came to that I believe really show that I lost my focus. One of those things is that, I hadn't put enough trust in God. And the second thing is I forgot about the sovereignty of God.
John Piper gives us kind of explanation to what sovereignty is, he said, "When we say God is sovereign, we mean He is powerful and authoritative to the extent of being able to override all other powers and authorities."
And that means not only does God know the future like we believed because he is omniscient. So God knows what's going to happen, but God has also been guiding and directing the world from the beginning of time. And that concept brings up a can of worms, I'm not gonna get into it all because you can look at the world and see some crazy evil things that have happened, and it's important to note that people have free will and They do evil things and they do things that God certainly does not approve of. But God behind the scenes is leading it all to a perfect and good end. And God is keeping track. Whatever people do evil, whatever people choose to do wrong, God is keeping track and he will hold people accountable for the things that they've done. In Proverbs 19:21, it says, "Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the Lord that will stand."
And maybe, like I mentioned a minute ago, you get worried about the future of your country or the nations of this world. In those moments, we can place our trust and we can be reminded of the sovereign plan of God. And Romans 13:1, it says, "Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities for there is no authority except which that which God has established, the authorities that exist have been established by God." That means God has placed people in power, kings, rulers, presidents, people in Congress. That doesn't mean that God is responsible for every terrible thing that they do, they make their own choices. But we can rest knowing that God is watching and he is keeping tabs. And so what seems like chaos to us is God guiding the world and placing and removing people from positions of power. He's guiding the world,to his ultimate plan.
John Piper said, "The presence of hope in the invisible sovereignty of God drives out fear." It means knowing that God has the world in his hands is a place of peace for those that have placed their trust in God. And so whenever I talk about me wanting to control things, me wanting to be a control freak and have my hand over everything in this world. It really is a reminder of the fact that there are times that I don't put all of my trust in God, because if I believe that God is holding the world, God has the world in his hands, he's the one controlling, he's the one pulling the strings, he's the one at orchestrating all of the world. And so what I have to do is go from being a control freak and wanting to have the world in my hands. It's giving my life to God and saying, God, forgive me for trying to put the world in my hands. I know that you have it under control, way better than I could ever do it. And so this idea of God being sovereign, God, having total control of the world, it means that those that trust in God know that everything is gonna work out okay. We trust that God is working all things out for good, for those who love him.
I wanna give you a quick example. Do you remember being a little kid and getting scared in the middle of the night? When I was a kid, I had a bedroom in the opposite corner of our house, and so my parents were in the downstairs in one corner as I, I was in the upstairs, in the opposite corner, and I remember being a little kid and I would have a nightmare, or I would wake up from something and I would be afraid of the dark, but you walk down, creaking down the stairs one at a time, walk through the living room, you creep open your parents' door, hoping that they aren't mad at you for waking them up in the middle of the night. And you go to them and you say, I can't sleep, I had a nightmare. And maybe they let you crawl into bed with them and you sleep there for the rest of the night. But whenever you were worried about the darkness or you were scared of something in the dark, a lot of us ended up going to our parents and trying to find comfort in them.
Have you ever wondered why that is? They can't control the dark. And I feel like we knew that they didn't make it not dark anymore. But I know for me, I went in there and I climbed in their bed because I believed that they could control the situation. Nothing bad could happen with my mom and my dad right there. They were gonna take care of it. They were gonna handle whatever situation came up. And no matter what was in the dark, my parents had it under control.
And as adults, I think sometimes we're still scared of the dark. Maybe not literally. We're scared of the unknown. We're scared of what we can't see, but instead of having our parents to go to, we feel like we're on our own. But that's not the case because we can turn ourselves to God and say, God, I don't know what's gonna happen, but I'm afraid of what I don't understand. I'm afraid of the future. I'm afraid of what could happen. And we can do the same thing with God that we did with our parents, and we can go to him and we can crawl there with him and we can say, God, I know that you've got it under control. Anything that happens that I don't know about that, that I can't see, you have it in your hands and I know that you're gonna work it out for me.
Romans 8:28, "And we know that in all things, God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his name." We are children of God and God is working out all good things. And whenever we can't see it, whenever we get afraid of the unknown or the future, we can trust that God is going to work it out.
And when life comes to make you question what's going on, we can position ourselves like the psalmist. It says, "Have mercy on me, my God, have mercy on me. For in you. I take refuge. I will take refuge in the shadow of your wings until the disaster has passed." I don't think there's any better example of a child crawling in bed with their parents, then this line here, "I will take refuge in the shadow of your wings until the disaster has passed." I will crawl into your arms until what I'm afraid of is no longer.
And so our greatest fear, I believe, is worry about the future. But our greatest hope is in the sovereignty of God, that he knows what tomorrow will bring. So keep your head up and whenever you get scared, you know where to go. Thank you so much for listening to this episode. We pray that it has helped you in your walk with God.
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