Okay, so listen to these examples and then tell me what they all have in common. Okay? Hands on the wheel, foot on the brake, eyes scanning the road. Choosing what to eat, when to sleep, how to exercise, how to dress. Carefully planning calendars, setting reminders, organising tasks so nothing falls through the cracks.
Arranging furniture, keeping things clean, adjusting the temperature, locking the doors at night. Budgeting, saving, tracking expenses, trying to prepare for what might come. Choosing our words before we speak, steering topics away from tension, managing how much of ourselves we reveal. Deciding whether or not to get close to someone or managing responses in others. Refusing to cry, suppressing anger, telling ourselves to stay calm.
What do all of these examples describe?
But it's something that leads to stress. Control. Control. Some of it was good, some of it not so good. So control shows up in everyday ways, often so naturally that we don't even think about it.
Because obviously some forms of control are healthy and even necessary. They help us to function responsibly. Controlling your breathing when exercising, keeping control of your car when you're spinning out, keeping your balance when you're slipping and sliding on the ice, controlling how much sugar or other not so good things that you eat. These are all examples of control that is good and healthy. But when control shifts from wise stewardship to anxious gripping, It stops serving us and it starts running us.
And if we're honest, I think most people wrestle with this on some level. I know my journey with this is ongoing. And sometimes it shows up in small, almost humorous ways, like refusing to let anyone else load the dishwasher because they'll do it wrong. Now, I actually had a friend who referred to himself as being dishwasher dyslexic because he would purposely do it wrong because then he didn't have to do it. So that's not a control issue, that's a passive aggressive thing, but just not letting anyone else do it because they'll do it wrong, or feeling tense when someone else is behind the wheel, or when you're gripping watching a hockey game.
Other times it's more obvious, like micromanaging at work instead of delegating, because deep down we're convinced if I don't do this myself it's going to fall apart. Making decisions for our kids because we're afraid that they won't make the right one. And often the right one is the one that we want them to make. In one way or another, we all feel the pull to manage some corner of our world a little too tightly. But why?
Believe it or not, control issues are usually less about power and more about the fear of loss, the fear of failure, the fear of being exposed, and the fear of unpredictability. Control promises safety, but when it becomes excessive, it often produces the opposite: tension, conflict, exhaustion, isolation, stress. So let's look at Matthew, chapter 6, verses 25 to 34, and we're going to see what it says about control. And I'm reading from the NIV. Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink, or about your body, what you will wear.
Is not life more than food and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you, by worrying, add a single hour to your life? And why do you worry about clothes?
See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labour or spin, yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendour was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, you of little faith? So do not worry. Saying, what shall we eat, or what shall we drink, or what shall we wear?
For the pagans run after all of these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore, do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.
So when we read Jesus' words about the birds and the flowers, we're not just hearing a poetic illustration. We're being invited into seeing a different way of living. Jesus had watched the birds riding the currents over the hills of Galilee. They weren't frantic, they weren't hoarding, they weren't mapping out a five-year survival plan, and yet somehow they were sustained. He had watched the wildflowers.
Fragile, breathtaking, here today, gone tomorrow, and noticed that their beauty didn't come from striving. They weren't trying to reinvent themselves. They weren't worrying about how they looked or how they were coming across. They were simply what their Creator made them to be. And Jesus draws a clear conclusion for us: the Father who made them is good.
But what does that have to do with striving for control in every aspect of our lives? Well, gripping tightly to control is often our attempt to secure what we're afraid might not be given. We manage, we plan, we try to anticipate every outcome, and we brace for worst-case scenarios. But Jesus doesn't point to the birds and say, Be more strategic. Or, you should be planning ahead for every eventuality.
He doesn't point to the flowers and say, Try harder to impress, will you? Work harder at standing out so people will notice you. He simply invites us to see how they live, sustained, beautiful, and unburdened. And he says, Look, trust. So as I said before, our desire for control often comes from a very human need to feel safe.
When life feels uncertain or overwhelming or when we have experienced some kind of trauma, Trying to manage our surroundings, our relationships, or outcomes can seem like a way to protect ourselves from hurt or chaos. The unknown is unsettling. So control feels like a shield against fear. For those who carry anxiety or past wounds, holding tightly to control can feel like gripping the railing on a swaying bridge. A way to steady themselves when everything around them feels unstable.
Control can also make us feel capable and confident, as if keeping everything in order proves that we're strong enough to handle life. But it can often be unhealthy to us as individuals, and it can be deadly to us as a church. And as we move into the season of Lent, a journey meant to draw us closer to God, learning to let go of the habits or behaviours that get in the way of us, Doing so becomes especially important.
Lent invites us to walk with Jesus, to loosen our grip on the things that we cling to and to deepen our trust in the Father. But instead what can happen is that we may try to manage our spiritual growth the way that we try to manage everything else. By striving harder, by performing better, measuring progress instead of surrendering. And not only can we be susceptible to this as individuals, but we can also fall into using these methods as a church to measure our growth. So we're going to look at three possible outcomes that can occur when we continue to strive for control when we're not really meant to.
So slide please. First one is that we stop depending on God and we instead rely on ourselves. So at the centre of our faith is trust, right? Trust in the sovereignty, the providence, the goodness, and the wisdom of God. And when we cling tightly to control, we may still say that we believe in God, but our posture shifts from dependence to self-reliance.
So instead of praying, you, will be done, we suddenly live as though everything depends on us. Control can become a functional substitute for faith. For individual believers, this can lead to anxiety rather than peace. Scripture calls Christians to rest in God's care to cast their burdens on Him and to walk by faith. A life dominated by control often produces fear.
And defensiveness and exhaustion. Because we were never meant to carry that kind of weight. We weren't created to master every circumstance. We were created to trust the one who is master over them all. And what happens when individual believers carry that same self-reliance into the ministry of the church?
Because think about it. If a church begins to operate on the strength and strategy and self-sufficiency of its people instead of depending together on the Spirit of God, what will the result be? What kind of culture will that create? And how long can that kind of momentum really last? Who's seen the Lion King?
I know I'm picking an old movie, but yes, we know the Lion King. Remember Scar? Evil Scar. Scar wanted control of the Pride Lands, and he got it. And he believed that if he just exerted enough power and strategy and force, everyone would just fall in line.
If he could dominate the system, he could secure his rule. It was leadership built on control. But look what actually happened. The land withered. It stopped producing.
It could no longer sustain life. Why? Because Scar wasn't stewarding the land, he was squeezing it. He wasn't trusting the rhythms that had had sustained it before, he was extracting from it. And his need to be in charge fed his ego, but it starved the kingdom.
And eventually everything around him suffered. The strong left, the weak barely survived, and he tried to secure through control, which slowly unravelled in his hands, or in his case, paws. But that's what control does. It promises security, but it pushes us to self-reliance. Scar didn't trust the order that was already built into the kingdom, he trusted himself.
And when leadership becomes about gripping power rather than stewarding what has been entrusted to you, decline follows. And that same dynamic can happen spiritually. When we try to control outcomes in our own strength, we shift from depending on God to depending on ourselves. We still may use spiritual language, But functionally, we're leaning on our own strategy, our own effort, and our own ability to hold things together. And when that happens in the church, vitality drains because the church was never meant to run on human control.
It belongs to Christ, and it flourishes when we trust His leadership and rely on His Spirit. Control pulls us to self-reliance. Trust returns us to dependence. And only one of those leads to life. Slide.
The second thing that can happen when we keep striving for control is that we can develop a superhero complex. Now superheroes are cool. We all know that. Marvel and DC have made tonnes of money off of Captain America and Iron Man and Wonder Woman and others that are equally cool. But alas, none of us were created with those kinds of superpowers.
None of us, as far as I'm aware, can swing from webs or hold onto a helicopter with one arm while gripping a building with the other to prevent it from taking off, nor can any of us deflect bullets with bracelets. For us, developing a superhero complex is an extremely unhealthy way to live. And this is something that can develop from different sources, including too much responsibility being put on us. And I have seen this happen in churches. Particularly churches that are struggling with declining numbers or ageing populations.
I have literally been in the room when I've heard congregations say, after calling a pastor, with delight and excitement, that he was going to come and save the church. And attempting to remind them that the church already had a saviour and it ain't the pastor totally fell on deaf ears. He was tangible. Someone they could see and hear directly from without too much effort, someone it was much easier to put their faith in. And it was someone who was nearly crushed under the weight of unrealistic expectations.
And as that pressure mounted, the church itself began to spiral downward. It wasn't until the superhero mentality was finally acknowledged and addressed, until the burden of being the Saviour was laid down and Christ was restored to his rightful place, that healing began. A superhero complex happens when someone begins to believe consciously or unconsciously that everything depends on them. That they must fix every problem, rescue every situation, carry every burden, and hold everything together. In ministry settings, that temptation can be especially strong because the work feels eternal and high stakes.
But when control tightens its grip, There are a few subtle shifts that can happen.
And the first one is the more common one. If I don't do it, it won't get done right.
I've been guilty of this one. Delegation feels risky, trusting others, dangerous. Just for the record, I'm much better at this now. But second, it's my responsibility to save this church. Not having that one on me.
I don't feel that one at all. The mission becomes personal rather than shared and ultimately rather than God's. I have to be strong all the time. Vulnerability disappears and weakness feels like failure. And this can be seen when a person can't admit when they did something wrong or they made a wrong choice or whatever and they deflect the cause of the problem onto someone else.
But it's so much more freeing when you can just admit that you screwed up, ask for grace, and then ask for help in fixing it. It's so much less stressful than trying to deflect it. And lastly, God needs me to make this succeed. Without saying out loud, We start taking over the role. We stop partnering, thinking of ourselves as a partner with God in His plans, and we start to act more like the role of Saviour, and those roles begin to blur.
Healthy stewardship and wise leadership are good and necessary, but striving to hold ultimate control is different. It signals that we believe that everything rests on us. For us as individual believers and as the church, that posture undermines the freedom and peace and power that come from depending fully on God. The problem isn't passion or commitment. Those are good.
But the danger is when leadership shifts from serving under Christ to subtly replacing Christ as the functional centre. Only one Saviour is needed, and it's not any human leader. Plus, superhero posture often leads to burnout, resentment, isolation, control struggles, a congregation that becomes dependent instead of empowered. Ironically, trying to save the church can weaken it. If we look at the early churches described in the New Testament, we see examples where there's shared leadership, distributed gifts, and dependence on the Spirit.
The church belongs to Christ, not to the strongest personality in the room. And at its core, the superhero complex is a control issue wrapped in good intentions. It forgets a freeing truth: the church does not rest on our shoulders. It rests on Christ's. Next slide.
The third point we're going to look at in regards to us striving for control in our lives is really the most important one. Because by striving to control our little part of the world around us, we're actually living in opposition to the heart of the gospel. Just think about it. If we understand that the good news means that we are made right with God by grace through faith in Jesus, when we recognise that we can't earn our salvation, that we can't prove ourselves worthy of it, that the only way to receive it is to accept Jesus as Lord of our lives, then we have to realise that there's going to be a struggle in our hearts between receiving the gift and letting go of our inner drive to stay in control. Does anyone here struggle to accept gifts that they think they haven't earned or that they don't deserve?
When somebody tries to bless you with something, but you're like, your automatic reaction is to say, so I had a teenager teach me a lesson years and years ago when I first started in ministry, and she blessed me with a coffee, and I tried to pay her because I felt bad that she was spending her money on me. And she's like, no, it's a gift. And I said, oh, but I don't want you spending your money on me. And she's like, Excuse me, you have to learn to accept blessings.
Yep. I love teens.
So most of us in one way or another want to manage our own standing. We want to feel like we've contributed. We want to feel like we've secured it, like we deserve it. But grace doesn't work that way. Grace says that you don't earn your place with God.
You don't negotiate it. You don't secure it through performance. It's a gift that is freely given because of what Christ has done, not because of anything that we've done. And that can be unsettling. Because if salvation rests entirely on Jesus' work and not ours, Then we have to let go of the steering wheel.
We have to surrender the idea that we can control our spiritual destiny. We can't make ourselves good enough, achieve enough, or behave well enough to guarantee it. Grace dismantles self-reliance. It gently but firmly takes the weight off of our shoulders and places it where it belongs. And that's where the collision happens.
Our pride wants to contribute. Our heart wants to say, I did my part. But the Gospel says, Christ did the saving. He did it all. And receiving grace requires something that is harder than effort.
It requires surrender. In the Church, the effects from not functioning from a posture of surrender can be even more damaging. When control becomes the priority, we begin to operate in a way that quietly contradicts the very message that we proclaim. Instead of living from dependence on Christ, we start striving to secure outcomes for ourselves, and in doing so, we move away from the heart of the gospel, which has always been rooted in trust and humility and surrender. And this can be seen through leaders micromanaging rather than shepherding, traditions that are guarded more fiercely than the Spirit's leading, Fear of change that overshadows trust in God's ongoing work.
Unity that is suffering from a culture where power and influence matter more than humility. The early church grew not through tight control but through surrender to the Spirit's guidance, to sacrificial love, and to shared mission. When control takes over, ministry can become about preservation rather than participation in what God is doing. So let's look at some of the examples that we have from the early church that demonstrate to us how to grow through surrender and humility and by following the leading of the Spirit. So first growth came through the Spirit's direction, not human strategy.
In Acts 2, the church is born not because the apostles engineered a movement, it was because the Holy Spirit was poured out. Peter stands and preaches. But Luke makes clear and the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved. The growth is attributed to the Lord, not to the apostles. 2.
Leadership was shared When conflict arose in Acts chapter 6, the apostles didn't tighten control. Instead, they delegated responsibility to qualified leaders. So the 12 gathered all the disciples together and said it would not be right for us to neglect the ministry of the word of God in order to wait on tables. Brothers and sisters, choose seven men from among you who are known to be full of the Spirit and wisdom. We will turn this responsibility over to them.
The result? So the word of God spread. The number of disciples in Jerusalem increased rapidly and a large number of priests became obedient to the faith. Shared leadership led to growth, control loosened, ministry multiplied. And Paul reinforces this in 1 Corinthians 12, describing the church as a body with many parts.
No one part controls the whole. The Spirit distributes gifts as He wills. The church thrives when every member participates and not when one person dominates. Verse 27, Now you are the body of Christ and each one of you is a part of it. Third, mission advanced through surrender and sacrifice.
In Acts 8, persecution scattered the believers. On that day a great persecution broke out against the church in Jerusalem, and all except the apostles were scattered throughout Judea and Samaria. Godly men buried Stephen and mourned deeply for him. But Saul, who became Paul, began to destroy the church. Going from house to house, he dragged off both men and women and put them in prison.
So persecution had caused them to lose control of the church in Jerusalem, People were fleeing and the apostles were left on their own. Now if this was the church today, the instinct might be to tighten control, to try and keep everyone in place, to continue doing church the way that it had always been done. Because the unknown is uncomfortable, especially for those of us who struggle with letting go of control. But the apostles responded differently. They focused on the mission, the reason for the church, which was to proclaim the word and spread the gospel.
Those who had been scattered preached the word wherever they went. Philip went down to a city in Samaria and proclaimed the Messiah there. Rather than clinging to what was familiar, they surrendered what they were used to and let go of what control they still had. And then later we see that the mission continued through their obedience. When the apostles in Jerusalem heard that Samaria had accepted the word of God, they sent Peter and John to Samaria.
After they had further proclaimed the word of the Lord and testified about Jesus, Peter and John returned to Jerusalem preaching the gospel in many Samaritan villages. So by releasing control and trusting God's guidance, the kingdom advanced. God's mission grew not because of human control, but because of faithful surrender and obedience. The church didn't shrink under loss, it multiplied. So to summarise, the early church grew because they depended on the Spirit, they shared the leadership, and they embraced suffering.
Sacrificial mission. When control becomes the priority, mission shifts towards protecting structures, bottom lines, and authority. But when surrender leads, the church participates in what God is already doing. The growth of the early church was not the result of tight control, but of radical trust. And the same radical trust that should be found in our own walk with Christ, because ultimately our faith is built on surrender.
Jesus himself modelled this in yielding to the Father's will. The cross is not a symbol of control maintained, but of control released in trust. If we look back at our passage from Matthew that we started with, we see that when Jesus tells his followers not to worry about tomorrow, he isn't dismissing real needs. I mean, food matters. Clothing matters.
Imagine if we were all still running around naked. Work matters. Jesus enjoyed meals, he attended celebrations, and he lived fully in the world that his father had created, but he didn't live anxiously clutching at it. He trusted God's sovereignty and providence, trusting that the father would provide all he needed physically and spiritually. What Jesus resists is the posture of clenched fists, because control says it all depends on me.
Trust says, I can rest in God's care. Control treats the present as something to manage in order to survive the future. Trust receives the present as a gift from a good Father. When Jesus calls us to seek first the kingdom of God, he is not asking us to neglect responsibility. He is asking us to release ultimate control.
To work, yes, but not out of fear of what might happen if we don't. To plan, yes, but not to manipulate the future. And to live fully knowing that the only thing that we need to hold onto tightly is Jesus. Lent is not about tightening our grip, it's about opening our hands. It's a season to practise letting go, to step out of our need to control and to lean fully into God's care.
When we release our grasp on the illusion that everything depends on us, we make room for God to move freely in our lives. True closeness with Him comes not through holding on tightly, but through surrender. Trusting that the One who holds the universe also holds us. So this Lent, may we let go, step into that trust, and discover the freedom and life that only God can give. Let's pray.
God, as we move into this season of Lent, often we think of Lent as a time where we are to sacrifice something, to give something up that we enjoy.
But I think something that we would be wise to focus on giving up is our need to control. Whether it's in small little ways that seem kind of humorous or in ways that can be destructive, we need to be able to release all that, to be able to lay down that need to control, to open our hands from gripping onto everything, and to trust that you have all of it planned out, that you know what is best for us, and that you will ensure that we have what we need to accomplish what you call us to.
As a church God.
May we be a group of people that come together with one focus, with one leader, which is you, one focus that is your mission. May you work among us to discern those next steps to take forward in that mission God. May all our personal goals and plans and ambitions for ourselves and the church be laid down. And may we be surrendering ourselves to your guidance, to your leading, trusting in your plans.
God we know that in order to fully receive your grace and love, We need to surrender our own pride, our own need to control. May you work in each of our hearts, God, so that we can each day get rid of a bit more of that pride and need to control and we can open ourselves up that bit more every day to your love and grace. In Jesus' name I pray. Amen.
