How to Release Control | Who God Is (Is What You Need) | Full Experience

We're so glad you're here. We want you to stand with us. This is the day the Lord has made. He's been prepping our lives. We want to give it back to Him right now. With joy. Come on, we sing. This is the day. This is where I believe. You are more than enough. You're more than enough for me. He's faithful, friends. You are faithful to your promise. You are strong when I am weak. And when I'm standing in your presence, I have everything I need. Come on, we sing. The joy of the Lord. The joy of the Lord is my strength. It's more than a feeling. The joy of the Lord. The joy of the Lord is my strength. Sing, oh my soul. Oh my soul. Bless His name. All it is will make me sing. The joy of the Lord. The joy of the Lord is my strength. Jesus, come what may. You are worthy of all.

You're worthy of all my praise. You are faithful to your promise. You are strong when I am weak. When I'm standing in your presence, I have everything I need. The joy of the Lord. The joy of the Lord is my strength. The joy of the Lord. The joy of the Lord is my strength. Oh my soul. Bless His name. All it is will make me sing. The joy of the Lord. The joy of the Lord is my strength. So let it rise up like a river. Overflowing Holy Spirit. Let it pour out with no limit. Overflowing Holy Spirit. Let it rise up. Let it rise up like a river. Overflowing Holy Spirit. Let it pour out with no limit. Overflowing Holy Spirit. The joy of the Lord. The joy of the Lord is my strength. The joy of the Lord is my strength. Oh my soul. Bless His name. All it is will make me sing. Oh my soul.

Bless His name. All it is will make me sing. Oh my soul. Bless His name. All it is will make me sing. The joy of the Lord. The joy of the Lord is my strength. The Lord is my shepherd. And He is everything I need. So I will not worry. I will not fear the enemy. ♪ He loves me, he said that he's with me even though ♪ ♪ I walk through the fire of shadow and death and still I know ♪ ♪ He has good plans, he has good plans for me ♪ ♪ So I will take heart in deserts and gardens ♪ ♪ He has good plans, he has good plans for me ♪ ♪ If I know my father, I know my father has good plans ♪ ♪ He has good plans, he has good plans for me ♪ ♪ The Lord is my savior, so why should I doubt my victory? ♪ ♪ Why would I question the rod and the staff that covers me? ♪ ♪ He quiets the waters, he quiets the storm and tide ♪ ♪ So what could be better than walking with him when I believe? ♪ ♪ He has good plans, he has good plans for me ♪ ♪ So I will take heart in deserts and gardens ♪ ♪ He has good plans, he has good plans for me ♪ ♪ If I know my father, I know my father has good plans ♪ ♪ Yes he does for you and me, I believe ♪ Come on, let's sing it out. ♪ Surely your goodness and mercy will follow after me ♪ ♪ If you will not find me, cause I'll be dwelling in the house of God ♪

♪ Surely your goodness and mercy will follow after me ♪ ♪ If you will not find me, cause I'll be dwelling in the house of God ♪ ♪ Surely your goodness and mercy will follow after me ♪ ♪ If you will not find me, cause I'll be dwelling in the house of God ♪ ♪ Surely your goodness and mercy will follow after me ♪ ♪ If you will not find me, cause I'll be dwelling in the house of God ♪ ♪ He has good plans, he has good plans for me ♪ ♪ So I will take heart in deserts and gardens ♪ ♪ He has good plans, he has good plans for me ♪ ♪ I know my Father, I know my Father has good plans, good plans ♪ ♪ Yes he does, I know my Father, I know my Father has good plans, good plans ♪ ♪ Cause you are a way maker, miracle worker, promise keeper, light in the darkness ♪ ♪ My God, that is who you are, I know my Father, I know my Father has good plans, good plans ♪ ♪ Way maker, miracle worker, promise keeper, light in the darkness ♪ ♪ My God, that is who you are, oh, sing it again ♪ ♪ Way maker, miracle worker, promise keeper, light in the darkness ♪ ♪ My God, that is who you are ♪ ♪ Way maker, miracle worker, promise keeper, light in the darkness ♪ ♪ My God, that is who you are ♪ ♪ This is a house of worship ♪ ♪ This is a place of praise ♪ ♪ Where every demon treads ♪ ♪ Where we proclaim your name ♪ ♪ We sing, this is a house of healing ♪ ♪ Our hearts are full of faith ♪ ♪ You have our full attention ♪ ♪ You have the final say ♪ ♪ So we sing, come alive in the name of Jesus ♪ ♪ Come alive in the name of Jesus ♪ ♪ This is a house of miracles ♪

♪ We bring everything to the feet of Jesus ♪ ♪ Everything in the name of Jesus ♪ ♪ This is a house of miracles ♪ ♪ There's resurrection power ♪ ♪ Your blood runs through our veins ♪ ♪ Your kingdom triumphs over ♪ ♪ Even the boldest graver ♪ ♪ So come alive in the name of Jesus ♪ ♪ Come alive in the name of Jesus ♪ ♪ This is a house of miracles ♪ ♪ We bring everything to the feet of Jesus ♪ ♪ Everything in the name of Jesus ♪ ♪ This is a house of miracles ♪ ♪ I still believe you're moving ♪ ♪ I still believe you're speaking ♪ ♪ God, I believe you're working ♪ ♪ All things for good ♪ ♪ I fix my eyes on heaven ♪ ♪ God, I receive your vision ♪ ♪ God, I believe you're working ♪ ♪ All things for good ♪ If you believe, sing it out. ♪ I still believe you're moving ♪ ♪ I still believe you're speaking ♪ ♪ God, I believe you're working ♪ ♪ All things for good ♪ ♪ I fix my eyes on heaven ♪ ♪ God, I receive your vision ♪ ♪ God, I believe you're working ♪ ♪ All things for good ♪

♪ So come alive in the name of Jesus ♪ ♪ Come alive in the name of Jesus ♪ ♪ This is a house of miracles ♪ ♪ We bring everything to the feet of Jesus ♪ ♪ Everything in the name of Jesus ♪ ♪ This is a house of miracles ♪ ♪ Oh, come alive in the name of Jesus ♪ ♪ Come alive in the name of Jesus ♪ ♪ This is a house of miracles ♪ ♪ We bring everything to the feet of Jesus ♪ ♪ Everything in the name of Jesus ♪ ♪ This is a house of miracles ♪ We believe it. God, those aren't words that we're just singing to the air, they're words that are true. Where you are, there's freedom. Where you are, there's miracles and we believe you are here with us. God, as we move into a time of communion, of taking of the bread and of the juice that represents your death and resurrection, help us to remember not even death could hold you down. You are a God that is consistently resurrecting things from death to life, making old things new, making pathways where it seems like there's no way. You are with us, Jesus, we love you. It's in Jesus name that we pray and everyone said How many times a day would you guess that the average person touches their phone? Like picks up the phone and checks it. If you came with someone who likes you, feel free to share your guess with them.

It's more than 10 and less than a thousand. Go. The correct answer is 205 times a day. What are we doing? Why are we checking that often? We actually know why. There's a little psychological research on why people are checking their phones so often. This technology has given us an illusion of control. It's not actual control. It's not real control. But you think you're in control. Let me illustrate. You want to check the weather. Say you have a wedding or maybe a picnic you're going on. So you want to check the weather. So you check the 10-day forecast and all you get is an emoji of a blowtorch. You and I both know that is not going to change before Halloween. This is where we live. So why do we keep checking it? You think that maybe if I check it again, I'll be able to change the weather by checking my phone. You don't. Surprise. Or let's say you invest in a stock and you want to check the stock. So you keep looking at the NASDAQ and looking at the NASDAQ and looking at the NASDAQ. Flash news, it doesn't matter how many times you check your stock. That doesn't actually cause the NASDAQ to go up or down. Or maybe this. You've got to fly it out so you get directions to Sky Harbor. And what comes back is just all these red lines. And you think, oh my gosh, I'm not going to make my flight. So you keep checking to see. Checking your phone will not make the red lines go away. So why do we do it? We have this illusion.

of control. This is such an important idea that we're gonna do a whole series on this in the fall, but I wanna pull it into this message because it relates to what we're talking about. In this series, we're talking about who God is. And we're investigating those big omni words. God is omnipotent, that means he has all power. God is omnipresent, that means he's everywhere. God is omniscient, he knows everything. And this week, we're talking about the omnipotence of God. And we think that we can control our lives better than him. This book called The Illusion of Control gives this, really, it's a startling idea, and they've proven it to be true. Here's the idea. The greater our illusion of control, the higher our level of anxiety. Can you relate to that? Because what happens is you actually have, let's say on a scale of one to 100, you have 20 control out of 100, but you have the illusion that you have 80 control. The larger the gap between your imagined control and your actual control, the greater your anxiety, because anxiety is when you're trying to control what you can't control. And it has some consequences that are really pretty serious. In fact, a lot of the behavioral issues

that we deal with as a culture are because we're trying to control things that are out of our control. Here's case in point, anorexia. It's an incredibly dangerous condition, you know that. Why do people have anorexia? Because they're trying to control their own body and control their own image. But what happens when you have anorexia? You actually lose control. Or this one, hoarding. You want, hoarding is just an issue of trying to take control. They want to gather what they can and keep what they can and control what they can, but people who are hoarders are out of control. You know that. Cutting is another behavior. It's a control issue. I want to feel what I want to feel what I want to feel it, and you try to control, but when you're cutting, you actually lose control. I think all of us have a little bit of OCD in us. In fact, I do. I'm gonna give you three OCD conditions, and you can guess with your neighbor which one you think I actually have. Hand washing, perpetual hand washing, because like germophobia, I gotta wash it off. That's one possibility.

Another possibility is meticulous organizing, like arranging things meticulously. Or third, you walk into a room and you start counting things. Count windows, count exits, count stairs. I don't count a lot of stuff, sometimes. But if you give me a packet of M&Ms, I will open the packet of M&Ms and I will lay them out, color-code them before I eat them. I know it's weird, but I'm not the only one. Just show of hands. Just don't leave me out hanging. On all our campuses, raise your hand if you color-code your M&Ms. It's because you love Jesus. I have another little tick that, and my wife has actually messed with me on this. Like, played mental games with me for years. I didn't know what she was doing. She finally, giggling, confessed, in our bathroom, next to my sink is a hand towel, and I square it up perpendicular to the counter because I'm a Christian. And after I left the bathroom, this went on for years. She would go over and just turn it. Just playing with my mind. I don't think it had any effect on me. We all have a little OCD. We all have issues that we want to control, and the crazy thing is, the more important something is to you, the more likely it is

to be out of your control. Your kids, man, they're important. You can't control them. Relationships, you can invest in a relationship, but you cannot control another person. Your occupation, your health. You can do things to stay healthy, but ultimately, you have no control over your health if you get a disease. And so, the question is, what are we gonna do about this obsessiveness about control? We micromanage so much. We try to manipulate other people, and it is never healthy. So here's the challenge I wanna give to us in this message. When we obsess over things we cannot control, two things are gonna happen, and they will always happen, they happen to all of us. When you obsess, you try to micromanage, you try to manipulate other people, two things happen. Number one, we force. control over things we can control. Why? Because you only have so much energy. You only have so much mental focus. And if you were focusing on things you can't control, you are robbing your energy and focus over things you actually can control. That's why these obsessive behaviors make you lose control. You are forfeiting control you could otherwise have.

Second thing that happens is we rob ourselves of peace. Because peace is in release. And when you're able to give over to God things you can't control anyway, you have this incredible peace come over you. And a focus that allows you to control what God put in your control. Listen, this message is not about let go and let God. This is not about being irresponsible. You know, God's gonna take care of everything. No, he's given you responsibility to take care of certain things in your life. And you're failing at that, I'm failing at that, when I obsessively try to control what I cannot control. So here's the question. Now all of us need to answer it. Do you trust that God is capable of control? Now I know you're gonna say yes. But I'm gonna believe it if I see you release it. There's a theological term for this. It's called omnipotence. That the God of heaven has all power. Now let me clarify. That does not mean that he can do anything. I want world peace, God, no. God cannot do anything. And you go, well that's heresy. Actually it's not, it's Bible. The Bible says God cannot lie. There are some things God cannot do.

Here's another one. God cannot make a square triangle. You can't. Now he could change the laws of the universe. But in this universe, he can't do that. Here's another thing God cannot do. And this is where we get stuck. God cannot force you to love him. It is God's desire that everyone is saved. But not everyone is going to be. Because not everyone receives the love of Christ. So when we talk about giving control to God, you have to give up some expectations that God will make everything pleasant and everything peaceful. That's beyond his control. He has all power. And he can do everything that's possible with all power. But he can't do everything that you might ask him or want him to do. So here's my question. With that in mind, how do I release the illusion of control to an omnipotent God? It sounds like a good idea. Yeah, I want to have more peace, so I want to release it to God. But how practically can you accomplish that? I'm going to give you a tool. And then I'm going to tell you a story from the Bible that illustrates the tool.

Here's the tool. If you are up against a situation, in fact, I want you to think right now. Just hold your hands out and make a fist. What's in your fist? For some of you, it's a child. And that child is out of control. And you're trying to control the child, and you can't. For some of you, it's your health. Name it, because as I tell you the story, if you can really name what you're trying to obsess about, what you're trying to control. Maybe you keep sending the same text and text and text and text, and you just can't. You know it's ruining the relationship because you're trying to manipulate another person, but you just can't release it. So find out what's in your fist, what you're trying to control, name it, and now, let's play a little game called Worst Case Scenario. You ready? Here's the subject on the table. I'm driving down I-17, I'm late for work. I'm late for work, and this is a problem. There's all this traffic, and I can't switch lanes, I can't go fast enough, I'm gonna be late for work. Okay, so why is that a problem? Well, because if I'm late for work, my boss will be mad at me.

Okay, why is that a problem? Because if my boss is mad at me enough, then she'll fire me. Okay, why is that a problem? Because if I get fired, then I'll lose my job. Why is that a problem? Well, if I don't have a job, I won't have any money. You see the pattern? Why is that a problem? Well because if I don't have any money, then I can't pay my bills. Okay, why is that a problem? If I can't pay my bills, then I could lose my house. Why is that a problem? Well, because if I lose my house, then I'll be homeless. Why is that a problem? Well, because if I'm homeless and it's this hot, I could get overheated and I could die. Okay, and what happens when you die? I go to be with Jesus. Why is that a problem? You understand how ridiculous it is. First of all, it's a ridiculous scenario. Most of the things that you're trying to micromanage and control are actually not that big a deal. So play it out to its logical extreme and logical stream of everything is okay, I'm gonna die. I'm gonna tell you a story about a person who actually did die and what Jesus did about it. If you have a Bible, we're gonna land in John chapter 11

and we're just gonna walk through the verses. So open up your Bibles. We'll begin at the beginning, verse one. So one of the classic Bible stories. Now, a man named Lazarus was sick. He was from Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister, Martha. Now, Mary and Martha were dear, dear friends of the family. Jesus loved them and he loved Lazarus. One of the few people in the Bible that the Bible says Jesus loved him. The city where they were from is Bethany and Jesus at this time is about a two days walk from Bethany but Bethany is about a two hour walk from Jerusalem. And Jesus had just been in Jerusalem. If you read the Gospel of John, he was nearly killed just a couple months ago in Jerusalem. And so Mary and Martha are thinking, our brother, he's getting sicker and sicker and sicker. What are we gonna do? We could call Jesus, but man, if we call Jesus, we could endanger his life as well. So they waited and waited and waited and finally, they can't wait any longer. Lazarus takes a turn for the worse and they sent messengers to Jesus. And these messengers run two days to catch up to Jesus. And they tell Jesus, listen, the guy that you love, Mary and Martha, their sisters are asking you, you love them, right?

They're begging you, come down and heal Lazarus before he dies. Verse four, when he heard this, Jesus said, this sickness will not end in death. No, it is for God's glory so that God's son may be glorified through it. Well, that's good news, right? So the messengers skedaddle two days back to Bethany. In the meantime, you'll figure this out later in the story, Lazarus actually died while the messengers were asking Jesus to come. They're already too late. So these poor messengers, they come bursting in the house, Mary, Martha, good news, Jesus said, he's not gonna die. Actually, Jesus didn't say that, he said it wouldn't end in death. But how else would they understand that? And when they say, he's not gonna die, good news, Mary and Martha just go, ah, for two days they've been weeping over their brother. And Jesus, in the meantime, listen to this, this is weird. Verse six, so when he heard Lazarus was sick, and he knew he was gonna die, Jesus knew that. He stayed where he was for two more days. And then he said to his disciples, let's go back to Judea. And his disciples said, Jesus, respectfully, that's a stupid idea. Well, that's not actually in the text, but I didn't really actually make it up. They think it's a terrible idea.

Lord, they said, weren't they just trying to kill you down in Judea, and you want us to go back into the lion's den? And Jesus, this is actually a hilarious conversation he has. Verse 11, our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I'm going there to wake him up. Okay, you know that's a metaphor, like a euphemism. He's not asleep, he dead. And the disciples say, well, that's good news. If he's asleep, you know, mama said, when you get sick, bowl of chicken soup, a good night's rest, that's what the doctor ordered. So let's just let him get better. And Jesus says, no, you knuckleheads, he's dead. Verse 14, so then he told them plainly, Lazarus is dead. And you're not gonna believe what he says next. It doesn't sound like Jesus, because it's so insensitive. He's dead, and for your sake, I'm glad I was not there, so that you may believe, but let's go be with him. And there's a character in this story. If you read all the lines, his name is Thomas. You know him as Doubting Thomas. And Doubting Thomas said, look, boys, if Jesus wants to go down back to Judea, then let's go and die with him. Doubting Thomas may have doubted, but he was no chicken. He had the courage to go follow Jesus even unto death. And I'm just asking you, do you have as much faith as Doubting Thomas for the situation that you're in? It may not make sense to you what Jesus is doing,

but it will make sense in the end. Do you have enough faith to say, even if I die, I'm gonna follow him because I know who he is. Well, Jesus arrives and Martha catches wind that he's on the edge of town, so she runs out to Jesus. And in verse 21, here's what she says. Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. If you had been here, my brother would not have died. She's not really blaming Jesus, but kind of. And you're not really blaming Jesus either, but kind of. Lord, if you'd shown up, my child wouldn't be where he is. Lord, if you had shown up, I'd still be married. Jesus, where were you when I lost my job? If you had shown up, it would have been different. And we keep saying, Jesus, if you'd just show up, if you'd just show up. Olly, olly, oxen free. Jesus, come out of hiding. We need you now. But he's here. He is very aware of what you're going through. Your pain, your problem is not lost on him. And probably like Martha, I do this. Maybe you do this as well. I say all the right things, even when I can't muster up the right faith. She said, but I know that even now, God will give you whatever you ask. So Jesus, I'm not blaming you for not being here. I believe, I wish you'd have been here.

It would have been different if you were here, but I still believe that whatever you ask, God is going to give you. And so Jesus responds, your brother will rise again. And she thinks, well, of course he'll rise again. She has her theology right. Verse 24, Martha answered, I know he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day. No, that's not what he's talking about, Martha. He's talking about today, when Jesus shows up, today he will raise him from the dead. But she doesn't know how to even think about that. Oh, she believed in resurrection. Probably just like you. Oh, someday when I die, I'll go to heaven and all my problems will be solved. No, we're not talking about someday, we're talking about today. Jesus has the ability to raise Lazarus from the dead. And he tells her as much in verse 25. Jesus said to her, I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live even though they die. And whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this? So let me ask you, do you believe that? That the situation you're trying so desperately to manage, and you know you can't. You're obsessing over the details, trying to control and manipulate, and it's not working. Do you believe that Jesus is able to bring life out of death?

Worst case scenario, you die. Is Jesus able to bring you life? There's a long conversation here between Jesus and Martha. What's so interesting to me is, and he'll do this with you, Martha comes with these ideas, with this theology. And Jesus meets her in the ideas, and they have a long, detailed conversation about correct theology, about the Messiah, about resurrection, about Jesus' power. She wants to have a conversation, he gives her a conversation. She goes back home, whispers to Mary, hey, Jesus is on the outskirts of town, and Mary just bolts. There were a bunch of neighbors and friends and family consoling Mary, and she's been inconsolable now for four days. And when she bolts, they run after her just to check up on her, make sure she doesn't do something harmful. And she gets to Jesus, and listen to what she says in verse 32. See if you recognize these words. When Mary reached the place where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet and said, Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. That's exactly what Martha said. And I'm only guessing, but I think the reason that Mary and Martha say the exact same thing

is because they have been saying that exact same thing for four days, over and over and over again. If the Lord had been here, my brother would not have died. If Jesus had just been here, my brother would not have died. It's the same thing that you say, Jesus, if you had just shown up, everything could be different. And part of the tenderness of Jesus, this is so good. He met Martha where Martha was and he had a conversation with her about truth. That's not where Mary is. She says the exact same words, but she's not in head space, she's in heart space, and her heart is shattered. And so you know what Jesus does? Verse 35 is the shortest verse in the English Bible. If you're hurting, I want you to know, Jesus is with you in it. And for every tear that you shed, he's right there with you, tear for tear, heartache for heartache. In funerals in those days, it was common for them to hire mourners, and these people would come, they just had good voices, I guess, and they would hire them to shriek, to mourn. Ooh! And everyone would hear that and get sad and everyone would cry, and this is kind of the way they did their funerals. That's not the word used to describe Jesus wept. The word for Jesus wept is a tear

just streams down his cheek. He's not making a scene, he is truly in the moment with her. You know what's crazy about that? He is about to raise Lazarus from the dead. There's about to be a party going on up in here, and he's not looking to the party, even though it's coming, it's coming. He is with her where she is, and I just want you to feel this, because some of you, you're not in your head space, you're in your heart space. I want you to know Jesus weeps with you. Even though he knows it's gonna change, it will be better. You'll get through this, but he's with you in it. And part of releasing control is knowing you're not alone in this. You don't have to control everything because Jesus will control it for you. And while you're figuring it out, he's not an omnipotent God a billion miles away. He is the God who weeps with you right now. And he says to Mary, take me to the tomb of Lazarus. I'm gonna go see my friend. They walk him over to the tomb. You can go visit the tomb today. It's a hole that they've dug into a limestone cliff, and it goes into like a cave, but leading down into it, there's these stairs cut out of the stone. And as they get there, there was a stone in front of the cave. These stones were about this tall,

and they were big, like thick stones. And they rolled them in front of the cave to keep predators out and the stench in. Okay, it's time for an irrelevant story. When I was in the seventh grade, preteen puberty, I was in a play at church camp. And we only had one girl in our group, so there wasn't enough players to play all the part of this particular scene of Mary, Martha, Lazarus, Jesus. So I got volunteered to be Martha. And we were using the King James Version at that time, and so it was like, here was my, I remember it to this day. I'm wearing a bed sheet as a kind of a tunic dress, and in my best falsetto, here's the King James Version of this, but Lord, he stinketh. That was my entree into my thespian career. So Martha protests, Jesus, if we roll that stone away, like, it's gonna be bad. And what's really bad is not the stench, it's you are dishonoring a corpse. For Jews to disturb a body laid to rest, that was, like, that was defiling. Why would you do that to someone you loved? There's no way that anybody wanted to do it, but you don't say no to Jesus. And so he said, roll the stone away. The stones rolled away, and Jesus stands in front of this gaping hole, this black hole,

that had sucked their hearts right into it when death took over. And he raised his voice and said, Lazarus, come out! And he did. Now that would freak you out enough, but you probably haven't looked at the details of how he came out. I told you there are stairs, right? And later we're gonna learn he was still wrapped up in the grave clothes. He is bound hand and foot. How do you come up a set of stairs if you're bound hand and foot? you hop. They're freaked out already because he just raised a dead guy and now he's like hopping. No one's moving a muscle like, what is happening here? Jesus actually tells them, look, the boy can't breathe. Unwrap him so he can breathe. Some of you are still holding on to the grave clothes. You've got these clenched fists around dead wrappings. Let it go. You can't control it anyway. In fact, the more you try to control what you can't control, the less you can control what you actually can control. Jesus said to them, and he's saying to you, verse 44, take off the grave clothes and let him go. Take off the grave clothes and let it go. If you can't control it anyway, do you believe that the Lord of the universe, who weeps with you, has it under control? I don't know what your story looks like, but we all have a Lazarus story. Something that is out of our control, it could even end in death, and we can't control it. And the call to the Bible is to let it go, but you can only let it go if you truly believe that Jesus is omnipotent and all good. I want to show you one story of what this might look like today. This is Jen's story. Nobody remembers everything from their childhood, but everybody has images that really flash across their mind, and some of the ones that I have are not good.

Remembering and knowing that I was in a position that was really unsafe, and knowing that my mom was...knowing that she was suffering is not something that I could care about when I was five or six. I had to worry about whether or not we were gonna get into a car accident because she had been drinking. I had to do that instead. When I was five years old, my parents got a divorce, and my brother was three years old at the time, and he and I were there with our mom after our dad left, and she suffered from alcoholism and depression, and that made our home feel really unsafe. A couple of years passed, and during that time, I felt like I really stepped in to be the protector and caregiver of my brother, and my dad and his new wife came to visit us. He quickly recognized what was happening and removed us from the home, and my mom was open to us leaving, open to us being in his care instead of hers, and I never saw her again. As a result of being in that situation, I realized throughout being a teenager, being in a new home, a blended family, that I was always trying to control the environment that I was in, make sure that I was always safe, but I also didn't get along with my parents because they were supposed to be the authority figures in my life, but I wanted to be the authority figure in my life. You know, later as a teenager and into college, I really had quite a bit of arrogance about my ability to be in control of every circumstance that I was in, and also that being in control of everything had a really high cost, financially, physically, emotionally, and I just felt like I was just very, very sure that I could keep going that way. I moved to California for a job as a 25-year-old, and I attended a church that my aunt introduced me to, and I walked in and I totally fell apart. I was completely undone by the idea of all of that time knowing that he had waited for me, and all he wanted me to do was one walk into the building. It just seemed so lopsided and unfair that he waited for me to to tell him that I was ready to be obedient to the life that he was calling me to instead of the one that I was building for myself. And everything, everything has been different since that time. I think in these last several years that I've been working really hard to trust God more in my

actual, like in my mind, just changing the way that I see circumstances. I think it's really easy to treat somebody that you're upset with as not a real person. I think that she wanted to be great at being a mom, but it just did not pan out. A couple of years after she passed away, I actually got some of her belongings sent to me. One of the things that I got was a photo of her and she just was totally beautiful in this picture. And I just decided to look at that picture and say, this is the person who God made to be my mother. And even though she wasn't the person that God designed to be my mom. If I had a chance to see her again, I would love to just say, I love you and you are loved. And I understand how hard it is to be a grown-up. I understand how hard it is to be a human now in a way that I didn't before. I feel like I have more understanding of myself, almost more control over my own life by knowing that he is in charge. And I feel more comfortable, more confident, more in love with being alive than I think I could have ever imagined. What a story. Anyone relate to that story? Trying to control what's out of your control. So I want to give you a tool of how to release control to God, a prayer that is going to be physical and portable. You can pray it anywhere at any time in a business meeting or a conversation or in the line picking up your kids from school. And I want to show this verse to you before I give you the prayer because this verse is one I'm still trying to figure out fully, but it speaks to this point of how you can release control to God. In Colossians chapter three, the Apostle Paul writes, for you died. The worst thing that could happen to you is that you would die, but if you're a Christian, you already died. That's part of what baptism is all about. You do the symbolic death and resurrection. You died and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. So part of you is already with Jesus right now because you died and you were already, raised to life. Though your physical body has not had resurrection, your spirit has. And that part of you is now with Jesus. And here's what I'm trying to figure out. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you will also appear with him in glory. So end of time, Jesus comes back and we rise to meet him in the air. We will see Jesus for the first time, but we will also see our full selves for the first time. Part of us is already there. And if we can release control over here, then we can bring the there here. I love Jen's last line. I'm more in love with being alive today than ever before. And we want you to be more in love with being alive than ever before. So here's the prayer. I want to ask you

to take your hands and just make a fist. You did this earlier. Maybe you could name it again. Maybe it's a person that you're trying to control. Just put a name to it, or a situation you're trying to control, or a job or a business deal you're trying to control. Name it and then release it. Because once you name it, you will realize, I cannot control this. Just give it to God. That's half the prayer. The other half of the prayer is to turn your hands over and ask God for the strength to grab a hold of what he has put in your control. For Martha, what she was trying to control was this situation of her brother's sickness. It was out of her control. If she would have released it, then she would have grabbed a hold of an opportunity to be a present sister for Mary. For Jen, what she was trying to control is the leadership of her own life. being her own God, and when she released that, she could truly grab a hold of her own happiness. I don't know what you named, but here's the prayer. Lord God, I release this to you. Name it, and I'm asking you for the strength to grab a hold of. Now, what's the this? It could be different for a lot of people. For some, it's to be present with your kids. For some, it's your own happiness. You have control over your happiness. Nobody else does. For some, it's your prayer life, that you've been trying to do it on your own and not talking to God about it, but when you release this to God, you can grab a hold of what he's put in your control and what he's asked you to be responsible for. So, let's pray this together right now. Take it home with you and pray it wherever you can,

wherever you need to, when anxiety arises. Holy Father, I have a white-knuckle grip on this. I'm releasing it to you because I can't control it anyway, and I'm asking for your Holy Spirit to strengthen me to grab a hold of what I am in control over. In Jesus' name, amen. Amen.