3 Things God Really Is in Control Of

1. Your Design and Your Body

The human obsession with the body has always been around, but it seems to have been exacerbated by social media and the increased attention on sharing our lives with others. People become dissatisfied with their noses, their thighs, the color of their hair, and begin to seek to control those things.

It isn’t necessarily wrong to change parts of your body. However, some people begin to obsess over elements of themselves that are out of their control, or begin to obsess over their body to a degree that it becomes unhealthy. For example, some people go to extremes to break their limbs to change their height, or intentionally maim themselves because they become convinced they should have been born with a disfigurement or disability. Some simply pursue so much plastic surgery they inflict permanent injuries onto themselves.

God made you to be you! While there isn’t a sin in dying your hair, using color-changing contacts, or maybe making small changes to the body, when it becomes an obsessive anxiety, it is controlling you – not your Creator.

Whenever insecurities begin to turn into anxieties, turn to God, and take comfort that He made you exactly who He wanted you to be.

Relevant Verses

Job 10:9-12 - “Remember that you have made me like clay; and will you return me to the dust? Did you not pour me out like milk and curdle me like cheese? You clothed me with skin and flesh, and knit me together with bones and sinews. You have granted me life and steadfast love, and your care has preserved my spirit.”

Psalm 113:13-15 - “For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother's womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth.”

Isaiah 43:7 - “Everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made.”

Photo credit: Unsplash/elisa-ph

2. Your Source of Food/Provision

Across the world, many people struggle to feed themselves. Because this world is fallen, there will always be hardships like famine and starvation, but that does not mean God does not love and provide for the basic needs of people. In fact, there are many times in the Bible where He does so! Sometimes it is through the mobilization of government through the workings of people he puts in power; God used Joseph being enslaved in Egypt to bring him to a place of power, and to create provision so there would be food during a seven year famine (Genesis 47:13-27).

In other cases, He provided miraculously, such as when it rained manna from Heaven for the Israelites (Exodus 16). God sent the prophet Elijah ravens to help sustain him when he was in the wilderness, experiencing extreme fear (1 Kings 17:2-6). God still provides in those ways today! Rely on the Lord for your daily bread and provision, even when it seems impossible.

Relevant Verses

Psalm 37:25 - “I have been young, and now am old, yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken or his children begging for bread.”

Matthew 6:25-31 - “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’”

Philippians 4:19 - “And my God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.”

Photo credit: ©Getty Images/Fresh Splash

3. The Future

Perhaps the thing people worry about the most that is completely out of their control, no matter how hard they try, is what is coming in the future. What will happen to the world? What about the next election? How will I pay this bill? What if all my friends decide they hate me tomorrow? What will I do if my spouse cheats on me? How can I guarantee my kids will grow up to do what is right?

Even Christians easily succumb to the fear of the unknowable future. When we try to make ourselves the locus of control, we will always fail because we cannot really plan for the future, since it is impossible for people to know what will happen in the next five minutes, let alone tomorrow or a century from now.

God does know the future, as He is Alpha and Omega, beginning and end. While there are many things people can exert control over, it is important to relinquish anxiety about the future to God, since only He knows what is coming.

Related Podcast: The Courage to Let Go of Control from Faith Over Fear

Relevant Verses

Isaiah 55:8-9 - “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”

Philippians 1:6 - “And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.”

James 4:13-16 - “Come now, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit’ — yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.’ As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil.”

Yes, God really is in control of our bodies, of providing for us, and even of the future. In fact, He is in control of all things! He is ready and eager to carry all of our burdens. "Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you” (1 Peter 5:6-7).

Rather than pridefully trying to shoulder all of life’s troubles alone, if anyone will cry out to God for help, He will be there. He loves people so much that He even made a way to remove the burden of sin. People who put their faith and hope in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ don’t have to have fear about eternity, because when Jesus died on the cross He paid the price for all our sins, and when He rose from the dead He became the first among the resurrected. This greatest of miracles is the ultimate proof that we let go of our anxiety and trust in God and His control.

Sources

Daniel, Samuel. Why Worry God is in Control. Xulon Press, 2006.

Sproul, R.C. Does God Control Everything? Orlando: Liongier Ministries, 2019.

Youssef, Michael. If God is in Control: Why is My Life such a Mess? Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1998.

Photo credit: ©Getty Images/Design Pics