the cultural stronghold of being in control

Last week I talked about the idea of cultural strongholds that we are often blind to living in the U.S.A. You can read a more detailed explanation about them here. Accepted parts of our culture can
become strongholds in a believer's life that are hard to identify. That's one of the deceptive powers of a stronghold.

My family and I may have moved to Switzerland for part of last year, but our bigger journey was the one of surrender that started well before we left the U.S. It began in the quiet places of our heart with a simple willingness to be pushed a little bit outside of what felt comfortable. With each baby step, there was a letting go process that required surrendering many previously unidentified fears and expectations. Over the course of the year, we were gradually stripped of so many things that we considered safety zones. 

Through the stripping process, piece by piece, layer by layer, we began to see the value of living a little less in control of our lives. It was a little more surrendered to a God who knew just how to move the pieces around. It required a lot of trust in Him because the pieces were always landing in a way that didn't necessarily make sense, but the end was also far better than we might have imagined.

Coming back home after this unique year, I am surprised to hear so much limitation in the voices of friends talking about basic decisions that are made. There is an amount of measured control, and I hear the sounds of holding back out of fear or anxiety. Over and over I hear the wonderful, well-meaning people around me limiting themselves to all of the things that make them comfortable, or that give them a sense of routine, or that offer security in some form. Whatever seems safe is viewed as a decision made in "wisdom"... but it isn't wisdom unless God is intricately involved in the process. And it can't be confirmed as the best decision if it is actually made out of fear.

The school example comes to mind, because how many of us have felt paralyzed when deciding where to enroll our first child into kindergarten? There are so many options, and all of them seem to involve putting our babies into school with ravenous wolves. There is stigma against public school, and snobbery among private schoolers, and defensive tendencies among home school families, because after all, everyone who isn't homeschooling has a conflicting opinion. I had a friend recently tell me all about the plan she had for her child's future through school, beginning with kindergarten on up through college. There is nothing that can make me feel more inadequate than a conversation with a woman who has a plan that reaches farther into the future than my plan does.

The thing is that there isn't just one way. It does matter where and how our children are schooled, and there isn't a one size answer that fits all. Whether it is schooling, or which side of town to live on, or which job to take, many of life's biggest decisions inherently have no moral right or wrong, and yet the choices matter immensely.

It isn't the choices, or circumstances, or upcoming changes that my dearest friends are experiencing that troubles me, it is the habitual inflexibility I hear while confronting some of life's big decisions. I hear this constantly limiting language used, and I readily admit to having said most of myself at one time. I hear it in the "I could never"s...
"I could never move to that side of town"...
"I could never leave this house that we have lived in for so long"...
"I could never learn to do that at this point in my life"...
"I could never uproot my children"...

We control our lives by limiting them. 

Every time we limit ourselves, we actually limit God. We cripple His ability to lead us somewhere. Maybe He wants to whisper softly that our child could be a light in the local public school. Or maybe He wants to challenge us to be become people who stretch beyond our natural personality and gift set... just so He can step in and provide the strength and abilities we need to do what He's asked. Maybe He wants to take us down a path that involves some hard work, or discomfort, or insecurity. Maybe He will lead us in a direction that will increase our dependence on Him rather than decrease it. Maybe.

Many of us who follow Jesus desire to live a life of big faith. We admire faith stories, and want to see God move mountains because we believed He could. But our lives in America have grown so comfortable, and predictable, so full of tangible security, that we have little left that we need to trust God for. After all, if I have already decided where the safest place to send my child to school is, then why do I need to exercise big faith?

Ironically, it feels harder to live surrendered in a setting that provides a lot of security. We are wired as human beings to seek out safety, and once we find it, to cling tightly to it. Comfortable things are just plain difficult to let go of. On the contrary, the more uncertainty or insecurity we are experiencing, the more likely we are to trust God with it. Hard things are easier to surrender to a God who loves us, because we just plain don't have any other choice.

Our lives are pretty easy here in 21st century America. But we still live with a lot of limitations, like parameters around with what we are willing to trust Jesus. It is a deception to believe that being in control is all about making decisions out of wisdom. It may instead be making decisions out of fear. That, my friend, is a stronghold.

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"The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom."

Psalm 111:10
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My challenge is to ask God today, with lots of prayer and an open mind, to reveal an area where fear, rather than wisdom, is dictating your decisions. A challenge to identify and begin to crumble a stronghold.