Out of Control

Out of Control

There’s a strange kind of panic that hits you the moment you realize you’re not in control.

It might be as simple as a delayed flight, a declined card, an unexpected diagnosis, or a text that changes the tone of your whole day. Suddenly all of the “I’ve got this” confidence we walk around with deflates, and something inside us starts grasping for the steering wheel.

We love the feeling of being in control.

We plan. We organize. We predict. We manage.

And then life walks in and reminds us, very gently or very violently:

You were never really in control in the first place.

That realization can either terrify you…

or set you free.

This is about that moment.

About being out of control—and discovering that maybe that’s where real peace actually begins.

When You Don’t Know Who Caused It

If you’ve walked with God for any length of time, you’ve probably asked questions like:

• “Is this the enemy attacking me?”

  
  
  
  

• “Is this God disciplining me or redirecting me?”

  
  
  
  

• “Is this just life in a broken world?”

  
  
  
  

To be honest, a lot of the time, we don’t know.

We can wear ourselves out trying to label every situation:

• “This is spiritual warfare.”

  
  
  
  

• “This is a test from God.”

  
  
  
  

• “This is my own bad decision.”

  
  
  
  

Sometimes there’s clarity.

But often there isn’t.

Here’s what I’ve come to realize:

The most important thing is not who caused it.

The most important thing is how I respond to God in it.

Because whatever reaches my life has to pass through the hands of a God who is still sovereign, still wise, and still good.

So the key question becomes:

Will I partner with what God is doing in this—even when it’s not what I prefer?

That’s where being out of control starts to become a spiritual turning point instead of just an emotional collapse.

The Red Sea Moment: When Freedom Meets Fear

There’s a story in Exodus 14 that feels uncomfortably close to home.

The people of Israel have just been freed from slavery in Egypt. After 400 years of oppression, God finally breaks Pharaoh’s grip and leads His people out with miracles, signs, and wonders.

You’d think, “Finally! It’s all up from here.”

But right when freedom is in sight, something else happens.

Pharaoh changes his mind.

He looks around and says, “What have we done? We’ve lost our slaves. We’ve lost their services.”

So he gathers his whole army, including six hundred of his best chariots, and goes after them.

Imagine the scene:

• In front of Israel: an impossible sea.

  
  
  
  

• Behind them: the most powerful military force in their world.

  
  
  
  

• Inside them: fear, confusion, panic.

  
  
  
  

That’s what being out of control feels like.

You hit a Red Sea you can’t cross and an enemy you can’t outrun. All your cleverness, strength, and experience aren’t enough.

But pay attention here:

The fact that everything is out of your control doesn’t mean anything is out of God’s control.

Israel panics. God doesn’t.

Moses tells them:

“Do not be afraid. Stand still, and see the salvation of the LORD, which He will accomplish for you today…

The LORD will fight for you, and you shall hold your peace.”

(Exodus 14:13–14)

At the very point they feel the least in control,

God is actually doing some of His clearest work:

• He’s exposing their fear.

  
  
  
  

• He’s confronting their trust issues.

  
  
  
  

• He’s teaching them the difference between their role and His role.

  
  
  
  

Their role? Walk, obey, move forward when He says move.

His role? Split the sea.

We get into trouble when we try to reverse those.

When a Lot Is Coming Against You

There’s a little detail in that story that’s easy to gloss over:

Pharaoh brought his best chariots.

The enemy didn’t send a half-hearted attempt.

He sent his strongest.

Sometimes when a lot is coming against you, it doesn’t mean you’re weak or you’re failing.

It may actually be the opposite.

The enemy tends to throw his heaviest artillery at the people who are carrying the greatest purpose.

If you feel like:

• Everything is hitting you at once,

  
  
  
  

• Pressure is closing in on all sides,

  
  
  
  

• Opposition is unusually intense…

  
  
  
  

don’t only ask, “What’s wrong with me?”

Ask also, “What has God put in me that hell is so afraid of?”

God often allows certain supports to be stripped away not to expose how empty you are, but to reveal how much He has already deposited inside of you.

When the crowd is gone…

When the applause is gone…

When the easy options are gone…

something deeper has to kick in.

Faith that isn’t propped up by comfort.

Trust that isn’t propped up by control.

Being out of control becomes the place where what God has truly placed in you begins to surface.

A New Baseline for Gratitude

There’s another layer God often works on during these seasons: gratitude.

Israel begged God for freedom from Egypt.

Then, once they were out and the wilderness felt uncomfortable, they started missing the food they had in Egypt.

They forgot the chains and remembered only the menu.

We do the same, don’t we?

We think:

• “I just want a new season.”

  
  
  
  

• “Lord, change my circumstances.”

  
  
  
  

And then when God does move,

the new season is unfamiliar, stretching, inconvenient.

We start to romanticize the old bondage because it was at least predictable.

Very often, God uses a season of feeling out of control to reset what we call a blessing.

Before, our baseline for gratitude might have been:

• “When things go my way.”

  
  
  
  

• “When my plans work.”

  
  
  
  

• “When people respond well.”

  
  
  
  

• “When the door opens.”

  
  
  
  

But Scripture gives us a different baseline:

“Let everything that has breath praise the LORD.”

(Psalm 150:6)

Not: everything that has a new house.

Not: everything that has perfect health.

Not: everything that has drama-free relationships.

Just this:

Breath.

If you woke up today, you’re already living in a miracle you didn’t earn.

If God gave you another day, that’s grace.

Before God gives us new blessings, He often gives us a new baseline.

Instead of:

“I’ll praise when things improve,”

He invites us into:

“I’ll praise because You’ve been faithful, even before anything changes.”

You don’t have to lie to be grateful.

You don’t have to pretend everything feels good.

You simply anchor your gratitude in one unshakable fact:

“I’m breathing, and God is still God.”

That’s where control starts to loosen:

when we shift from complaining about what we’ve lost

to thanking Him for what hasn’t left.

It’s Not the Weight. It’s the Grip.

Let’s be honest: life is heavy.

There are responsibilities we can’t just walk away from:

• Family

  
  
  
  

• Work

  
  
  
  

• Calling

  
  
  
  

• Ministry

  
  
  
  

• Finances

  
  
  
  

• Commitments

  
  
  
  

You can’t just throw your hands up and say, “I’m done, God. You handle everything.”

That’s not trust—that’s avoidance.

But here’s the insight that changed a lot for me:

The weight isn’t always what’s breaking you.

It’s the way you’re gripping it.

There’s a difference between carrying responsibility and clinging to control.

Responsibility says:

“Lord, I will do what You’ve clearly asked me to do.”

Control says:

“And I will also manage how everybody responds, how everything turns out, and when it all happens.”

That’s where we injure our soul.

We grip things like:

• Our children’s choices

  
  
  
  

• Our reputation

  
  
  
  

• Our timing

  
  
  
  

• Our financial security

  
  
  
  

• Our ministry outcomes

  
  
  
  

• The way people perceive us

  
  
  
  

We grip them like our identity depends on them,

like our future depends on our ability to hold them just right.

And then we wonder why our hearts are exhausted and our minds are frayed.

Being out of control is often God’s way of gently prying our fingers off things that were never safe in our hands anyway.

What I’ve Learned Personally About Letting Go

Here’s something I’ve seen repeatedly in my own journey:

As long as I stay obedient to what God has actually asked me to do,

and I take my hands off the things I never truly controlled,

God begins to move in those areas in ways I never could.

It doesn’t mean life suddenly becomes easy.

It means the pressure shifts from my shoulders to His.

Scripture puts it like this:

“The steps of a righteous man are ordered by the LORD.”

(Psalm 37:23)

That’s true for righteous women too.

Notice what it doesn’t say:

• It doesn’t say, “The plan of a righteous man is approved by the Lord.”

  
  
  
  

• It doesn’t say, “The blueprint of a righteous man is guaranteed by the Lord.”

  
  
  
  

It says:

Steps.

God orders steps—movement, not paralysis.

My part is:

• To love.

  
  
  
  

• To obey.

  
  
  
  

• To keep going forward, even when I don’t see the full picture.

  
  
  
  

His part is:

• To order the steps.

  
  
  
  

• To redirect when necessary.

  
  
  
  

• To close doors.

  
  
  
  

• To open the ones I’d never have thought to knock on.

  
  
  
  

I’ve had to learn to say:

“Lord, I release my need to control outcomes.

I will be faithful in obedience,

and trust You with everything I can’t manipulate or manage.”

That’s not passivity.

That’s surrender.

Rest Points: Pushing Through Fear with the Holy Spirit

There’s also something that happens inside us as we keep walking with Christ day after day.

Scripture talks about having “the mind of Christ.” That’s not just a theological phrase. As you walk with Him, obey Him, and surrender control over and over, your thinking actually starts to align more closely with His.

Along the way, there are moments—almost like rest points in the journey—where the Holy Spirit invites you to push through a specific fear:

• The fear of rejection

  
  
  
  

• The fear of lack

  
  
  
  

• The fear of failure

  
  
  
  

• The fear of what people will say

  
  
  
  

• The fear of stepping into something new

  
  
  
  

At those rest points, you could stay where you are, or you can let the Holy Spirit take you through the fear instead of around it.

Every time you say “yes” to Him at one of those points—

every time you let your spirit man lead instead of your fear—

something powerful happens:

• There is a fresh demonstration of the power of God in your life.

  
  
  
  

• Your inner man is strengthened.

  
  
  
  

• Your spiritual ears tune in a little more clearly to the voice of the Lord.

  
  
  
  

When your spirit, led by the Holy Spirit, is in charge of your being, you begin to hear Him with a clarity you don’t have when fear is holding the microphone.

And here’s the beautiful part:

When you walk through fear in obedience to God, there is an empowerment by the Spirit that confuses the enemy.

The very thing that was supposed to paralyze you becomes the place where God’s power is displayed.

The very anxiety that was supposed to shut your mouth becomes the doorway to a new level of authority and sensitivity to His voice.

“I Just Want to Lose My Mind”

I have a good friend who’s a medical professional, and every once in a while I’ll say to him—half joking, half serious—

“I just want to lose my mind.”

On the surface, it sounds like a stress joke.

But underneath it, here’s what I really mean:

“I don’t need my mind.

I need the mind of Christ to walk through what’s in front of me each day.”

Because without the mind of Christ, there is always a pull:

• To be led by the enemy’s whispers,

  
  
  
  

• To be dragged around by our own fears,

  
  
  
  

• To be controlled by regrets and painful memories,

  
  
  
  

• To let old trauma, not the Holy Spirit, steer our decisions.

  
  
  
  

Our natural mind wants to replay:

• Every mistake

  
  
  
  

• Every wound

  
  
  
  

• Every worst-case scenario

  
  
  
  

And then it wants to lead.

That’s why the mind of Christ is so incredibly important.

Being “out of control” from a kingdom perspective isn’t about losing all reason; it’s about losing control of our old, natural way of thinking so that we can walk in the Spirit.

More simply:

It’s losing control of our humanity

in order to live under the control of the Spirit of God.

When I say, “I want to lose my mind,” I don’t mean I want to shut off thinking.

I mean I want to stop letting my unrenewed thinking, my past experiences, and my fears be the loudest voices.

I want to think with:

• His peace, not my panic,

  
  
  
  

• His perspective, not my tunnel vision,

  
  
  
  

• His truth, not my trauma.

  
  
  
  

And here’s what happens over time:

When we lose control of our own way of doing things and begin to walk under the control of the Holy Spirit, a transformational change takes place.

We don’t just talk about the mind of Christ as an idea;

we begin to walk in it—and with that, we start to walk in the fruit of the Holy Spirit.

• Love when there should be bitterness

  
  
  
  

• Joy when circumstances say we should be crushed

  
  
  
  

• Peace in the middle of conflict

  
  
  
  

• Patience when everything is delayed

  
  
  
  

• Kindness when we’ve been mistreated

  
  
  
  

• Goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control (Galatians 5:22–23)

  
  
  
  

Think of Jesus in the wilderness:

He was led by the Spirit into the desert, tempted and attacked by the enemy over and over.

Yet He came out “in the power of the Spirit” (Luke 4:14).

The same Spirit who sustained Him through the attack enabled Him to walk perfectly in the fruit of the Spirit—not just when things were calm, but in the middle of spiritual pressure.

There comes a point in our journey where:

• The mind of Christ,

  
  
  
  

• The fruit of the Spirit, and

  
  
  
  

• The leading of the Holy Spirit

  
  
  
  

stop being just benchmarks of what it means to look like Christ,

and become something we actually manifest, irrespective of the storms around us.

At that point, being “out of control” doesn’t mean chaotic or unstable.

It means:

Out of the control of flesh and fear,

and under the steady, loving control of the Holy Spirit—

thinking with the mind of Christ and carrying His fruit in every season.

Trusting God Day by Day – Not Lifetime by Lifetime

One reason being out of control feels so terrifying is because we don’t just think about today.

We think about every possible tomorrow in one shot.

We imagine:

• “What if this never changes?”

  
  
  
  

• “What if this gets worse?”

  
  
  
  

• “What if these consequences last forever?”

  
  
  
  

We stack up years of imagined scenarios on today’s shoulders.

No wonder we crumble.

But God doesn’t ask you to carry a lifetime at once.

He invites you to trust Him day by day.

Jesus said:

“Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things.”

(Matthew 6:34)

And when He taught us to pray, He didn’t say, “Give us this year our annual provision.”

He said:

“Give us this day our daily bread.”

(Matthew 6:11)

Daily grace.

Daily strength.

Daily wisdom.

What if being out of control is God’s invitation to stop living in a future He hasn’t asked you to carry yet?

What if today’s question isn’t,

“How will this all work out over the next five years?”

but rather,

“Lord, what does obedience look like today?”

Three Simple Ways to Loosen Your Grip

If this all feels good in theory but you’re wondering how to actually live it out, here are three places to start:

1. Name What You Can’t Control

Take a moment and be brutally honest.

What are you trying to manage that is not truly in your hands?

• Someone else’s choices?

  
  
  
  

• The timing of a breakthrough?

  
  
  
  

• A relationship outcome?

  
  
  
  

• Financial security in an uncertain season?

  
  
  
  

• How people see you?

  
  
  
  

Write it down if you need to. Then bring it to God and say:

“Lord, I acknowledge I cannot control this.

I will be faithful in what You show me to do,

but I release the outcomes into Your hands.”

You may have to repeat that prayer often. That’s okay.

Letting go is not usually a one-time event; it’s a repeated posture.

2. Thank God for What Hasn’t Left

You may have lost things.

You may have had doors close.

You may be grieving real pain, and God sees that.

But in the middle of that, ask:

• “What do I still have that I’ve stopped appreciating?”

  
  
  
  

• “Where is God still present, still providing, still sustaining?”

  
  
  
  

It might be:

• Breath

  
  
  
  

• Faith

  
  
  
  

• A friend who hasn’t walked away

  
  
  
  

• Daily bread

  
  
  
  

• The quiet, steady presence of God’s Spirit

  
  
  
  

• The fact you’re still here, still standing, even if shakily

  
  
  
  

Let your gratitude shift from “extras” to “essentials.”

“Let everything that has breath praise the LORD.”

(Psalm 150:6)

If you just breathed, you just qualified.

3. Walk, Don’t Freeze

When you feel out of control, the temptation is either to:

• Grab tighter and try to micromanage everything, or

  
  
  
  

• Shut down and do nothing out of fear.

  
  
  
  

Neither leads to life.

Instead, ask God for one simple step of obedience:

• Is there a call you need to make?

  
  
  
  

• A conversation you need to have?

  
  
  
  

• A habit you need to start—or stop?

  
  
  
  

• A small act of faithfulness you’ve been delaying?

  
  
  
  

You don’t need the whole map.

You just need the next step.

“In all your ways acknowledge Him,

and He shall direct your paths.”

(Proverbs 3:6)

You acknowledge Him by saying,

“Lord, I surrender control, but I will not surrender obedience.”

You keep walking.

He keeps ordering.

When “Out of Control” Becomes an Invitation

Maybe right now you feel exactly like Israel at the Red Sea:

• Pressured from behind.

  
  
  
  

• Blocked in front.

  
  
  
  

• Tired inside.

  
  
  
  

You didn’t plan for this.

You didn’t ask for this.

You can’t manage your way out of it.

But what if this is not the end of your story?

What if being out of control is the very place God is going to:

• Show you what He’s placed inside of you,

  
  
  
  

• Reset your baseline for gratitude,

  
  
  
  

• Lead you through fear by His Spirit into a clearer, sharper walk with the mind of Christ,

  
  
  
  

• Grow the fruit of the Spirit in you until it shows, even in the storm, and

  
  
  
  

• Teach you to walk, not as the one who runs the universe,

  
  
  
  

  but as a loved, led, and carried child of God?

  
  
  
  

You may not be able to say, “I like this.”

But you can say, “I trust Him in this.”

And maybe that’s where real freedom begins.

Not when you finally grab the wheel,

but when you finally realize:

You were never meant to drive this thing alone anyway.