I want power, and I want control

Just being honest…

If you say you don’t, you’re lying. And you’re probably more desperate for it than the rest of us… maybe you’re trying to take control of the desire to control by pretending it isn’t there.

By the end of this blog, you’ll re-cognise why you desire these things and how to see them as a gift rather than a curse.

Annika and I were in Gothenburg, looking at the canals that the Dutch built. I was thinking about how incredible the Dutch were in controlling water and reflected on how in order to control something, you must understand it. I think that the Dutch understood water. They knew it and so could control it and have power over it. Once you have this, you can harness the power effectively and use it to your benefit. It serves you, and because you know it, you recognise its value, so you protect it and provide for it to ensure its effectiveness and longevity.

So why do we desire power and control? Because God gave us the capacity to have power and to control things. The problem is that, through sin, our desire for them became warped and we look to have power over other people, by trying to control the context we, or they, occupy.

God commissioned us in Genesis 1: 26

…let them rule over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the sky, and over all the cattle (animals), and over all the earth (ground/ land), and over every creeping (moving) thing that creeps on the earth”

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A comprehensive mandate. God relinquished control over these things by giving it to us – let THEM rule (subjugate/ have dominion over) over the earth and every living thing, but, crucially, not over each other.

What went wrong? Control and power are given to us in relationship. When we are in right relationship with God, the stewardship is easy (follow me as I follow Christ) When we sin, we come out of order, we do not submit to God’s way of doing things. In essence, we are saying that our ideas, our way of doing things, are right. In fact, we are trying to take control over God, we make ourselves God. The key is to consider what it means to be meek. Gentle is a wrong interpretation of this – to be meek conjures up the idea of a racehorse with a bit in its mouth. All that power, all that energy, all that majesty submitted, in trust, to another. What’s our reward when we submit to God’s ways? We inherit the earth.

Blessed are the meek, For they shall inherit the earth. Matt 5: 5

The other complication is that we don’t steward our resources well.

There is a natural symbiotic relationship that grows out of wise stewardship. We see it in Aesop’s fable of the golden goose. A farmer’s goose lays a golden egg, and he is thrilled. Some time later, it lays another one. In his greed, instead of being patient for the goose to lay another, he cuts the goose open to get the eggs. No more eggs, and no more goose. If the farmer had stewarded the goose well, it would have continued to produce golden eggs.

What is stewardship? Stewarding well looks like this: provision and protection.

Does God, as a good Father, steward us by giving us provision and protection, or does He want us to provide for and protect ourselves?

Actually, that’s a trick question, I think that it’s one inside the other. God provides for us by giving us the capacity to provide for ourselves. He protects us by giving us the capacity to protect ourselves.

I think that our problems, as humans, are twofold – either thinking that we can do it all by ourselves or thinking that we need God (or someone else, the state/ our older relatives/ our children) to do something more for us. He has given us the mandate to rule and reign on His behalf, Jesus has died and has risen again so that we can do this in right relationship with God as our Father, and the Holy Spirit is with us as a guide and comforter.

I believe that there are levels to this-

• You – do you have self control? Your body and your mind. Are you in control of what you eat/ drink/ watch or have you ceded that – Jesus shows that fasting puts these things into their place.
• Finances – are you in charge of your money, or does it control you? Jesus shows that giving puts money in its place.
• Relationships – to you try to control them, or are the people you spend time with free? This could be your spouse, your children, those who work with you? I always think of the song by Sting – “if you love someone, set them free”. Jesus shows that sacrificial loving puts relationships in their place.

Are you brave enough to honestly ask the Holy Spirit how you are getting on with these? To be honest – He’s probably already putting His finger on something, just as He is with me right now…

I’m convinced that God gave us our first training ground in ourselves. The Greeks had

“Know thyself”

emblazoned onto the Acropolis. If you want to control yourself and become more powerful through being the most accurate and effective version of yourself, you have to know yourself. This requires honesty and accountability. I don’t think it’s possible to fully know yourself by yourself, it requires relationship. If this intrigues you, then explore the Johari Window model, a visual framework tool to develop self awareness.

Why would God trust us to steward all He had created if He knew that we couldn’t be disciplined over our desire for an apple?

Photo from Pexels, by NEOSiAM 2024