Pulling Weeds

Quick, name three things you fear.

Any kind of fear… relational, physical, economic, political… Just list the first three that come to mind.

1.        ______________________

2.        ______________________

3.        ______________________

Now, look at your list. What’s the common denominator or thread among the three?

I’ve been serving fearful people a long time. So, I’m going to make an educated guess about the common thread among the three things on your list:

What the things you fear have in common is that they are beyond your control. That’s a universal truth. Fear is based on our inability to control. We don’t fear everything outside of our control, but we don’t fear what we think we can control either.

The paradox of the relationship between fear and control is that while we fear things beyond our control, fear typically triggers controlling behavior, and when we try to control what is beyond our control, we consistently make our mindset and situation worse.

Fear and controlling behavior are two ends of the same weed. One might say fear is the root and controlling behavior is the fruit.

What are the benefits of understanding the relationship between fear and controlling behavior?

I think there are three significant benefits.

1.        It can help you understand yourself.

2.        It can help you understand others.

3.        It can help you understand God.

First, how often have you found yourself trying to control other people or circumstances that were clearly out of your control?

When you realize what you’re doing, or worse if someone else confronts you about your attempts to control, what’s the next step?

Often, a person will simply attempt to stop one’s own controlling behavior. But that’s like cutting weeds. They may be out of sight, but simply stopping a fear-driven behavior is not sustainable. Since the root or fear is still intact, the weed or controlling behavior will return.

On the other hand, if you pull the unseen root to the surface, and identify and address the underlying fear, you’ll often realize that your controlling efforts have no hope of succeeding and may be making your situation worse. Unidentified fears create illogical and ineffective responses. Yet, once a fear is brought to the surface, you may be ready to face the issue more logically and effectively.

Second, do you ever encounter controlling people, those wreaking relational havoc by trying to control other people or circumstances beyond their control?

Have you paused to consider their underlying fears?

Again, by simply addressing the controlling behavior, we’re just cutting weeds. When appropriate, seek to identify and address the fear or root beneath the controlling behaviors. When we care enough to gently and compassionately address fears, rather than simply recoiling or pushing back against controlling behaviors, we often find ourselves in much healthier and encouraging relationships.

One’s fears and attempts to control are huge obstacles when it comes to one’s relationship with God. You probably know that the most common encouragement in Scripture is “Fear not.” It appears 365 times in Scripture. God continuously tells us to “fear not” because we are continuously encountering circumstances beyond our control and he’s encouraging us to trust him rather than attempting to control what is beyond our control. That’s the essence of faith – that God, not us, is in control and that we can relax because he is trustworthy.

But there’s another side of the fear and control issue when it comes to our relationship with God. Considering how often God reminds us to “fear not,” have you noticed how people in Scripture consistently react when they realize that they are in the presence of God? They are afraid. They most often shudder with fear and fall on their faces. That’s because they have come face-to-face with the reality of how far beyond one’s control God is.

At some level, every believer falls into the trap of thinking we can control God. We live as though we can keep him in a box well away from the parts of our lives that we don’t want him to address. We create rituals or routines for addressing him only in certain places or at predetermined times. We follow our formulas for addressing him in ways that unknowingly treat him as subservient. We grow overconfident in our abilities to explain or influence him. We act as though we control when he is present and when he is not or what he will do.

Repeatedly, people in Scripture, who tilted toward thinking that they could control God, encountered God and were overcome by fear because they were blown away by how uncontainable, undefinable, inexplainable, and uncontrollable God is.    

One might say that God the Gardner is pulling weeds to allow our relationships to thrive by lovingly reminding and encouraging us that He is both trustworthy and beyond mankind’s control…