The Well of Control

We're going to talk today about a story that we actually began talking about a few weeks ago.

It's a story of this woman who has an interaction with Jesus at a well.

And this is all under the umbrella of this concept we've been talking about for the last few weeks called never going back.

The reality is, as people, we like to look backwards.

We love nostalgia and we often find ourselves longing for the good old days.

But God doesn't ever, He doesn't ever long for the good old days.

God's always moving forward.

In fact, he's always trying to take people forward to places they've never been before.

We're the ones that just want things to go back to the way they were.

We're the ones who keep going back to the same old behaviors, the same old mentalities, the same old types of decisions, expecting this time it's going to be better than it was the last.

And God's saying, no, no, no, you need something new.

You need something you've never experienced before.

And we see this illustrated beautifully in this interaction that Jesus has with this woman at a well in John chapter 4.

John 4 · chapter mention

So I actually want to read this interaction again.

Starting in verse 1, it says, Jesus knew that the Pharisees had heard that he was baptizing and making more disciples than John, though Jesus himself didn't baptize them, his disciples did.

So he left Judea and he returned to Galilee.

He had to go through Samaria on the way.

Eventually he came to the Samaritan village of Sychar, near the field that Jacob gave to his son Joseph.

Jacob's well was there, and Jesus, tired from the long walk, sat wearily beside the well about noontime.

Soon a Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, please give me a drink.

He was alone at the time because his disciples had gone into the village to buy some food.

The woman was surprised, for Jews refused to have anything to do with Samaritans.

So she said to Jesus, You're a Jew, I'm a Samaritan woman, why are you asking me for a drink?

Jesus replied, If you only knew the gift God has for you and who you're speaking to, you would ask me and I would give you living water.

And I just want to emphasize this.

This is such a powerful statement.

I hope this hits you the way that it's intended to hit you.

Jesus says, if you only knew the gift God has for you and who you're speaking to, you would ask me, and I would give you living water.

Now, she thinks Jesus is talking about actual water.

This is something Jesus does very often.

He speaks in metaphor, people kind of miss it, it goes over their heads, and he has to connect the dots.

Sir, she says, you don't have a rope or a bucket, and this well is very deep.

Where would you get this living water?

And besides, do you think you're greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us this well?

How can you offer better water than he and his sons and his animals enjoyed?

And Jesus replied, Anyone who drinks this water will soon become thirsty again.

But those who drink the water I give them will never be thirsty again.

It becomes a fresh, bubbling spring within them, giving them eternal life.

Please, sir, the woman said, Give me this water, then I'll never be thirsty again, and I won't have to come here to get water.

She says, I won't have to keep coming back to this well every single day.

And keep in mind, she still thinks Jesus is talking about water.

She probably thinks he's crazy.

This is where Jesus turns the tables.

This is where he helps her understand what he's really talking about.

All right, check it out, it's great.

He says, Go and get your husband.

I don't have a husband, the woman replied.

And Jesus said, You're right, you don't have a husband.

For you've had five husbands, and you're not even married to the man that you're living with now.

You certainly spoke the truth.

Now, now please understand, Jesus is not, he's not shaming this woman.

We don't see Jesus shame people who are who are really struggling with life, who are trying their best, who just who have issues and problems.

He has incredible compassion for people.

The only people Jesus sort of shames, if you want to call it that, would be the people who are self-righteous, who believe that they are in and of themselves truly holy and good, and they kind of set themselves up as the judges of others.

But when it comes to everyday people with everyday problems and struggles, Jesus never puts them to shame.

He's not shaming her, he's connecting the dots.

He's been talking about this living water and how the water that she's been drinking from this well just it leaves her thirsty again and again, and she has to keep coming back to the well, back to the well, back to the well.

And then he says, Hey, tell me a little bit about your relationships.

And she's been married five times, she's in another relationship now, she's not married, but clearly she's just doing the same thing over and over and over again, even though it does not satisfy her.

The truth of the matter is this: we're all the woman at the well.

Every single one of us, we're that woman.

We all have things that we go back to time and time again.

Patterns of thinking, ways of behaving, certain coping mech, certain coping mechanisms that I can't say this.

How about coping mechanisms?

I said like Copenhagen almost, like coping mechanisms, like it's one word.

Whatever.

Certain coping mechanisms that we just go back to over and over again.

We all have this tendency to do that, even though we know, we we know in our minds this doesn't work.

Every time I do this, I find myself back in the same situation.

Why do I keep going back to the same old well over and over again?

Jesus says, no, no, I want you to have something new.

I want you to have something different.

I want you to have an encounter with me, a relationship with the God who made you that changes everything.

And you won't need to keep going back to those old ways of thinking, those old ways of behaving, those old coping mechanisms.

He wants to do something new to give us what he calls living water.

Today I want to talk about an old well that I know that I struggle with, I know that many of us struggle with, and I think it's one right now that God is making it very, very clear to all of us that we need to let go of, we need to move past it.

It's time for us to stop going to this old well and to go to him for what we really need.

And it's the well of control.

A couple weeks ago we talked about the well of self, self-gratification, self-fulfillment, self-reliance.

That's an old well, it never satisfies us.

The more we focus on ourselves, the less joyful, the less happy we are.

Last week, Fred talked about the well of accomplishment.

When we try to live performing and trying to earn everything by the way that we do.

If we do it right, if we do well enough, if we do good enough, then maybe just maybe we'll be happy.

That's an old well, it does not satisfy us.

Today, I want us to talk about the well of control.

If this whole season that we're in right now has taught me anything, it's that I am, I have far less control than I actually think.

I like to be in control.

I like to at least think that I'm in control.

It's my decisions, it's the thing that I'm doing that's really controlling my circumstances.

And so if things are going well, it's because I'm doing well.

If things are going poorly, maybe it's because I'm doing poorly.

Or I don't know, I like to blame things on others sometimes.

Control is funny like that.

It's convenient to take credit for the control when it's going well, but when it's going poorly, that's a different story.

But at the end of the day, I like to feel like I'm in control.

But again, right now, I'm learning, I think all of us are learning, that maybe we're not in as much control as we'd like to think.

I actually think that what we're discovering right now is that control is kind of an illusion.

Control is an illusion.

And actually, I asked a friend of mine to help me uh illustrate this for us.

And so I've got my friend Arthur here.

Uh if you go to his hands, you might recognize Arthur.

Hello, sir.

We'll wash our hands after this, I promise.

Uh Arthur is on our worship team, he plays keys, he's uh been a big, big help in our kids areas over the course of this.

If you have kids, you've seen Arthur on the kids the kids stream.

Uh but Arthur is like a world-class magician.

Thank you.

Uh you're the tallest magician.

I am.

I know.

I am a tall guy.

And uh and so I asked Arthur, I said, hey, could you could you do something today that would help us sort of understand the fact that control is an illusion.

I thought about illusion and actually thought of you.

And so control's an illusion.

What do you have for me?

I think this is pretty good.

Um because it better be.

I I know, right?

I'm not gonna have any control over this.

Oh, okay.

I'm gonna give up the control.

You're gonna have all the control.

Oh, I love it.

You talked about an illusion of control.

Yes.

This is the case.

You're you're giving me the illusion of control.

I am giving you the I could do some fancy card stuff right now.

I'm not gonna do that.

I'm gonna set a couple cards down though.

Alright?

These are mine.

Those are yours.

These belong to me.

And you have control over them.

Yes.

What do you want to do?

Shuffle.

I want you to mix them up, make it random.

Well, those are good shuffles you do there.

Well, I'm just kind of like cutting it over and over again.

And uh I don't want to I don't want to mix them all up.

Really?

Well, you can't do this.

I can.

But I just don't, it it bothers me.

There's like an OCD part of me that goes now.

So what do I do now?

Push them together.

Control them.

Here we go.

Can I pull them off?

Yeah.

Alright, and kind of make it like a.

You can do whatever you want.

No, I don't.

No, no, no, no.

It's not.

It's a big mess.

It's a big mess.

Alright, here we go.

How's that?

I'm not gonna touch them.

That's what happens when I try to control things.

Really?

Yeah, don't.

That's life.

That's my life under my control right there.

Alright, alright.

So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna give you these cards.

I want you to take them back.

Okay.

And you're gonna you're gonna deal down cards.

Okay.

I'm not gonna tell you what you're gonna do, but you're gonna deal as many cards as you want, face down, one at a time, on top of the other, and deal as many as you want.

So just put them down.

Put them down.

Just deal as many as you just on top of each other.

Oh, okay.

On top of each other.

Uh-huh.

Can I go in any way?

I don't care.

Yeah, you can do a couple at a time.

Can I put something from the middle?

Sure.

Alright.

That's good.

All right.

You good with that?

Yeah.

Now, do you want the last card that you dealt?

That's the card we're going to use, or the next one coming up.

What do you want to do?

I'll do the last one that I dealt.

So just push it over here.

Push it over here.

Push it here?

Yeah, yeah.

I'm not gonna really.

Alright.

And put the rest of those back together.

Okay.

Now this is good, right?

You had good control.

Yeah.

I haven't manipulated you in any way.

I don't think you have.

No, I haven't.

It doesn't feel like that.

It doesn't, doesn't it?

So I've got my three cards.

I chose these before before anything else started, and then you chose one card.

Okay.

And do you have any remember when I had you deal them?

Yes.

Were you counting to yourself or not?

No.

Yeah, I always do.

Okay.

I'm kind of a control freak in that way.

And you actually you dealt down seven cards.

Okay.

I knew you were going to do that because.

Well we have this on video, and so I can go back and watch.

You can, you can, but you actually did.

And the card you stopped on was a seven.

Which is amazing because my cards were all sevens as well.

It's nutty, isn't it?

They're all sevens.

No, I'm going to put all the sevens back here.

Put your hands on top so I can't control.

Alright, sevens.

No.

Because I dealt seven cards out.

That's what I'm saying.

Isn't that funny?

Okay.

That's amazing, isn't it?

What a coincidence.

Yes.

Okay.

It's just happening.

Yes.

So sevens come in two different colors.

There's black ones and red ones.

Name one of those colors.

Red.

Perfect.

How about diamonds or hearts?

Hearts.

Hearts it is.

Okay.

Here we go.

No, is it gonna be the.

No, it vanished.

Well, it's not the what do you mean?

It disappeared.

The seven of hearts disappeared.

Oh, I was expecting to open it up and see the seven of hearts.

No, no, no.

It's gone.

So there's the seven of clubs, spades, and diamonds right there.

But the seven of hearts no longer exists.

He's gone.

Check out the next card.

Oh, that's weird.

That's not even a card at all.

How about the next one?

Oh, that's not.

Wait, wait, wait, wait.

Check those out.

Hold on, hold on.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay.

Yeah, yeah.

Okay, they're all blank.

Well, no, you really need to check because there could be something tricky going on there, but that's you can see.

Well, just these, just these three sevens.

Everything else is blank.

Yep.

You chose the seven of hearts.

I did.

Remember that wallet that we pulled all the deck out when I started this thing?

It's been sitting there the whole time.

Uh-huh.

Would you go just flip that open there?

I can see.

Oh, look at that! Inside the wallet, there's a little card.

It's your seven of hearts.

Look at that.

So, okay, I'm not gonna ask you to reveal I know magicians.

Yeah.

I don't want you to be like, I don't I don't want the disbanded.

Disband is barred.

You lose your license of the club.

Oh yeah.

But I would imagine that this whole trick, it's it is you were actually in control more than I felt like I was.

Is that true?

Way much more than you could even.

Okay, so so my my feeling of control was just it was an illusion.

You felt pretty good about it.

I felt pretty good, I did, but it worked out.

Thank you so much.

My pleasure.

See, control, it's an illusion.

Okay, let's let's talk about how this connects to life.

Um when we try to control everything, it reveals something about our hearts.

It reveals a tremendous amount of fear.

Okay, because control is rooted in fear.

You control things because you're afraid of what would happen if you didn't.

You're afraid that if you weren't the one in control, if you're not the one pulling the strings, if you're not manipulating everything to work out the way you want it to work out, it's all going to go awry.

Everything depends on you, and you you have you have total fear, which is why you control.

The opposite of control is trust.

Think about a relationship that you have.

Uh, if you know someone that's in a relationship with someone else and they're incredibly controlling of that person, it means that they don't trust that person.

They don't trust them.

They feel like they have to be the one that makes the decisions because if that person was left to their own, uh it would all it would all go poorly.

They're afraid of handing the keys, so to speak, to that person.

They have no trust.

When we live our lives trying to control everything, it actually reveals that we we struggle to trust God.

When I'm trying to control my circumstances, it means I don't, I don't really, I don't really trust the Lord.

And see, here's the thing, I'm glad we were doing a card trick with Arthur because maybe think about it like uh like you're playing cards.

We all have a responsibility to make the best of the cards that were dealt.

I'm not saying this whole control thing, let go of it.

That doesn't mean we have no responsibility for making wise decisions in life.

The reality is this, no, we're all we're all dealt certain cards.

Right now, we've all been dealt this card of COVID-19 and all the political craziness and lockdowns and division.

We've all been dealt the same card.

And we all have the responsibility right now of playing that card to the best of our ability.

But we're not the one that controls the deck.

We're not the one that's dealing out the cards, so to speak.

We actually don't have control of the world around us nearly as much as we might like to think.

And what's funny is that I already know that.

Like scripture speaks to this so many times.

For example, last week, Fred used uh Luke chapter 12.

Luke 12 · chapter mention

We can look at Luke 12.

Uh says, this is Jesus talking.

He's using a story.

He says, A rich man had a fertile farm that produced fine crops.

He said to himself, What should I do?

I don't have room for all my crops.

And then he said, I know, I'll I'll tear down my barns and build bigger ones.

Then I'll have room enough to store all my wheat and all my other goods, and I'll sit back and I'll say to myself, my friend, you have enough stored away for years to come.

Now take it easy, eat, drink, and be merry.

But God said to him, You fool, you will die this very night.

And then who will get everything you worked for?

Yes, a person is a fool to store up earthly wealth, but not have a rich relationship with God.

In this scenario, the man feels like he's in control.

He's done it, he's controlled everything, and now he can just sit back and relax because his control has worked.

He's not depending on the Lord.

He's not trusting in the provision of God.

He's trusting in the control that he's had over all of his circumstances.

Doesn't work out well for him.

We can look at James chapter 4, verse 13.

James 4:13

Look here, you who say, today or tomorrow, we're gonna go to a certain town, we'll stay there a year, we'll do business there, we'll make a profit.

How do you know what your life will be like tomorrow?

He says, your life is like the morning fog.

It's here a little while, then it's gone.

James is a super uplifting dude.

Uh what you ought to say is if the Lord wants us to, we will live and do this or that.

Otherwise, you are boasting about your own pretentious plans and all such boasting as evil.

This whole idea of pretentious plans, this is control.

You're bragging that you're in control, that you've got the plan, that you've got it all figured out, that you've you've figured out a way to make it all work.

And he says, You're boasting about your own ability to control.

You don't know what's going to happen tomorrow.

God's the one that's in control.

Psalm 127, verse 1.

Psalms 127:1

Unless the Lord builds a house, the work of the builders is wasted.

Unless the Lord protects a city, guarding it with sentinels will do no good.

We might feel like we're the ones in control sometimes, but deep down inside, at the end of the day, it's God.

Jesus in John chapter 15.

John 15 · chapter mention

He says to his disciples, You didn't choose me, I chose you.

I appointed you to go and produce lasting fruit so that the Father will give you whatever you ask for using my name.

He tells his disciples, look, you didn't pick me.

I picked you.

I was the one that was in control of that.

Think back to the woman at the well.

This connects so well to her.

She didn't wake up that day and say, you know what I'm gonna do today?

I'm gonna change my life.

I'm ready to be done with the way I've been living my life.

It's not working.

I'm gonna seek God until I find him.

And I think I'm gonna get started in a well.

That's not what happened.

She was just doing her life, and and and she happened to go to this well, and there was Jesus, and he was the one that met her there.

He was the one that was controlling that whole interaction.

He loved her, he cared about her, he loves all of us enough to initiate a relationship with us.

He says, Look, you're not the one in control.

I am.

That's really good news.

I hope you hear that, I hope you understand that.

That God being in control and not you, that's really, really good news.

There's this beautiful, beautiful psalm, Psalm 23.

It's one of the most famous psalms in Scripture.

And it says this The Lord is my shepherd, I have all that I need.

He lets me rest in green meadows, he leads me beside peaceful streams.

It goes on to say that he renews my strength and he guides me along right paths, bringing honor to his name.

God is my shepherd.

God's the one that's controlling things.

Yes, I have decisions.

Yes, I have I have choices that I have to make.

I have to respond to the way he's leading, but at the end of the day, he's the shepherd, not me.

He's the one that's directing the paths of life.

I have experienced this time and time again that at the end of the day, when I look at my life and I look at all the good things in my life, and I ask myself, how much can I take credit for the good things in my life?

How much were the good things that have happened in my life under my control?

What I find is that practically none.

I'll give you three examples real quick.

Number one would be my God, my relationship with the Lord.

The reason that I'm a Jesus follower is because when I was when I was in the fourth grade or the summer before fourth grade, my family moved into a new house.

And I remember that summer very, very well because we actually had to move in with my grandma for a few months.

Uh our house sold and the new house wasn't quite ready to close yet.

And we had this little limbo time.

We were waiting for all that to get wrapped up.

We lived with my grandma.

And I'll never forget moving into that house.

There was just about a month left in the summer.

I was so excited to be in the new house.

It had a ton of land that we had never had before.

It was awesome.

But our neighbor invited us to church.

And I didn't want to go because I'd only been to church a couple of times in my life before that, and all I knew is that church meant you wear dress pants.

And like any good fourth grade boy, I hated dress pants.

So I didn't want to go, but my parents said, sure.

The neighbor invited us, let's go.

And we started going to church.

My parents loved it.

I loved it.

Within a year, I had become a Jesus follower, and I've never really looked back.

It's interesting.

The neighbor who invited us to church, uh, he got arrested a week later.

Turns out he had been embezzling money from the place that he worked, and we never saw him again.

And I look back and I think to myself, number one, it's ironic, I'm a Christian because a criminal invited me to church.

God uses any of us, right?

So none of us have to worry.

We all have past, we all have baggage.

God can use you no matter what.

He used a criminal to bring me into a relationship with him.

But but I think back to what if we had moved into that house one week later?

We were at my grandma's for most of the summer.

It was it was kind of this weird limbo of when is the house going to be ready?

And if we'd moved in a week later, he would have already been arrested, already been gone, I would have never been invited to that church.

I was not the active agent in that.

I was not in control of that.

God is the one who is lining those things up.

I can look at another great blessing, my wife.

This week we celebrated our 15-year anniversary.

Megan, I love you.

When I think about my wife and my relationship with her and what part did I play in that, the truth of the matter is way less than I might like to believe.

I met my wife on a bus at, well, I saw her on a bus, I think I talked to her later, but at a school that I started going to when I was uh 16 years old.

Now, the reason I was going to that school is because we had moved to Georgia, and uh the school that I had started going to wasn't really working out.

My parents were sort of concerned with the friend group that I had chosen, and rightfully so.

Uh the neighbor, the person it's funny, similar situation, the person that we moved in next to, uh, that that neighbor, uh I became friends with them.

They had a child that was my age.

Uh so we started hanging out, and they were pretty wild, and they ran with a pretty wild crowd, and my parents were like, whoa, you know, we don't we don't like that.

And so they actually pulled me out of that school and put me into a new school, and that happens to be where I met my wife.

And there were a whole bunch of other scenarios that even led to us moving to Atlanta in the first place, none of which had anything to do with me.

Uh, that was all choices my dad was making in his job and taking him here, there, and everywhere.

But again, uh, if we hadn't moved next to that neighbor, and that neighbor and I hadn't started hanging out, and that neighbor didn't happen to be kind of a wild high school student, whatever, my parents never would have pulled me out of that school.

They never would have moved me to that other school.

I never would have met my wife.

I was not in control of that situation.

I can look at this whole scenario, uh, my church.

And when I say my church, um, I don't mean my church.

This is my church, like it is your church.

This is my family.

I've been here for uh 13 years now, 14 years, something like that.

Crazy, crazy long time.

And all the different situations and scenarios that brought me here, none of them were in my control.

I was living in Kansas City, Missouri, and uh a buddy of mine who had actually been a mentor of mine when I was in high school, called me up.

He knew that I had a passion for ministry, and he called me in Kansas City and he said, uh, hey man, what are you up to these days?

And I was working in a marketing company, and he was like, Man, I thought you wanted to do ministry.

And I said, Yeah, I did, but then I I don't know, I had kind of a weird experience with a church in college, and it kind of put a bad taste in my mouth.

So I was like, maybe I don't want to do ministry after all.

Uh he was he was here uh in in the Cherokee County area.

He said, Man, you you know you're supposed to do ministry.

He said, I'll tell you what, I actually bumped into a guy the other day at Taco Mac who's part of this new church that's starting up called His Hands, and uh he just happened to tell me that they're looking for a youth pastor.

I'm gonna give you his number.

And so he gives me his number and I call and and you know I could tell a lot more detail in this because it goes deeper.

But again, I I didn't I didn't control that situation at all.

It wasn't like I said to myself, you know what, I'm gonna I'm gonna find a church and I'm gonna look in Georgia and Cherokee County.

And no, I I just get a call one day randomly from a friend of mine who challenges me and says, you know what you're supposed to do.

Call this number.

I call this number, started coming here after that, flew down for an interview, became the youth pastor.

I've been the pastor now for the last six years.

None of that was was my control.

Because God is the one who's in control.

He's the shepherd.

Psalm 23, it's the truth.

He's the one who leads us.

Every good thing that I have in my life, if I look at my life, I can't really take much credit for any of it.

I can't, I can't boast about it.

God has been the one in control.

God has been the one that's that's been leading me where I need to go.

I've learned that that God is better than me at being God.

God is is better than me at being God, and so maybe I should let Him be the one who has control.

Maybe on a daily basis I should surrender whatever illusion of control that I have because the funny thing is, no matter how much I know this to be true, I'm still prone to believe over time that no, no, I'm I'm really the one that's pulling the strings, I'm really the one that's in control.

Maybe, maybe because God is so much better at being God than me, maybe every day I should wake up and I should get on my knees and I should surrender to God and say, Lord, I know you know this.

I just want you to know that I recognize it too, you are in control.

You're my shepherd.

You're gonna lead me today, and I'm gonna follow you when you do.

You're gonna lead me today, I'm gonna follow you when you do.

Now, now again, I want us to be clear.

I'm not saying that we have no responsibility for making wise choices.

I'm not saying that the circumstances that we're experiencing in life are not somehow tied to our choices, but what I do want to say is that we're not the ones in control, and our greatest responsibility, our greatest responsibility is letting the Lord lead us where he wants us to go.

He is the good shepherd.

He is the one who leads us to the places that we need to go.

And even when we're in a situation, by the way, where it feels like, yeah, okay, this isn't a good situation.

This is really hard.

I'm going through a trial.

I'm in a real struggle right now.

I know many of us are in that situation.

We have to understand that God is still the one in control.

He's still leading us.

That scripture we read, Psalm 23, it says the Lord's gonna lead us along the right path.

Right after it says, He leads us along the right paths.

It says this in verse 4.

In the presence of my enemies, you honor me by anointing my head with oil, my cup overflows with blessings.

So it says that the Lord is the one leading us along the right path, and then all of a sudden we're in a we're in a valley.

Well, maybe the Lord's gonna lead us through the valley.

If we stay connected to him, if we if we continue to hold his hand and let him lead us.

Yesterday, just yesterday, I went on a walk with my four-year-old son Judah.

And Judah, I love you so much.

Judah and I are very close, but Judah's learning to trust me.

And and a lot of the neighborhood that we live in has some sidewalks, but a lot of it doesn't.

There's portions that have sidewalks and portions that don't.

And so when we're on this walk, when we would get to a moment where the sidewalk ended, we'd have to walk on the road.

And in those moments, I make Judah hold my hand.

But he doesn't like to hold my hand because he doesn't feel big when he's holding my hand.

He wants to walk independent of me.

When we're on the sidewalk, I'm fine letting him walk independent of me, but not when we're in the road.

And so I'm holding his hand and he's fighting me.

And there were a few moments where cars started to come by and I squeeze a little tighter, and for some reason, his reaction to me squeezing his hand a little tighter is to pull away.

And I know that he's oblivious to the cars.

He's not paying attention, he's looking here, there, and everywhere.

And so the only reason I'm holding his hand is because I want to lead him to safety.

I want to lead him in a way that makes sure that he's taken care of.

He doesn't really realize that, so he's fighting me on it.

The truth is, my job is to lead him, his job is to learn to trust my leading.

His job is to learn to go with me, not to fight against me.

And we had to have a few conversations where I had to explain that in terms that a four-year-old can understand.

Same is true for all of us with God.

You're not the one dealing the cards.

You're the one that has the responsibility to play the hand that you're dealt to the best of your ability, wisely, with discernment, trusting the Holy Spirit to give you what you need, trusting Him to give you the wisdom.

But at the end of the day, we have to realize that our desire for control, it's rooted in fear.

If we want to experience the life that God has for us, this life that is full of blessing after blessing, promises that He makes, promises to be with us, promises to protect us, promises to provide for us, all of that, all of that, experiencing that, that comes through trust.

That comes through responding to him with trust, taking him by the hand and letting him lead us where he wants to lead us.

Control is an illusion.

It's an old well that we go back to time and time again because we're afraid, because we struggle to trust God like we need to.

But what I want you to understand this morning is that you can trust him.

Whatever situation you're in right now, you can trust him.

If life is going incredibly well for you right now, praise God.

Trust that you're in the situation you're in because the Lord loves you and because he's led you here.

But if you're in a really dark place, if you're in a challenging situation, if you're in a dark valley, like Psalm 23 says, some translations say the valley of the shadow of death.

If that's where you are, then guess what?

God is with you.

And he's your shepherd.

He's your shepherd in the green pasture, but he's your shepherd in the valley as well.

And he's going to lead you where you need to go.

Trust him.

Let go of control, let go of the illusion of control, and on a daily basis this week, wake up and say, Lord, I surrender the control to you.

You've got it.

I trust you.

I trust you.

I don't want to go back to that old well of control and fear.

I want the living water that comes from trusting you and letting you give me what I need.

So I'm open.

I'm open, Lord.

Take me where you want me to go.

Give me the living water that you've promised.

If that's the prayer of our heart, guys, we're going to experience the things that God has for us, and everything He has for us is good.

Let's pray.

Lord, thank you so much for giving us living water.

Thank you so much, Lord, for loving us the way that you do.

Lord, we recognize that we are not in control.

We recognize, Lord, that we might get stuck bragging and boasting about all of the plans that we have and the things that we've figured out.

We might be confident that we know the way things are going to go.

We might be like that man in your illustration in Luke 12 more often than we care to admit.

We think we've got it figured out, but at the end of the day, control, it's an illusion.

We don't have it.

But we have something so much better than control.

We have you.

We have a shepherd.

We have someone who loves us, who does have ultimate control, who we can trust.

And we know, Lord, that no matter what situation we're in, no matter what we face, no matter how hard it gets, you are in control.

And you love us, and you've promised to lead us and you've promised to lead us through.

We trust you.

And Lord, help us trust you more.

Help us surrender our need for control and recognize that it's an old well that we never want to go back to, and help us live the rest of our lives, Lord, from this moment forward with you.

Trusting that you're going to give us everything we need, receiving the living water that you promise.

The relationship with you that truly fills us, truly satisfies us.

Lord, we we pray all this in your name.

We love you.

Amen.