Out of Control
Let’s start off this post with one of my favorite Toms, not Tom Hanks this time, but Tom Cruise. For all of his interesting beliefs and relationships that provide a seemingly constant stream of tabloid fodder, Tom Cruise makes great movies. The vast majority of his movies are wonderfully entertaining…not all, but most. One of my favorites, and certainly not one of his most critically acclaimed, is Days of Thunder from 1990. It’s Top Gun on a NASCAR racetrack, which should be all you need to hear to go watch it immediately. It is also the movie where Tom and Nicole Kidman met and fell in love, which I think was a sweet time in Hollywood history before things started to go so sideways with Tom and Scientology, but I digress. Anyhow, there’s a great scene where Tom’s character, Cole Trickle, and Kim’s character, Dr. Claire Lewicki, are fighting as a result of Cole’s fear after a huge wreck on the racetrack. Claire nails him. Here’s a clip followed by full dialogue:
Claire: You are selfish! You are crazy, and you’re scared.
Cole: I’m not scared!
Claire: You are scared to death! You…have a…sickness, it’s called denial, and it’s probably gonna kill you… You wanna control something that’s out of control…that’s what you said to me, wasn’t it? Well, let me let you in on a little secret that everyone else in the world automatically knows. Control is an illusion, you infantile egomaniac. Nobody knows what's gonna happen next: not on a freeway, not in an airplane, not inside our own bodies and certainly not on a racetrack with 40 other infantile egomaniacs. Nobody knows and nobody controls anything. Now you’ve gotten glimpse of that and you’re scared. You might not have the courage to race any more. You may never have had it.
Great scene! The only flaw with Claire’s amazing diagnosis is her statement that everyone else in the world automatically knows that control is an illusion. From my own experience and observation we all have the same sickness as Cole…we are all in denial and believe the illusion of being in control.
The funny thing about this illusion is that it does not inspire confidence in me, as one might think it would (part of the denial, I guess). Rather, the illusion of control produces fear and anxiety in me. Pressure. I worry that it’s all up to me. I’ve got to figure this out. I’ve got to see the potential disasters coming and take all the necessary steps to head them off…not just in all the particulars in my personal life, but also in my kids’ lives, in our ministry, and on my really bad days the entire world. I’ve got to figure all of this out and solve the problems. Egomania at its worst. And all it produces in me is dread because I know that most of the time I have no idea what to do. That’s the tyranny of our sin combined with the demand of the law and the voice of the enemy…you’ve got to get an idea and you’ve got to make it happen or you’re toast!
One of the greatest guitarists ever!
Maybe you’re not as neurotic as Cole Trickle, Eric Clapton, and me, but my bet is Claire’s words still hit home in some way.
Ephesians 1 has the antidote. Paul writes to the church in Ephesus telling them, and subsequently us,
“[God] chose us in [Jesus Christ] before the foundations of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love, he predestined us for adoption through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will…. In [Jesus] we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace.” - Eph. 1:4,5,7
God is in control, and his plan has been to save us, to adopt us as his very own children through Jesus Christ. Paul tells us that he did all of this through Jesus according to the purpose of his will, according to his plans for us. We were chosen by him from before the beginning of time, and He has done and is doing everything to ensure that we are his…that what he wants to have happen happens.
That same amazing love and grace is active in your life right now. Paul applies all of God’s power, what he calls “the immeasurable greatness of his power” to you and me in this passage (v.19). He is telling us that God is in control, he has great plans for us, and he is keeping those plans. Now, in case you doubt the goodness of God’s plans for you Paul describes them here: that we should be holy and blameless before him, that we should be adopted by him, that we should have redemption, forgiveness of our trespasses, that we should experience the riches of his grace, that we should have a spirit of wisdom and knowledge of God himself, that our hearts and our eyes would be enlightened, that we would know the riches of his glorious inheritance, the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us, and finally that we should know the hope to which he has called us. Those are his plans for you! Did you hear that list? Find something in there that is not good, and I’ll give you my shirt!
He is at work right now in your life carrying these things to fruition. Do you want to know how I know this true? Because you are reading this right now. You are here “hearing” God’s promises to you in His Word right now. There is no mistake about that. If you take anything away from this post let it be the fact that God is intentional, that he is in control and does not leave things to chance. He never has and never will.
Let some of that sink in a little. He has chosen you to be holy and blameless, to be adopted as his, forgiven right now. Another way of saying that is that He has made you perfect already in Jesus, holy in Jesus, free in Jesus. He speaks that truth to us in every area of our lives. That’s what Paul says, that we would have the spirit of wisdom and knowledge of God, that our hearts and eyes would be enlightened, that we would know the riches of this glorious inheritance that we have in Jesus. Our life is spent waking up to the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us. He carries us through every experience whether it be painful or joyful, whether it be a good year or a rough one revealing to us the truth that we are loved by him already, that we are perfect in his eyes already in Jesus. There is nothing we can do to stop him. These are his plans for you, and he will keep them. Amen.
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