Why Trusting God WORKS And Trusting Ourselves Does NOT
We are NOT the boss!
As a CEO in the marketplace early in my walk with Christ, I allowed career uncertainties to spill into my personal life. I allowed inexorable stress to surge through my soul. I allowed a ticking time bomb to pervade my world. And it produced horrific consequences.
Playing the role of boss forces us to assume a “large and in charge” persona in our futile attempt to make everything “perfect.” It automatically lands us in a slipstream of angst.
For me…chasing money, prestige, power, and possessions put me in a front-row seat to a parade of negative consequences produced by worrying about an “uncertain future.”
I was playing boss and had forgotten about God.
If we think we can do anything on our own, it won’t be long before we think we can do everything by ourselves.
That’s why I ask God to remind me every day that I am not the boss of my life. To keep me on my knees, looking up to him for direction and discernment. To give me the power to vanquish SELFISHNESS.
I never want to forget that trusting God WORKS…and trusting ourselves DOES NOT.
We actually start playing boss as children, always wanting something and eventually wanting everything. We have all seen and heard kids walk around the house saying, “Mine, mine, mine” and “I want it now!”
This me-centered perspective is particularly evident today in the face of 21st Century relativism, where everything is okay so long as someone says it’s okay and “no one gets hurt.”
It’s a farce. And it’s sad.
But adults are no different. That was certainly the case for me earlier in my life as a stressed-out CEO chasing a 500-Horse-power sports car because the one I had only took 410 horses out of the barn and onto the street. What a joke.
Playing boss often comes from a selfish attempt to control our circumstances while chasing a mythical form of happiness. It’s the “when I have thus and such, then I will be happy” syndrome. But if we’re not happy now, we won’t be happy later.
Acting as the boss of our life is a selfish attempt to control things by exercising our own power. But there’s more to it than selfishness; it is really a misplaced focus on an idealized sense of happiness at a destination point down the road. It is the “when I have thus and such, then I will be happy” syndrome that comes from trying to be in control of our lives. The problem is that it never happens. If we are not happy now, we won’t be happy later.
We can’t have it both ways. If we are going to play boss and rule our own lives, we will not be in a position to yield our life to God. It’s that simple. Those two avenues lead in opposite directions because they are incompatible…
Doing our own thing ignores God’s wise principles of living. Playing boss leaves us vulnerable to collisions with sin and the disruption of our relationship with God. We then drift farther and farther away from knowing God and finding his peace.
I learned the hard way that playing boss was isolating me from any chance of connecting with God, let alone yielding my life to him in full surrender. I learned that playing boss shuts off God’s wisdom fountain. And I learned that playing boss opens us up to collisions with sin and the disruption of our relationship with God.
“Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall.” Proverbs 16:18
