false gods: control

Since last year, God’s given me a new hope and vision for my life. He’s given me very clear instruction and a very clear promise, along with it. Both tied to letting go of and walking away from yet another idol I didn’t know hindered me; a weighty one at that. I didn’t even realise how much of a heavy burden I was carrying and how truly bad it was until the Holy Spirit showed me.

There’s a Proverb about having too much honey — Proverbs 25:16. The New International Version reads, “If you find honey, eat just enough — too much of it, and you will vomit.” The King James Version reads, “Hast thou found honey? eat so much as is sufficient for thee, lest thou be filled therewith, and vomit it.” [emphasis added] In our modern culture, saying “too much of a good thing can be a bad thing” is the equivalent to the scripture.

When I first read this proverb, I took it and received it. I nodded and thought to myself, “that makes sense.” Still, I didn’t understand it until I started questioning it when God showed me that too much good stuff can actually be bad for me. How could this be possible? Is too much love, too much wisdom, too much hope, too much confidence, too much joy, too much self control a bad thing? How can something good and of God become so bad for us that we vomit it up? Well, it can definitely happen because that’s what happened to me.

I have another question. Did you know it’s possible to be too smart for our own good?

I’ve always been the smart girl and the smart one. I retain knowledge and information like a sponge, am a great test-taker, and love to learn. Growing up, I didn’t often hear that I was being too smart for my own good until I was. Being an inquisitive child, I asked a lot of questions, questioned a lot of things, and as I got older, I started to become more confident and bold about it. While, yes, it can be stifling and light-snuffing to say that to a child or anyone really, it can also be true. It is possible for us to be too smart for our own good. Solomon speaks about it in one of my favourite books of the Bible, Ecclesiastes. He writes in Ecclesiastes 1:17-18 NLT:

“ 17. So I set out to learn everything from wisdom to madness and folly. But I learned firsthand that pursuing all this is like chasing the wind. 18. The greater my wisdom, the greater my grief. To increase knowledge only increases sorrow.”

Solomon advises that if we pursue knowledge, it’s like chasing the wind, yet, in our day and age, knowledge is power. Honestly, it is power and it can be powerful. Knowledge isn’t even inherently bad, much like wisdom and understanding — which come fro applying knowledge. Even James tells us in James 1:5 that we can ask God for wisdom if we do not have any and are in need of it. And, surely, He will give it generously and without prejudice. So, how is it truly possible to be too smart for our own good if wisdom and knowledge are a good thing?

My god and north star was the thing I firmly plant my feet on as I walk. It’s the source of my peace, confidence, joy, hope and it becomes the anchor for my faith. Knowledge and wisdom, when depended on too much, can make us vomit. It spoils when it becomes our source and the anchor for our faith and what’s born of that is idolatry. I depended on knowledge and what I “knew” in uncertainty more than I depended on God. That is when it became bad for me, and I started to vomit it up.

Idolatry is adultery in our relationship with God, and not many of us would like to admit that there are other gods we serve, false gods that seduce us to forget that God is who He says He is. I’ll admit it humbly that I’ve had my fair share of idols, and God has torn down every single alter and cast away every safety net. Still, I never imagined that I was consuming too much honey and creating an idol of the illusion of control and safety I felt from knowing and having information.

The moment God showed me my heart and the alter I raised up was during one of my sessions with my life coach. I was sharing an update, and he shared with me what he learned in the Spirit about submission a long time ago. As I listened, the seeds of that lesson were scattered and sown into my fertile heart. I’d just been crying, too, so the ground was proper and ready. He said something to this effect:

“Submission [to God] is disconnecting from the things we root our identity and confidence in that lies outside of God.”

This means that God should be the only One our identity and confidence is rooted in. Even a blessing can become a curse if we allow it to be the source of the very things God gave us before we were even a reality in our mother’s wombs. Any good thing God gives is a resource and a window to His glory, and it should always lead us back to Him.

I sat with this new revelation and was taught me something more: our identity, value, worth, and purpose don’t come from anywhere, any thing, or anyone but God. We have them long before we had anything else in the world because He gave them to us when He first thought of us. I sat with this and was so on fire about it. I started submitting everything and anything that came to mind. Anything I anchored my identity, confidence, value, worth, and purpose in that just wasn’t God alone had to go. No matter how good it was, it just wasn’t God and I needed to face that. So, I did.

Now, I’ll be honest and say that my arrival to healing wasn’t instantaneous at all. This heavy weight of control was an Achille’s heel in my life, and it constantly led me to sin. I spent years building up this alter of security in control through knowledge and wisdom. Years spent creating this god, and God wanted to tear it down with me. First, He had to show me and I needed to be willing to see.

My willingness to open my eyes helped me truly see what I was doing. As I saw it, I confessed it, repented, and surrendered. With each confession, that bitterly disappointed and fearful part of my heart was touched by God’s tenderness, kindness, mercy, and grace in love. I continued to surrender and submit, and He continued to show me that He was all that I needed for a very long time.

Part 3 coming soon.