We Have a Good Father Who Is in Control

I have a little test for you?  Do you know the French word for a car’s clutch?

I do now. I didn’t a few months ago, but I do now. This Summer Andy and I had a brilliant holiday camping in France. All was great until the day we headed home driving back up France for our ferry to England. As we stopped at a motorway toll booth. our car’s clutch (Embrayage in French, in case you were wondering) wouldn’t go into gear and we were stuck. With nothing but our very limited French, and Google Translate, we were stranded.

For five days we were unable to get home. We didn’t know if our car was fixable. We didn’t know what would happen. We had French friends helping us speak to the mechanics but everything was out of our hands. Our car had been towed off to a garage in Toulouse to mechanics who didn’t speak English, and we were definitely not in control. We could only wait, pray and trust.

I found being totally out of control and not able to fix things those five days both a relief and horrible at the same time. It was a relief because none of it was in my hands to sweat over “Will I get this wrong?  Will I make the right decision?” I had no decisions to make – it was all in the hands of some mechanics in France that we had never even met. It was horrible because I didn’t have any control or say in how things would turn out or when we would get home.

So much of in our lives is unfixable. Most of us can’t fix cars. None of us can fix other people. A lot of us can’t fix medical situations. And like it or not, we often can’t even fix ourselves.

If, like me, you are used to fixing things and having answers, it’s a bizarre experience when we are in situations like a child again - dependent on others - and all we have in those moments are prayer, faith and trust.

If this is where you find yourself today – your problems are unfixable by yourself and things are a bit scary - I want to encourage you with some truth. Whatever your circumstances, we have a Father God who is way more in control and overseeing things than any of us can even imagine. He promises to never leave us (Isaiah 46: 3-4), to bless our lives (Psalm 34:8) and to be the strong one in the relationship (Ephesians 1:19). These promises are unshakable, and we can lean back on them today. It’s OK to be real about the discomfort of not being in control – to want to be in control is part of being human – but to remind ourselves who is in control even when we aren’t – that brings peace to our hearts.