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July 28

Who’s in Control, Here?

 

The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.  ––John 3:8

 

My friends and I joke that when we want to go do guy stuff, we need to get permission from “Command Control” (meaning, our wives). It’s a tongue-and-cheek nod toward respecting our spouses that they’re going to be okay with us playing basketball for three hours on a Saturday afternoon. In the military, of course, the command center is the critical “brain” linked to the body of any particular army or military organization. If the command center falls on the battlefield, almost certain disaster follows. It’s true for a marriage, too, when spouses vie for control.

 

The excellent film Pressure exemplifies what happens when competing voices inside a military command center are at odds with each other. Based on real events, the film details the intense days leading up to D-Day, June 6, 1944, and focuses on the battle of wills between Britain’s leading meteorologist, Dr. James Stagg, and his American counter-part, Dr. Irving Krick. (Spoiler Alert…) Without giving too much away, the invasion is delayed by two days—thereby skirting disaster in the form of a brutal storm that hits Northern Europe—and the rest, as they say, is history.

 

Much later, President John F. Kennedy asked former Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces (and later President) Dwight D. Eisenhower why the allies had the advantage on D-Day, and he said, “Because we had better meteorologists than the Germans!”

 

What control center are you tuning in to “read the weather” in your life—choices you need to make, relationships that need navigating, your walk with God? It’s very easy to slip into behavioralism masquerading as spirituality—the type of faith walk that’s based more on your own thoughts and feelings rather than on the voice and direction of the Holy Spirit. The war you are waging is fraught with spiritual storms and emotional hurricanes that require accurate reports and direction from God’s Command Center.

 

Take the time to test the weather in your life today:

 

 

Don’t depend on any voices except God’s. All others lead to stormy disasters.

 

Lord, whose voice am I listening to today—mine or Yours? Help me to attune my spiritual ears and eyes to hear and see what steps I need to take today to walk in Your path.