Today's Devotional

January 29, 2009

Subject: What You Can Control

1 Corinthians 37:7a "Nevertheless he that standeth stedfast in his heart, having no necessity, but hath power over his own will..."

To be clear, the verse above may not have the primary purpose for which I'm using it today, but nevertheless, I believe it applies.

I called one of my students into the office yesterday aghast about the fact that she failed four out of seven classes for the semester. As I talked to her about the causes and her plan to fix it, I heard what I so often hear from students at this age, "well my parents are getting a divorce, blah, blah, blah." I knew where she was headed so I asked "what does that have to do with you failing your classes?" She seemed shocked that I asked that. I then went on to explain, that "you are responsible for your decisions and your parents are responsible for theirs. You can only control the things you have the power to control."

I don't think many in our country understand that principle. On my way to the gym this morning a financial analyst was on talking about our economic crisis and how some people are losing their minds over things they can't control. The economy, like much of the rest of the world may clearly be out of our control, but we can control what is in our ability to control. The financial analyst when on to say that we should spend less than we earn, we should save for long-term purposes and pray about where to make investments. That we can control and that will work in any economy.

We have power over our own will. That means that there are a whole lot of other things and people's wills that we have no control over. If you want to live stress-free life in the joy of the Lord, understand that you can only control what you can control. If we do the right things with what we control, we'll surely find that the rest of the world won't matter as much.

Carlen