Hotel curtains seem to have superfluous black out properties. It can be mid afternoon and still pitch black in your motel room if you have pulled the curtains.

I am not a curtain puller. I don’t mind a little light at night and I enjoy sunny glimmers on my bedspread in the early morning. But not everyone is like me, and many people choose to pull the curtains.

This past year I shared a room with Melissa Taylor at She Speaks. She is apparently the blackout curtain kind of girl, because she pulled the curtains every night. This was okay with me. I’m not that picky. However, one night I got up and had to go to the bathroom. Now you talk about DARK! I don’t think I have ever been in a darker room. I first ventured out of my bed and began to walk to what I thought was the hallway, smack, there was a wall. I decided it would be best to place my hands out in front of me rather than beside me. So as I felt along the wall, I felt everything but a bathroom door. I was certain I was going to wet my pants right there and then. I had just about given up when my fingers ran across the smoothness of the bathroom door and I was finally able to go in. I had never been more thankful to locate a hotel bathroom in my life!

The need to control is kind of like living your life with black out curtains. Although, it doesn’t seem that way at first…

Have you ever asked God to show you His will only to turn and run in the other direction because you didn’t like His instruction? I know I have, and I am not alone. Jonah is famous for this in the Bible. God asked Him to do something, He ran, and God sent a storm to chase Him down.

So why do we do this? Why do we hear a word from the Lord and choose to deliberately disobey? Fear is a usual factor. What if we are incompetent or make a mistake? But even deeper than fear is the need to be in control. And then at the core what do we find? Lack of trust. Lack of trust in God.

It seems like it should be easy to trust God. After all, He is the one with the capital G at the front of His name. He is the man with the plan. But we operate as if we are stuck in the room with black out curtains. And in many ways we are. We are often left completely blind to everything other than what is directly in front of us. And when everything around us is dark, that’s where it happens. We lose the capacity to trust.

God tells us to turn to our right, we really should trust Him, but we don’t. So we turn to our left. And perhaps we hit a brick wall. But we chock it up to coincidence and sometimes even choose to run into that wall again, and again. Talk about being a control FREAK! When we do the very opposite of what God has asked us to do, all the while blind and refusing to listen to His direction, that is the height of FREAKISHLY FREAKY need for control. But we do it!

The thing is, God can see in the room with the blackout curtains. He knows the plans He has laid out for us. The plans that lead us where He wants us to go, and where He wants us to go is good!

Look at Jonah. When He finally did what God asked Him to do thousands were saved! And yet Jonah was still angry. He still was in despair. He had lost His capacity to trust even when God showed Him that His will was perfect, right, and good! God had led Him to the safety of the bathroom in the room with the blackout curtains and yet He still refused to trust God!

Is this you? Maybe God brought you safely out of the storm? He showed you that His will is good and yet you continue to reject Him and the power of His saving grace? Have you lost your capacity to trust Him and replaced it with an oversized, dysfunctional capacity for control?

If so, you need to go back to the source! What happened in your life that has left you so hurt and filled with bitterness that your refuse to trust God? Did a religious leader hurt you? Was your father abusive or did He abandon you? If so, how are you going to deal with these things? Will you continue to wander around in the dark or will you start working through these past issues so that you can trust God to guide you to safety even in the darkest of nights?

It is time to ask yourself, what has damaged your capacity to trust? And what steps will you choose to take to mend it…are you willing to let it go…and let God free you from the darkness and walk you safely into the light…