This may or may not come as a surprise to you, but so many people blame God for their out of control behavior. How many of you have seen the T-shirts “born to shop” or “born for chocolate?” I know we all laugh, but unfortunately for some, we actually believe in our hearts that somehow God himself has some responsibility for the out of control areas of our life.
Let’s look at a scripture that clears this up for us. When tempted, no one should say, "God is tempting me." For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone; but each one is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed. (James 1: 13-15)
Clearly God doesn’t tempt us to eat, have sex, or work inappropriately. He doesn’t cause us to get angry, envious, self-righteous, self-absorbed, prideful, reckless, unkind, or any other out of control behavior.
God created us in His image. He created us to be loving, kind, patient, understanding, creative, fun, nurturing, and all of His other wonderful characteristics. He originally created us without sin or even an appetite for sin. We were created to be absolutely pure and sinless. I mean Adam didn’t even know he was naked, that’s pretty pure.
God didn’t create us for whatever is controlling us. It is not his design at all that we continue to use our mind, will, emotions, and body in a submissive manner to whatever is controlling us.
It often pains Him to see us being limited by behaviors that have control over us. He cries at our being limited. So many think God is often an angry God. But he is really more compassionate similar to what a parent would be.
As a parent, you can see a behavior like slothfulness or procrastination in your child. You try everything you can to help your child move from being slothful to becoming motivated and industrious. Year after year you ache about this slothful behavior. You may get upset at times, but at a deeper level, you hurt for this child because you know that slothfulness has control over him or her and will eventually limit their quality of life, friendships, marriage, and future parenting to mention only a few areas of life.
That’s how God feels about what is controlling your life. He may get upset at times but His deeper feeling towards you is sadness because this will handicap you, your friendships, marriage, and parenting.
Suppose you’re out of control behavior is envy. You envy those who are richer, more important, more beautiful, skinnier, and happier. God is sad because you are not being able to celebrate the wonder of you he created. He is sad because your friendships will be limited and your ability to trust and connect to these “more wonderful” people will be limited. Your mate will suffer the entire marriage because you can’t be happy with who you are and how good your life really is. Your children will have undue stress to measure up and then wonder why they can’t be like so and so.
God doesn’t like envy, but this isn’t His only feeling about the envy that has control of someone’s life. This soul and how they can’t enjoy themselves saddens him. They see others as objects to compete with, not people who are flawed and need to be loved.
So, God is not a scapegoat. Actually, he can be an ally in your getting control over what has been controlling you. He is your biggest cheerleader if you can hear Him. He would be saying, “Get up, and try again. Keep going. I am so proud of you.”