If Jesus’s invitation “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28 NIV) sounds like an empty promise to you, there’s a good chance one last obstacle to your freedom is standing in the way—control.

Maybe you (like me) tend to turn God into a vending machine. Where you decide you’ll put in a certain number of songs worshipping or hours praying and, in return, God will move in the exact way you want him to.

Maybe you figured at this point you wouldn’t have any questions left about faith or struggle with any doubts, but you still do. So you try to control those thoughts by pushing them into a back room in your soul and locking the door.

Maybe you’ve become impatient with the long work of God and have started scouring the internet for those quick-fix solutions. You still show up to church and read your Bible and all that, but if you’re honest, you’re way more interested in practices where you can be at the center.

The challenge of control has existed ever since Adam and Eve ran, hid, blamed, and sewed together fig leaves in the garden. If that reminds you of you, try a new perspective.

Imagine yourself standing with King David and staring up at a starry night sky, contemplating the God who created the whole universe. David prays,

When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them? (Psalm 8:3-4 NIV)

The One who hangs constellations in the night sky is mindful of you. He cares for you. Not some future version of you who better reflects his image—the you right here and now.

Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths. – Proverbs 3:5-6 ESV

You don’t have to get stuck in your insecurities. You don’t have to perform. You don’t have to get caught in the comparison trap. You don’t have to run away from the present moment. You don’t have to try to control any of it.

You can be free from you, enjoying the scandalous freedom of trusting God. And it finally will feel like rest for your weary soul.

Today’s Truth Statement: I am created in the image of a self-giving God.

We hope you are encouraged by this reading plan. To learn more about FREE ME FROM ME by Ryan Wekenman, click here.

Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. But that is not the way you learned Christ!— assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.

Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another. Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil. Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need. Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you. – Ephesians 4:17-32 ESV

We’ve looked at performance and comparison. Avoiding is another way to keep self at the center. It tends to happen in one of two ways.

First, on those rare occasions when we actually feel like we’re doing and saying all the right things, we avoid our inner brokenness by thinking too highly of ourselves.

The second (and more common for me) way we avoid is through the deflated self. The moment we fixate on just how imperfect we are instead of participating in life, we get down on ourselves and look for ways to avoid it altogether.

Whether you’re puffed up or deflated, you’re making the same mistake. You’re placing yourself at the center of this story, thus inheriting the unrelenting pressure that comes with it.

The apostle Paul said, “You have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator” (Colossians 3:9-10 NIV).

Self-reliance, or what Paul elsewhere called living according to “the flesh,” puts an enormous weight on your shoulders. Because the problem with being the one in charge is you are the one in charge.

Do you know what’s a lot better than self-help? God’s help.

And that takes us to one of the wildest things Jesus said. On the night he was betrayed, he told his disciples, “It is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you” (John 16:7 ESV).

Jesus called the Holy Spirit the Helper. And he basically told the disciples, “As great as it’s been to have me here in person these last few years, the Helper is the better option now.”

We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace. – Romans 6:9-14 ESV

The same is true for us today. We’ve got a much better option than self-help; we’ve got God’s help. It’s time to let the Helper do what the Helper does best.

Today’s Truth Statement: I am created in the image of a self-surrendering God.