Week two of “Control Issues” gets specific. If control really is an illusion — a God category we were never built to carry — then the next question is unavoidable: how, exactly, do we go about trying to grab it? Pastor TJ McCormick opens this message with some honest, laugh-out-loud confessions (including his 20-month-old daughter’s biting habit) before diving back into Genesis 3 to name three tools people reach for when they’re trying to control their lives, their people, and their futures.
The first tool is knowledge and information — the idea that if we just know enough, we’ll be in control. TJ traces this straight back to the tree of knowledge in the garden, and makes the case that we’ve confused information with influence: knowing the weather forecast doesn’t mean you control the weather, and knowing more doesn’t equal controlling more. The second tool is power and money, which “sell the illusion of control but only lead to more chaos” — effective for a season, but ultimately something people, like money itself, will grow wings and fly away from. The third tool is the one nobody wants to name: shame and blame, the hidden tools Adam and Eve reached for the moment they hid from God in the garden, and the same tools so many of us still use today to manage our image and control how others see us.
TJ doesn’t just diagnose the problem — he gets personal about which of the three tools he uses most, and challenges the church to do the same: name your tool specifically, because until you name it, you can’t tame it. The message closes back where week one left off, with the Serenity Prayer, and a reminder that surrender isn’t just the path to peace — it’s the path to salvation itself.
BIBLICAL REFERENCES
Genesis 3:5
Genesis 3:6
Genesis 3:10
Proverbs 23:4-5
James 4:10
John 3:16
