On Runaway Horses and Scurrying Rats

…Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good things, and an evil man out of the evil treasure brings forth evil things. Matthew 12:34b-35

I remember one night at the jail when Sue was teaching on self-control, she talked about how we would prefer to control other people. She said that if we had a remote control that worked on people, there are plenty of folks we would choose to mute, or we would make them go away simply by clicking “OFF.”

This illustration reminded me of the Adam Sandler movie, Click, where a magical remote control is used to skip the difficult and unpleasant parts of life. It’s quite funny and appealing in the beginning, but by the end it’s very sad because by skipping every unpleasantness, the man becomes basically a zombie floating through his days with no awareness or empathy. He has skipped so much of life, he hasn’t really lived; hasn’t been a father to his children or a husband to his wife.

Yes, we love to be in control. We would love to control life’s circumstances as well as the people around us.

And yet we can’t seem to control ourselves:
our tongues
our bodies
our anger
our spending
our eating
our drinking
our thoughts
even our facial expressions

Oh we can control ourselves most of the time, maybe even 99% of the time. But then comes a moment that surprises us, something we didn’t expect, didn’t get a chance to plan for. We don’t think; we just react.

Debi Pearl in her book Created To Be His Helpmeet describes it this way:

Reactions are not premeditated actions springing from our best motives, carefully thought out, planned, and weighed. They are emotional responses, breaking loose like wild horses when we feel hurt, cheated, used, or misunderstood…We lose our carefully preserved “front” when we are pressed beyond calculated thinking. Then who we really are is made manifest.

who we really are…

In Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis addressed the same idea:

Surely what a man does when he is taken off his guard is the best evidence for what sort of a man he is? Surely what pops out before the man has time to put on a disguise is the truth? If there are rats in a cellar you are most likely to see them if you go in very suddenly. But the suddenness does not create the rats: it only prevents them from hiding. In the same way the suddenness of the provocation does not make me an ill-tempered man; it only shows me what an ill-tempered man I am. The rats are always there in the cellar, but if you go in shouting and noisily they will have taken cover before you switch on the light.

Forgive me for quoting so extensively, but can’t we all relate?

Debi Pearl continued with this excellent advice:

You can control your future reactions considerably by changing the way you think before you are pressed into a response. The way you think every day determines the way you feel, and it will determine how you will react in stressful situations.

change the way you think…

In Matthew 12:35 Jesus said, “A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good things, and an evil man out of the evil treasure brings forth evil things.” Bad things come out of a bad heart. There’s just no way around it. The bad reactions that I sometimes have when I’m caught off guard reveal something bad about my heart.

James 3 doesn’t give us much hope for ever perfectly taming the tongue. Words that reveal weaknesses of character sometimes pop out of our mouths. If we want to tame the wild horses, if we want to get rid of the rats in the cellar, we’re going to need to give up all of these ill-conceived notions of controlling other people and controlling circumstances, and we’re going to have to purify our hearts (James 4:7-10), “bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ,” (2 Corinthians 10:5). There is hope for improvement if we identify our weaknesses and change the way we think by renewing our minds (Romans 12:2).

Now, I wonder what kind of remote control could make that happen….

Dear Heavenly Father, we ask you to purify our hearts and renew our minds through the power of Your word and Your Holy Spirit. May we learn to think more like Jesus so that we can live and love as He did. Forgive our failings and help us, Lord! In Jesus’s name, Amen.

by Christie Cole Atkins

For more ideas on changing the way you think, click here to read a previous post on Re-wiring Our Self-Talk.