Adapted from Bible Worship:
It’s still summer, but when things are in full swing, do you often feel completely exhausted—perhaps right now? Do you feel like you are working day and night, calculating every penny, planning every move, and trying with all your might to fix your financial situation, yet nothing seems to change? You lie awake at night staring at the ceiling, wondering when your long-awaited breakthrough will finally arrive.
If this describes you, you might be making a silent mistake that is actually blocking the very miracle you are praying for. You are trying to control everything, and by doing so, you are pushing God out of the driver’s seat of your life.
In the spiritual realm, control is actually fear disguised as wisdom.
Here are the seven signs that trying to control everything is delaying your financial breakthrough, and more importantly, breakthroughs also in your emotional, personal, health, and spiritual lives.:
You are constantly calculating and have lost your peace. You cannot sleep at night because your mind is constantly running numbers or other problems. Psalm 127:2 says, “It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil.”
When you obsess over calculating every scenario, you are eating the bread of anxiety.
Remember Peter in Luke 5? He was a professional fisherman who worked all night relying on his own control and caught absolutely nothing. But when Jesus told him to cast his nets into the deep—an instruction that logically made no sense—Peter surrendered. He said, “At Your word, I will let down the nets.”
The moment he traded calculation for obedience, his nets began to break with fish. Your breakthrough won’t come from obsessive calculations. Hand the math, hand the emotions, over to God.
When you try to control your destiny, fear becomes your primary adviser.
Control can produce panic, and panic always produces Ishmael. In Genesis, God promised Abraham and Sarah a son.
But Sarah got impatient with God’s timing. She virtually panicked.
She took control and had Abraham sleep with Hagar, producing Ishmael. That act of human control brought pain and division for generations.
Whenever you force a financial or any such door open because you are panicking, you create an Ishmael. It brings endless headaches. Proverbs 10:22 says, “The blessing of the Lord makes rich, and he adds no sorrow with it.”
Stop making decisions out of panic. God is not late. Nor are the angels.
And don’t stop being generous because of a scarcity mindset.
When you trust God, you operate from abundance.
When you try to control your life, you shift into emotional scarcity.
You hoard every “penny” and stop giving, telling yourself you’ll be generous when your breakthrough comes.
Remember Exodus 16: God provided daily manna from Heaven and told the Israelites not to save any for the next day. But out of fear and a desire for control, some tried to hoard it. The Bible says it bred worms and stank.
When you hoard your money or emotions out of fear, your finances or emotions, your good “luck,” can begin to rot spiritually. You may cut off the Divine flow. Luke 6:38 says, “Give, and it will be given to you.”
You cannot receive a breakthrough with closed fists. Prove to your mind that money does not control you by doing something generous today.
And don’t treat God as a consultant instead of the commander.
There is a massive difference between asking God to bless your plans and asking God for his plans.
Proverbs 3:5-6 says, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart… In all your ways acknowledge him.”
Surrender your ambitions and ask, “Lord, what do you want me to do?” God always pays for what He in His goodness and mightiness orders.
Ah, that word “surrender” is key.
Your value is not defined by your debt of whatever kind; your deficit; your insufficiency; it is defined by the Blood of Jesus.
God will sometimes allow your life to dry up specifically to break this false identity. He wants you to learn that He is the solid rock at the bottom. This is the Almighty who by mere thought can reconfigure a cosmos!
When you detach your self-worth from your financial status, as one example, money loses its power over you. And when money no longer controls you, God can finally trust you with more of it. God is waiting for the moment you finally say, “I give up. I surrender.”
Surrender is not defeat; it is the only path to victory.
[resources:books on miracles]
