The dictionary defines control as "the power to influence or direct people's behavior or the course of events." I used to read that and think, yes, that is what I want. I am the kind of person who makes plans, sets goals, and moves quickly toward them. For a long time I genuinely believed that the quality of my plan was the main variable between where I was and where I wanted to be.
The world does not push back on that assumption. If anything, it reinforces it. A life plan is presented as a guide and a reminder of what you want to achieve, a tool for realizing your dreams and meeting your personal and professional objectives. That framing is everywhere. And it is not entirely wrong. Planning is good. Goals are good. But I think we conflate two things that are not the same: goals and plans.
Goals are dynamic. Plans are static. A goal is what you are actually after. A plan is your best current guess at how to get there. When we treat our plans with the same weight as our goals, we start to believe that we are managing the outcome, not just the process. That is where things get shaky.
"In his heart a man plans his course, but the LORD determines his steps." Proverbs 16:9
I spent a long time reading that verse as comfort for when things go sideways. But I think it is actually an invitation to rethink the whole framework from the start. The LORD determines the steps. Not my backup plan. Not my ability to adapt. The steps are being determined before I even take them.
Pharaoh and the Illusion of Position
Pharaoh is one of the most interesting case studies in the Bible on this. In Exodus 5, he refuses to release the Israelites. He has the position, the power, and every reason to believe he can manage the situation in front of him. That is what positions of power do to us. They create a feedback loop. Decisions seem to work out, and we start to believe we are the reason they work out.
What Pharaoh could not see was that by Exodus 12, he was releasing the Israelites in the middle of the night, broken, while they walked out with the wealth of Egypt. His plan was never the controlling variable. God's will was accomplished through him whether he agreed to it or not. The thing Pharaoh spent all his energy resisting still happened. He just had to endure ten plagues to get there.
That is a hard picture to sit with. Not because Pharaoh is a sympathetic figure, but because the logic is uncomfortable. We do not waste our time trying to outmaneuver what God has already determined. We just delay it, and usually at a cost to ourselves.
Pride and the Misplaced Source
Samson is a different kind of example, and in some ways a more personal one. Judges 16 shows a man with extraordinary gifting who had no idea what the actual source of that gifting was. He was disciplined. He was strong. He had real capability. High controllers often do. They have great work ethics. They are often the most capable people in the room. But when we do not understand where our strength comes from, we are going to misplace it eventually.
Samson subjugated God into a position that fit his life rather than orienting his life around God. We do the same thing when we treat God as a resource we can draw on when things get hard, rather than the one who holds everything together. Pride is not always loud. Sometimes it just looks like a quiet assumption that we are more capable than we actually are. It gives us a false perception of reality, and that gap between perceived strength and actual strength is where the failure usually happens.
God is not a companion we can override when we think we know better. He is superior in every way, almighty, and worthy of our praise in ways we will never fully comprehend. When we reduce him to a peer, we lose the actual anchor that was holding us.
Holding Plans With Open Hands
I am still someone who plans. I will probably always be. But I am learning to hold plans differently than I used to. The plan is not the contract. The goal is not something I can manufacture through willpower alone. The steps are being determined by someone whose vantage point is infinitely better than mine.
That does not mean we stop planning or working. Pharaoh still had a kingdom to run. Samson still had enemies to face. The difference is not in the doing. The difference is in the grip. Are our hands wrapped tight around the outcome, or are they open to the one who actually determines how things go?
I have found that the tighter I hold something, the more I start to resent any circumstance that threatens it. And that resentment is usually a signal that I have confused my plan for something with more authority than it has.
Proverbs 16:9 is not a resignation verse. It is a reorientation verse. It is an invitation to plan from a posture of trust rather than a posture of control. The man in that proverb still plans his course. He just does not pretend that his planning is what determines where he ends up.
Open your hands. That is not defeat. That is actually a more honest read of how things work.