This is part of my year-long series exploring human-centered alternatives to the spiritual promises in Oswald Chambers’ classic devotional My Utmost for His Highest. Today’s entry, “The Notion of Divine Control”, promises that believers can develop a mindset where God is “behind everything that happens,” making prayer “as easy as breathing” and creating “perfect confidence” that “nothing happens unless God wills it.”
Here’s what maintaining perfect trust in divine control actually delivered:
“God is behind everything that happens,” her pastor assured confidently. “Fix your mind on the idea that your heavenly Father controls all circumstances. This will make it as easy as breathing to trust him. Nothing happens unless God wills it—rest in perfect confidence.”
Jennifer’s husband had just been diagnosed with ALS at age 42. The devastating news felt like drowning in ice water, but spiritual guidance promised that believing in divine control would bring peace through this nightmare. God was somehow behind this progressive neurodegenerative disease as part of his perfect plan.
Jennifer desperately wanted this framework to provide comfort during the devastating diagnosis. She tried to maintain the mindset that God was controlling her husband’s decline, that somehow this tragedy was part of divine plan requiring perfect trust and confident prayer.
For months, Jennifer forced herself to see God’s hand in every aspect of her husband’s deterioration—his increasing weakness, speech difficulties, eventual need for a feeding tube. She prayed constantly from what she believed was “perfect confidence,” asking God to heal or at least slow the disease’s progression.
But the promised peace through divine control was spiritual torture.
The more Jennifer tried to see God behind her husband’s suffering, the more tormented she became. Either God was deliberately causing this agony, or he was powerless to stop it. Neither option provided the comfort that believing in divine control was supposed to bring. The perfect confidence felt like cruel self-deception.
Meanwhile, Jennifer’s neighbor Susan approached her own family’s medical crisis with zero expectation of divine control explanations. When Susan’s daughter was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes, Susan didn’t seek divine purpose but focused on practical management. She learned about insulin protocols, carbohydrate counting, blood sugar monitoring from medical professionals.
Susan’s approach involved accepting that some medical conditions simply occur without divine purpose or control. She didn’t waste emotional energy trying to understand God’s will in her daughter’s diagnosis but channeled concern into becoming competent in diabetes care.
When Jennifer’s husband eventually died from ALS complications, she felt spiritually shattered. Where was the divine control that was supposed to make sense of his suffering? Where was the perfect confidence that trusting God’s will was supposed to provide?
Jennifer’s breakthrough came when she abandoned the search for divine control and started processing her grief through hospice bereavement counseling. The peace she found didn’t come from believing God was behind everything but from accepting that some tragedies simply happen without divine purpose or meaning.
The silence where divine control was supposed to provide comfort revealed the truth: there was no heavenly Father behind everything. Only human suffering that required compassionate support, not spiritual explanation.
Reflection Question: When has accepting that difficult circumstances lack divine purpose been more comforting than trying to see God’s control in everything?
This story is part of my upcoming book “The Undevoted: Daily Departures from Divine Dependence,” which offers 365 human-centered alternatives to the spiritual certainties in Chambers’ devotional. Each day explores how reason, community, and human resilience can address life’s challenges without requiring divine intervention.
God or Delusion? 