Control is a double-edged sword.
On one hand, you can use control to get people to do what you think they should be doing. In that way, it can make them (at least seem) more productive.
But on the other hand, control crushes people’s spirits, making them less useful in the long-run.
There’s a guy in the Bible named Philemon who learned this the hard way. And we get to read it and learn from it.
It’s a lesson on leading and loving people well, and how to help yourself and everyone around you more effective.
Here’s how the story goes…
Philemon was a man during the time of the apostle Paul’s ministry in the first century A.D. According to the book of Philemon in the Bible, Philemon had a slave named Onesimus who ran away.
After running away from his master, Onesimus apparently heard the message of the gospel of Jesus, and accepted Jesus as his Lord. Somewhere in all this, Onesimus met Paul, and became one of Paul’s key helpers on his mission.
Even though Onesimus had proven himself helpful and useful to the apostle Paul, Paul still felt it necessary to send Onesimus back to his master Philemon in order to be reconciled in hopes that Philemon would set him free.
Paul was in a weird position because apparently he was also close with Philemon, which would have made taking his slave as a worker in his ministry an awkward encounter the next time he saw Philemon, and it could have hindered Paul’s reputation as a leader.
So the book of Philemon is a letter written from Paul to Philemon, asking him to accept Onesimus back not only without punishment, but setting him free and treating him like a brother instead of a slave.
Put yourself in Philemon’s shoes…
He had a resource, but he thought that resource should be more useful to him.
He envisioned having Onesimus do certain work for him, and produce certain results, but Onesimus ended up not being useful in the way Philemon wanted.
Onesimus runs away, and the whole ordeal costs Philemon in the long run.
So he considered Onesimus useless.
Onesimus then comes to know Jesus, gets free both physically and spiritually, and comes back to Philemon with the potential to be useful – but this time in a different way than originally intended.
Philemon had a choice to make.
He could begrudgingly turn away the new gift he was receiving in his returning slave (because that relationship was bound to look very different than it had before)…
Or he could receive Onesimus as a brother and embrace the new kind of usefulness he had to offer.
Things were going to be very different than Philemon had anticipated.
But God turned a good resource into a potentially amazing friendship. Philemon had to decide if he was willing to let go of his expectations.
There are people and things in our lives that are gifts from God, and we start out thinking they should produce results in a certain way.
But for whatever reason, they just don’t produce those results.
We get frustrated, and sometimes we give up on them, considering them useless.
It feels like it costs us more than it’s worth.
We end up just wanting to move on, bitter and broken over the whole situation.
But here’s the thing:
People are only as effective as they are free.
When we’re restricted, our effectiveness is limited.
When people have things that keep them bound – fear, shame, regret, addictions, etc. – it’s impossible for them to maximize their effectiveness.
Likewise, when people are bound by overbearing expectations, their effectiveness is limited.
Your wife, your kids, your team at work…the tighter your grip, the higher your expectations, and the more controlling you become – the less effective they become.
True potential comes from letting go of control and being faithful even when where things are going might be uncomfortable and humbling.
Onesimus could only be useful when he was free from the control of Philemon.
Trying to place him back under control would have limited his potential.
In order to get the most from the gift that Onesimus was to Philemon, Philemon had to let go of his control and expectations of how we wanted things to look.
Where has your desire for control limited the usefulness of something or someone in your life?
What have you not stewarded well because of a perceived lack of value and how can you steward it well going forward?
Where have your expectations limited the usefulness of a gift or resource or relationship in your life?
Finally, what does it look like to be faithful with what you’ve been given regardless of how useful it may appear to you through the lens of your own expectations?
When you set aside control and expectations in order to embrace empathy and compassion for what that gift means to someone else rather than what we can get out of it, we find that the usefulness of everything we’ve been given gets multiplied in the process.