Matthew 4

I was not given choice to be in control.  I was given choice to be free.  Because what I really mean when I say that I am in control is that I am getting what I want.  But because  what I want is, by its very nature in the future,  it is a place beyond what I can see.   Which means I am being tempted from beyond—making deals with a future outside of my present existence.  Wishing of the future; this state always beyond my current one; begging it not to let me die, not to get sick, to defeat all my enemies, to have no problems for me.  These hollow desires fixing my eyes forward, always forward.  These, in and of themselves, may all be great things, but the one thing they definitely are not is in my control.  Which means they are impossible to be chosen.  Which means desires are not choices, they are temptations.  Temptations that lead astray.   My desires feel like they are mine and that they are something “I choose.” But they are not.  If anything, desire works the other way around. It chooses for me, leading me by the nose.  So when I say I am in control, it is simple enough to conclude the opposite:  I am not. 
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Also, by definition, being in control is a state in which one’s desires are fulfilled. But for how long? Which is to say when one’s desires are fulfilled, one is in a fleeting shelter of control, a cozy and warm temporary hut for one's desires, though a small and inescapable prison for himself.  He was given choice to be free.  To be free even of desire.

To be in control requires constant filtering of my actions through the law. A constant attention to the narrow pattern of behaviors that are either right or wrong;  to check whether my desires are justified or not under the law. But life is not law. Life, in a real sense, is too short for that.  I am free of the law.  Free to attend to life. If I lay down my desires, I am free of being controlled by them.  And I simply listen. I love. I live. I give control fully to the only place where control exists—the Spirit of God, the maker of life and laws, whose every word is mine to hear and mine to follow. I am free. I am alive. I am justified.