This audiobook is a journey I am on: a journey many others have joined me on, and one I will happily take you on.

The journey is firstly about becoming conscious of how we tend to live, believing that we need to be able to make life happen for us and ours. Although this may seem a responsible way to live, it actually exposes us to all sorts of unbearable pressures as we attempt to gain control over the circumstances of our everyday lives.

Once we become conscious of this, the journey then walks us out of the captivity and heaviness of having to make life happen. We will be able to make peace with the circumstances of our lives and, as a result, discover how to engage with life in a life-giving way, for ourselves and those around us. A life that lives well in all circumstances.

I uncover two major problems hidden in our human condition that prevent us from living well. They are: 1) the make it happen barrier and 2) the need-to-know disease, and they are both overcome by the journey we will go on. These are just my ways of keeping it real and keeping it simple.

The overall conclusion is that we can live with the hidden illusion that we can have control ourselves, over the circumstances of everyday life, and the compulsive lie that we need to have that control. There does need to be control and order, but the fact that we feel we have to provide it is the issue. This need shows itself as fight or flight. The fighters think they can make life happen, and those who flee know they can’t, but fear the consequences. The behavior of both destroys the very life it seeks to protect through control.

My experience of this is that Jesus is saying that I will live freely and lightly as he does, as I become more like him. That I might try harder to think, speak, and act as Jesus would, and more, just to become like him, living freely and lightly as he says in Matthew 11 (MSG). A life in all its fullness in all circumstances, good or ill, more in this world, and less of it. After all these years of living, I recently said to my son that what I want is to be able to engage with my life in the world as Jesus would if he were I.

I found the way to this kind of living in more recent years, and more simply revealed, in the beatitudes. Here, Jesus offered this pattern, or way, of becoming more like him, to a crowd of ordinary everyday people on the side of a mountain, none of whom by then could have been Christian, so that lets everyone in. He did it in a simple enough way that they would be able to live it. It took him barely 10 minutes to do it, so I do wonder how it became so complicated for us.

I bring a fresh way of reading the beatitudes that will open heaven’s door to our households, our families, our friendships and fellowships, our employment, our community, and society.

Wayne Jacobsen, coauthor of the number one New York Times best seller The Shack, says this about Control, the illusion and the Lie:

"Life happens to all of us—tragedies as well as triumphs. We are repeatedly told we can take control of our lives and get the results we want. Poppycock! Finally, a book that dares to tell the truth and unravel the illusions that cause so much anguish. In this simple yet profound read, Gary Smith gives you a road map out of the illusion of control into a growing trust in how God works. It’s a life-changer!" (Wayne Jacobsen, author of He Loves Me and Finding Church, coauthor of The Shack)