Far too many people believe letting go of situations or even your entire life in deference of God and His plan is giving up. It’s actually not even close to that.
Letting go doesn’t mean you just don’t care. God understands you have hopes and dreams, even if those don’t square with the direction He knows you should take in life. Far too many believe He doesn’t care when their dreams are dashed, leading them to abandon hope and declare “God doesn’t care about what I want.”
Of course He does.
But any good father doesn’t just give his child anything that child wants. After all, kids think having candy all the time or eating ice cream for breakfast is good for them because it makes them happy. As a parent, you know it’s bad for their health and comes with long-term consequences.
Just because you don’t give your child what he wants doesn’t mean you don’t care about what he wants – you do, but you know it isn’t what he actually needs, even if he fails to understand that. You also know that one day he’ll hit the level of maturity, experience, and knowledge where not only does he understand why what he wanted wasn’t good, he will appreciate your not letting him get his way.
God doesn’t want us to give up and not care about what happens to us. Instead, letting go or what some refer to as “The Surrender” involves not abandoning hope or unplugging, becoming apathetic, but instead accepting that we don’t know how to manage everything.
Instead of trying to will all of our deepest wishes into existence, including those that seem like genuinely good things (not the equivalent of always eating candy), we accept that God might have a different plan for us, one which will lead to greater growth, understanding, and ultimately happiness.
Sure, along the way we will suffer. We’ll be asked to sacrifice, sometimes temporarily giving up possessions or even personal connections we value above all else. But ultimately we will find greater happiness and rewards for our willingness to let go, to surrender our will to the Lord.
This isn’t done through apathy, because if we truly just don’t care anymore and give up, it isn’t a sacrifice and we really learn nothing.
Yes, letting go sometimes means we go through things that are genuinely awful. That’s partly what makes it so hard to do. God might have us go down paths we really would rather not. But he doesn’t do that out of sadistic pleasure – He takes no joy in our suffering.
You really can’t tell one who took upon Himself not only all of our sins but also all of our infirmities and other trials that He doesn’t understand how any degree of suffering feels, because He literally is the only one who knows exactly how you feel.
This concept, which I’m still learning in degrees, has helped me get through the most painful losses in my life. It’s not all for nothing but instead is part of the process of making me into something more.
As I heard a wise man recently say, God is the author of our lives and our job is to be good stewards over what He blesses us with. To be a good steward, you don’t just live apathetically and put in no effort – in contrast, you put in tremendous effort, even when things don’t work out how you wished. Just know you’re not walking the pathway alone.
Image via Grok
Steven Symes 