When God Says, “Let Go”

“Whoever dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the Lord, “He is my refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust.” Psalm 91:1-2 (NIV)

Last post, we looked at this verse as a challenge to stop building our own faulty fortresses around our hearts and rest in God as our Fortress.

But, once we decide we want to trust God with our hearts over ourselves, then what?

What does trusting God actually look like in our day-to-day walking with Him?

I am a list-loving, step-creating person.

My phone is filled with lists of things I want to do and mini-steps on how to get it done.

I love a big idea revelation as much as the next person, but I absolutely hate the feel of knowing who I want to be, but not how to become that.

At one point in my life, I was drowning in knowing I needed to trust God, and genuinely wanting to, but constantly feeling lost in how to actually live that out.

And then, one night as I was collapsing under the weight of carrying my own heart, God met me in my frazzled exhaustion.

He graciously led me to this verse in Isaiah:

“You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts you.” Isaiah 26:3 (ESV)

The truth in this verse has changed everything about the way I evaluate how I am trusting God with my life.

If perfect peace flows out of complete trust in Him, then anxiety, worry, fear, doubt, unsettlement are red flags going up in my heart that there is something that I am not trusting Him to hold in His Hands.

It’s not hard for us to recognize when our hearts are unsettled, even while the cause is still unclear in our eye’s vision.

What is hard is choosing well where to run in reaction to feeling these unsettling emotions.

It’s too easy to distract ourselves with anything and everything- believing the lie that being numb is better than feeling the way I’m feeling right now.

But, what we’re really doing is much worse than numbing our discomfort until later.

We’re shooting down the red flags our own hearts are flying to warn us that something is wrong.

And even before we realize that we’re turning from trusting in Him to trusting in ourselves, the distance we’re creating between us and the One who holds our very life in His Hands brews up anxiety and unsettlement within us.

And this is actually good news if we open our eyes to it!

God doesn’t just ask us to entrust our lives in His Hands and then leave us to our own demise trying to figure out how to do that.

But, the more we learn to trust in Him, the more uncomfortable we will be when we start slipping into taking things back into our own hands.

This is why choosing to trust God with our life won’t be functional as a one-and-done decision.

It’s a daily, situation-to-situation choice we have to actively make as we walk through life with Him.

When that all-too-familiar lack of peace feeling starts to well up like a lump in my throat, I come to this verse.

I get on my knees in admission that I am not in perfect peace, and so I must not be trusting Him fully.

Then, I ask God to show me what it is that I am not trusting Him with.

And He is faithful to reveal my own heart to myself, so that I can begin to let go and place whatever it is into His safe Hands.

There is a reason peace is part of the fruit of the Spirit.

It is not something we can obtain on our own.

There is no working hard enough to achieve perfect peace.

It is only found in letting go and trusting our life in God’s hands.

I’ve seen this time and time again in my life.

Our oldest, Ace, turned 4 years old in December and he still doesn’t talk.

He has a few words he says and other ways of getting some common points across. Most often, a wide stance and intense stare into my soul that means he wants to watch football.

But other than that, a lot of the day is a guessing game. Which can turn overwhelmingly frustrating very quickly.

Recently, the weight of not knowing what my son was trying to say to me yet again was tearing up my heart.

And the Holy Spirit brought Isaiah 26:3 to mind.

After a lot of ugly tears and finally asking God to open my eyes to where I wasn’t trusting Him, I realized that at the core of my anxious broken heart, I wasn’t trusting that God had the best plan for my son’s life.

And honestly, I still don’t really understand how Ace not being able to verbally communicate could be the very best for him right now.

But, through His empowerment, God’s helped me loosen my grip on my thoughts for how Ace’s life should be going and trust that He has the absolute best for him.

So when we’re inevitably sitting at the dinner table and Ace is struggling to get me to understand what he’s saying for the forty-seventh time today, I still get frustrated.

But, I’m not overcome by anxiety and defeat like I used to be.

Because I know where to lay my heart down. I know I can run right into God’s wide-open arms for guidance and exchange my frustration for His peace.

I don’t have the answers for tomorrow.

I don’t know the fix for every situation we’re going to run into.

And I can almost guarantee I will feel lost multiple times within the next 24 hours trying to understand my son.

But, I’m choosing to continually open my hands and bring my unsettled heart to God so that He can fill me with His promised peace that I desperately need from Him.

When I think of all the nights I chose a TV show to numb my discouragement from not being able to understand what Ace was telling me that day, or opted to just go to sleep instead of asking God to bare my heart and help me work through my anxiety and pain, I regret that I held on so exhaustively for so long when it wasn’t necessary.

God’s always right there holding your perfect peace in His Hands, wanting to expose what you’re painfully clinging onto and help you let go so you can exchange it for His peace.

Not for a life free from pain or filled with nothing but comfort and being oblivious to what’s going on around us.

A promise of perfect peace as we learn to trust in Him.

I pray that this week, instead of reflexively numbing the red flags rising up within us, we choose to take them to God and ask Him to reveal what we are not trusting Him with. And as we let go, we grab hold of the perfect peace this verse promises.

From one of His children to another,

Christi