Let Go...and Let God!
Every day, we have to decide who’s going to be in control of our life — us or God.
That choice is a battle. There are things in our life that we want to control. We want to make our own rules. But stress relief always starts with letting go and letting God be God. It always starts with saying, “God, I’m giving up control, because you can control the things that are out of control in my life.”
Psalm 46:10- says, “Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth. The Lord almighty is with us, the God of Jacob is our fortress”.
I don’t know what you’re going to face this week. You don’t, either. But I can already tell you what God wants you to do: Let go, and know. Let go of control, and know that God is in control. Let go, and know! This is the first step to peace in our life.
Whenever we face out-of-control situations, we tend to go to one of two extremes. For some of us, the more out-of-control our life gets, the harder we try to control it. Some of us do the exact opposite: We just give up! We have a pity party and invite yourself to it.
Both of those reactions to stress are foolish. They don’t work. Instead of being a victim or becoming hyper controlling, we need to pray the prayer of surrender.
The number one reason we’re under stress is because we’re in conflict with God. We’re trying to control things that only God can control. We can’t control our husband or our kids or our wife or our job or our future or our past or any of that stuff. The more we do it, the more we’re trying to play God, and that puts
us in opposition to God. Not only are we going to lose that conflict, but we’re also going to be tired.
Millions of people pray the Serenity Prayer, which is based on the Lord’s Prayer, but I had never read the last eight lines to the prayer: “Living one day at a time, enjoying one moment at a time, accepting hardship as a pathway to peace, taking as Jesus did this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it; trusting that He will make all things right if I surrender to His will so that I may be reasonably happy in this life and supremely happy with Him forever in the next. Amen.”
That’s where the power is! There is power when you surrender to God the very things you’ve been trying to control. My Challenge for us today is to Let Go....and Let God.
In His Grip....Pastor Matt Meadows