Letting Go, and Knowing God Is in Control

“Let go of your concerns! Then you will know that I am God. I rule the nations. I rule the earth.” Psalm 46:10 (GW)

Every day, I need to decide who’s going to be in control of my life—me or God.

That choice is a battle. There are things in life that I want to control; I want to make my own rules. But stress relief always starts with 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, “Let go of your concerns! Then you will know that I am God. I rule the nations. I rule the earth” (GW). 

I won't know what I'm going to face next week. But the thing God wants me to do is to: Let go and know.

Let go of control, and know that God is in control. This is the first step to serenity.

Whenever people face out-of-control situations, we tend to go to one of two extremes. For some people, the more out-of-control your life gets, the harder you try to control it. Others do the exact opposite: You just give up! You 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, I need to pray a prayer of surrender.

Why surrender? The number one reason I'm under stress is because I'm in conflict with God. You’re trying to control things that only God can control. You can’t control my job or my future or my past or any of that stuff. The more I try, the more I'm trying to play God, and that puts me in opposition to God. Not only am I going to lose that conflict, but I'm also going to be tired.

Millions of people pray the Serenity Prayer, which is based on the Lord’s Prayer, but most have never read the last eight lines to the prayer. It essentially says: “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 you will make all things right if I surrender to your will so that I may be reasonably happy in this life and supremely happy with you forever in the next. Amen.”

That’s where the power is! There is power when I surrender to God the very things I've been trying to control.

In summary:

Letting go of control and surrendering to God is the first step toward true peace. Every day brings the choice between self-reliance or trusting in God's sovereignty. Psalm 46:10 reminds us to "Let go of your concerns! Then you will know that I am God." This act of surrender acknowledges that while life can be unpredictable and overwhelming, God remains in control of all things—nations, circumstances, and individual lives. Trying to manage what’s beyond our control only leads to stress, while releasing that control to God opens the door to serenity and trust.

When life feels out of control, people often react by either tightening their grip or giving up completely. Both responses are ineffective and miss the real solution: surrender. The core of stress lies in trying to do God's job, and that creates unnecessary conflict and exhaustion in my life. True relief comes when I stop striving and instead pray a prayer of surrender, like the extended Serenity Prayer, which embraces living one day at a time and trusting God with what I cannot change. Surrendering to God isn’t weakness—it’s the pathway to strength, peace, and lasting joy.