“Take off your God-suit and turn her over to God,” my friend told me as I explained how I was desperate to figure out how to fix the problems in my daughter’s life. The spiritually correct answer from me would have been, “Of course, I trust him, okay.” But that would have been a lie. At that moment, I didn’t trust God to take care of my daughter.

I  wouldn’t run the world like God does and I certainly wouldn’t have let the things that have happened to my daughter happen. In my not so humble opinion, it has been too much for too long. So truthfully, I had to admit to my friend that I am struggling with trusting God with my daughter because he hasn’t done a good job overseeing her life. I feel compelled to handle it for him because I know what is best. (Now you know why she was telling me to take off the God suit—I was acting like I know better than God.)

One of the hardest things to do is to see those we love suffer and to be powerless to change it. We care deeply and we are affected by what they do and experience. When we see people making choices that aren’t good, we want to convince them to make different choices. When we see them hurting as a result of other people’s choices, we want to make the other people make different choices. When we see God allowing things we don’t understand, we want to change God and the circumstances.

It isn’t trust if everything is alright. If things are going perfectly well, there isn’t anything to surrender. I was only faced with making this choice because things aren’t good. Trust has to happen in the midst of the storm. The ultimate test of our faith as Christians is whether we trust through the storms of life as well as the periods of calmness.

The challenge for me and you is to admit powerlessness and to turn our loved ones over to God for him to fix, change, guide, and correct in his way and time. We can do our part in how we respond to them (with love, support, truth, and boundaries), but we are not their solution and the responsibility for fixing them isn’t ours to carry.

The friend that was talking to me had experienced similar problems with her daughter and had to learn to let go in the midst of the storm, too. Her daughter had come through the difficulties and God had used them for good in her life, but there was a time when all my friend had was faith that God would be faithful.

It wasn’t working for me to hold on so tight.  It was only making me more fearful and intense in my response to the circumstances. I had to pray and ask God to make me willing to trust him. I had to ask him to help me accept that I don’t have the answers and don’t know what is best. I had to  make a choice to trust.

By Karla Downing

Relationship Devotional Prayer

 
God,

I don’t understand your ways. I only know what I see and it makes me fearful, angry, worried, upset, and disturbed. Help me choose to let go and trust you with the people I love so much and whose lives deeply affect me. I admit you are God and your ways are not my ways. Help me to take off the God-suit I have been wearing.

Relationship Devotional Challenge

• Think of something that isn’t going well in someone’s life that you care deeply about.
• Ask yourself if you think you have the “answer.”
• Ask yourself if you are willing to let go and turn the problem and the person over to God. If not, ask God to make you willing to be willing.
• Turn it over by letting go and trusting God in the midst of the storm.

Scripture Meditation

 
Matthew 8:23-27

“The disciples went and woke him, saying, ‘Lord, save us! We’re going to drown!’ He replied, ‘You of little faith, why are you so afraid?'” (verses 25-26, NIV).

Isaiah 55:8-11

“‘For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,’ declares the Lord. ‘As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it'” (NIV).