Day 29 -Give Up

A Weightless Devotional

“He says, “Stop your striving and recognize that I am God.” —Psalm 46:10

To be anxious is to be striving. Even though you’re not making any progress, your mind and body are working overtime to handle the happenings around you. In an effort to feel secure, your thoughts race to fix every potential problem and plan for the worst-case scenarios of tomorrow. Ironically, instead of leading to peace by finding amazing solutions and control of the situation, all this striving only leads you down the path of more stress and uncertainty. The more you try to resolve your imagined future, the more you convince yourself that the things you’re anxious about are actually happening.

When anxiety takes root, it tricks us into living in a distorted reality—one where imagined fears feel more real than God’s promises and where we focus so intensely on what could go wrong that we live as if it already has.

But God wants us to set down this imaginary world and trust Him with the reality that He is God and that He has us in the palm of His hand. In Psalm 46:10, we are encouraged to stop our striving and to recognize that He is God. With these words, He is gently reminding us that no amount of worry can change the truth that He’s the one in control. Instead of pretending we’re on our own, we’re asked to stop, to recognize His hand in our lives, and to rest in this certainty.

No matter how hard you try, you will never be a better god than He is. Even if you think you know what you need better than He ever could, you’re wrong. He knows you better than you know yourself. And He loves you more than you ever could. He’s the Father who won’t let you fall. Picture Him standing beside you, steady and strong, inviting you to let go of the anxious burden of self-sufficiency and to allow Him to carry it instead. Like a child standing at the edge of a pool, your heart pounds with fear, but when you leap into His strong, open arms, you find nothing but safety and joy.

By His very nature, God is your protector. He cannot be any other. Worrying, striving, and playing pretend can’t change His faithfulness. So why would you want to rely on your own strength when He is infinitely stronger?

It’s hard sometimes to fully trust that your life, and the lives of the people you love, are truly in God’s hands, especially when life gets hard. In those times of spiritual amnesia when you temporarily forget that He is your God and your Father, you end up trying to make yourself your own protector. But all that does is put the weight of the world on your shoulders—a burden you were never meant to bear. Through worry and stress, you try to take control of your circumstances, but this only adds to the weight you carry.

Consider that you neither have the job title nor the skill to keep the universe running. Your worry will never be as powerful as His love. Nor do you have what it takes to make your future secure, but He does, and He will. All you have to do is get out of His way and lower the shield of worry that attempts to protect you from your Protector.

Imagine you’re walking through a forest with God as your guide. He knows the way perfectly, every step and every obstacle. But still, you whip your head around, looking down every potential path, checking for danger, trying to see around every corner. The more you strive to figure out and control what lies ahead, the more anxious you become. But when you let Him lead, you can finally relax, trusting that He sees what you cannot.