Letting go of our illusion of control is difficult. For more encouragement in learning how to let go and surrender all to God, look through these articles that Just Between Us has put together.

I thought I had my life pretty well under control. My kids were launched, I had enough freelance work to keep me busy, and my husband was starting a new business while working full-time at his “day job.” But when the world shut down and much of the U.S. was under stay-at-home orders, my work virtually dried up, my husband had to take a temporary pay cut, and my children’s careers were put on hold.

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I realized then that my sense of control was an illusion. If a tiny, unseen virus can kill millions of people around the globe, devastate economies, and throw our healthcare system into disarray, then there are forces at work in this world that we have no power over. Thankfully, our God is more powerful than a virus—or any other force for that matter, seen or unseen (Eph. 1:19-21).

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As James wrote in his letter to the early church, “Now listen, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.’ Why you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, ‘If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that’” (Jas. 4:13-15).

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Letting go of my illusion of control is difficult. But being stuck at home for several months, without my usual activities to distract me from the things God wants to teach me, helped me learn to take one day at a time and hold loosely to the things I had previously thought so important in my life—my career, financial security, even my health.

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Even now that the pandemic is, hopefully, receding, I’m still striving, daily, to surrender all to God. Resting in the assurance that my heavenly Father knows my needs and will provide for me, I’m learning to “seek first his kingdom and his righteousness” (Matt. 6:25-34).

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Letting go of control and surrendering all to God may look different for everyone. It may mean saying “yes” to a calling from God that you’ve been resisting. Maybe it means letting go of something in your life that seems good in order to embrace something that God knows is better for you. Perhaps it means putting something or someone into His hands and admitting, for the first time or the 7,563^rd time, that you cannot control that person, situation, addiction—you name it.