Let go and let God?

In a recent sermon on Isaiah 33, the main point was that we should not put all our reliance on earthly solutions to earthly problems. Judah was facing a military problem, and they sought a military solution by calling on Egypt to help them. What they did not do is pray, seek the prophet, or go to the law for help; the law did state clearly not to rely on Egypt! An application for us today was that we are also slow to pray and quick to look for practical solutions to what we face, and we need to trust God more.

This generated some questions from a few different people around a similar theme: does this mean that we should ‘let go and let God’, as it is sometimes put? That instead of doing anything ourselves, we should just hand our problem over to God in prayer, and then we can let God sort it out while we don’t do anything?

Although this sounds very holy, it does not line up with what we see in the Bible. For example, the people of Israel needed to trust God when they conquered the land of Canaan. The people were more powerful than they were, and they were scared. Yet, they trusted God, and they went on to fight. And they won because God made them win. They still fought, got their hands bloody, and were covered in mud. They trusted and acted in line with what God wanted. They didn’t just sit back.

Or, to use a New Testament example, the apostle Paul believed in the sovereignty of God, that God was in control of all things, including people coming to faith. Yet he worked with all his might to spread the gospel and persuade people. Trusting in God’s control didn’t mean he didn’t work at all; it meant he worked hard, and with confidence, trusting God for the outcome.

Or, to come at it a different way, think of the parable of the talents. Each of the servants was entrusted with great riches to look after until their master returned. They were commended not just for trusting he would come back and burying it, but for getting on with working with it for the master’s best interests in his absence.

We cannot just sit back. Trusting God means that when we face a problem, we pray first. We seek what God says in the Bible about our situation, and we seek godly counsel from mature Christians. And then we act in line with what seems wise based on God’s revelation. So, if we lose our jobs, we thank God for our past job, pray for God to provide, and we also apply for suitable work. If we face bullying at school, we pray for self-control and patience, we seek God’s will in his word that speaks of turning the other cheek and our great worth in God’s sight, and we strive to live a godly life in a difficult situation. Just sitting back and waiting for God to solve our problems without our input sounds holy but is, in fact, lazy.

God wants us to use our wisdom to serve him well. That will include prayer, for sure, and knowing God’s word well. We need to trust God and also get on with living a godly life.