Daniel 4:34-35 "But at the end of that period, I, Nebuchadnezzar, raised my eyes toward heaven and my reason returned to me, and I blessed the Most High and praised and honored Him who lives forever; For His dominion is an everlasting dominion, And His kingdom endures from generation to generation. "All the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing, But He does according to His will in the host of heaven And among the inhabitants of earth; And no one can ward off His hand Or say to Him, 'What have You done?'
The Lord did amazing miracles through Jesus on earth. Here is one in the Old Testament before Jesus came: With a single trial God changed Nebuchadnezzar from a proud, rich, exalted, unbelieving king on earth into a humble man of faith who surrendered everything to God, letting go of everything he had before, and exalting God in His rightful place.
It's a difficult thing to do - to "let go" of everything for the sake of the Lord. It takes a humbling, a choice of our self-will, a dying to self, and in many times a trial.
I know man who is not a believer, who some years ago was going through a really deep struggle for a season. He came to such a point of an end of himself that he told me, essentially, “I’m just letting go. I can’t control it anymore and I’m tired of trying to.” That's how he tried to handle his situation that was out of control. It was his way of "letting go."
As a Christian, I’ve often felt the word from God to my heart, a similar word - that I need to “surrender”, “let go”. To 'let go' of my self-will, to 'let go' of my desires, to 'let go' expectations of what I think needs to happen, to 'let go' of my point of view and my opinions which come from my own reasoning, to 'let go' of my preferences, and ambitions that come from my own flesh's desire.
But I saw that there should be a drastic difference between the way a Christian "Lets go" and surrenders, and the way the world does. What’s the difference between the “surrender” of the world, and the surrender of a Christian? What’s the difference between the way an unbelieving man “lets go” in a deep, painful struggle, versus someone who trusts in the Lord who “lets go” and dies to themselves?
The way I understand it, two things should be different about me when I "Let go" (and for us who love Jesus, we understand it to mean to "die to self")
1. The first thing is: HOPE. The dying to self of the world is a hopelessness that says, "I don’t care about the consequences because the burden is too much to bear. I’m just going to stop controlling and take whatever consequences come with it."
There’s word in the English language called “apathy.” Apathy means deciding to not care about anything. It’s choosing to have a careless attitude and disregarding the consequences. Whatever consequences come, it is not worth the "caring" about it. This is how the unbeliever has to handle things to try to obtain peace if they cannot control something, because if God does not exist, then there’s no promise or control that anything will work for good. If there is no God, then it's basically up to “chance” whether things work out, and after some time they will see that “chance” will let them down. Many times even as Christians we may even be tempted to obtain this false-peace without God. I've tried it myself and discovered is a terrible, terrible way to go about trying to get peace, and it also doesn't glorify God because it's leaning on my own method to solve my anxiety rather than Him.
But the Christian full of faith has hope and faith in God! That’s the difference, we’re not giving up. Instead, we decide to look to God for the provision (and decision on what happens!) rather than giving up.
"Without God" says, “I’m letting go, and I don’t know what will happen. But I'm tired of caring about it.”
"With God" says, “I’m letting go, and transferring the responsibility to God to handle, trusting He will work things out right. It's up to Him to decide. He can take away, and He can give (Job 1:21). It's all for Him and up to Him from now on.”
2. The second thing is ACTION. The second thing is, as a Christian, it’s not that we stop working altogether when we “let go and surrender.” Letting go and dying to self does not mean that we do nothing. It means we stop doing all the things that we were doing to try and control things before in our own power. This time we only follow the leading of the Holy Spirit. If we have a burden for something, we may be doing 10 things to try to guarantee an outcome, or to fix some problem. Maybe 8 of those ideas were of my own self and thought and reasoning, and only 2 of them were being led by the Spirit and from God. Dying to self and letting go and surrendering means not doing the 8 (if we’ve sought the Lord and confirmed they are not of Him), and only doing the 2 that the Holy Spirit was leading me to, and trusting God with faith that He will do the work if I just obey the 2 little things He was telling me to do. Because my faith was resting in my 8 actions before - those 8 things that I was trying to do to control the situation, it wasn’t really firm in God.
One real-world example: One time I lost peace with someone through some argument. I tried and failed to fix the issue with long conversations and “good points” which I felt I needed to argue with that person. I wanted to 'change their mind' and restore peace, or push them in the direction I think I needed to go. But instead, God told me to stop all that and He gave me a Word; “Instead of arguing your view, just stay quiet and do this one thing: apologize. Don’t argue, just say you’re sorry.” So I did. And wow! What I couldn’t accomplish with all of my manipulating, God did with a single Word. I had to stop the 100 things I was arguing and obey the 1 word God gave. Then it was done. But I had to be listening to Him, and also to trust Him enough to “let go” and stop arguing with all of my own reasonings and control.
That's just an example. But the principle is always true: "Trust and obey... there's no other way."
So those two things: 1. trust and hope in God to do the work, and 2. to only obey the leading of the Holy Spirit now to act in the situation, not my own reasoning and clever ideas. The letting go of the world is putting a band-aid on cancer. But the “letting go” of a Christian allows the Lord to work amazing things, where no one gets the credit but Him.
“You are the God who works wonders; You have made known Your strength among the peoples.” Psalms 77:14 NASB