Have you ever heard the cliché ‘Let Go and Let God’? If you’re a Christian or have been involved in church culture at all, you have absolutely heard it before—without a doubt. You can find this catchy slogan painted on coffee cups, upon the backdrop of a scenic picture, on a t-shirt, on bookmarks, bumper stickers, banners and more.
I’m definitely not coming down on Christian clichés; there is certainly truth to them. But the red flag must be raised when one doesn’t know the full meaning behind what it is trying to convey. For instance, have you ever been talking with a friend about some issue, problem, or hardship you are facing, and then they proceed—with genuinely good intentions—to supply you with a cliché as good advice? Sounds good on the surface (maybe?), but what the heck does it even mean after all? Ultimately, clichés—if not fully understood for what they mean to fully represent—are as helpful as applying a Band-Aid to a complex injury. Sure, the patient will need a Band-Aid eventually, but they need much more than that overall.
Similarly, clichés are virtually useless and ill advised if we don’t know the why, how, what, or who behind it. A good portion of the ‘Let Go and Let God’ tagline is based on the presupposition of trusting God. But have you ever been skeptical, and asked why? Why can we trust what God does? Why can we trust who He is? How do we even know? Or, better question, can we know these things?
Pop-church responses to why we can trust God might consist of the following:
“Because God is good and He loves us”
“He wants what is best for us”
“Because God is sovereign”
Those are all true. But how do you know? Like, how do you really know those things? What is the foundational source you are drawing upon in order to inform that knowledge?
Answers that glaze the surface might include:
“Because that’s what I have been taught about God”
“Because I look back over my life and see how God has loved me through my personal experiences”
“Because the Bible says so, and I believe it is true”
To put it bluntly, while all those statements are indeed true, they do not get at the fundamental, basic source that proves to us most clearly that God is good and that He can and should be trusted.
Most of us have been taught that God is good our whole lives but we have never come to know why He is good. If you are at all like me, maybe you have held on to those responses above for most of your life—reasons that are true, but unfortunately do not really provide a solid, motivating reason for why we can really trust Him. If we do not possess a steadfast, insurmountable ‘why’ behind our trusting in God, then we can only conclude that our trust is—in some respects—hollow, blind, and shaky.
Meaning, if our trust in God is not built on a solid, immovable reason, then it will be greatly challenged when we are faced with trying circumstances. For example, what if something painful in your life happens that you can’t explain? If your belief in God’s goodness is primarily based on your past experiences or intellectual admission, what do you do when your present circumstances are anything but good? Is God no longer good and trustworthy? Of course not. However, a trust in God that is primarily warranted because of favorable circumstance in the past will not prove to be a reliable and steadfast motivation for trusting God when you are experiencing unfavorable circumstances in the present. Thus, this specific reason behind trusting in God is ultimately shakable and unstable—vulnerable and subject to circumstance.
Furthermore, if we trust God because we believe he is good and wants what is best for us—but do not know why—then what do we do when something tragic happens? How do we reconcile the two beliefs in the existence of an all-good God and the existence of terrible pain or bleak uncertainty? Mere intellectual admission of God’s goodness without the anchor of why will most always be overturned by the tangible stings of life. Even if we can’t reconcile adverse circumstances and a loving God in our minds, should we just resort to biting the bit and tenaciously holding on with white knuckles deep in our hearts?
I don’t think so. And I don’t think God wants that for us anyways. In fact, in Christ, we have a hope that does not and will not disappoint (Rom. 5:5). God gives us a firm, unconditional reason for why we always can and should trust Him. And that is the gospel. It alone is the unconditional, unshakable source that fully and confidently informs us of why God is always good and able to trusted. The gospel is what we can hold on to when all things seem bleak. Only the gospel is the place where we most clearly see God for who he really is, how he really feels about us, and how he deals with suffering and the sufferer.
Reflecting on the work of Jesus forces us to reinterpret our situation, giving us a reason for why we can truly trust God. For instance: If God died for us by taking our punishment, condemnation, and justice on the cross when we were at our most sinful state, how much more then can we be assured in our suffering, uncertainty, and doubts that God is for us, loves us, and is with us, now that we are his beloved children? If God died in our place when we were completely undeserving and were at enmity with Him, then certainly we can trust Him with anything now that we are his beloved children. The gospel tells us that we can completely trust who he is and what he does because it portrays the clearest demonstration of who he ultimately is and what he ultimately does by pointing us to the cross and resurrection. Through this we know he is good, just, gracious, sacrificial, and humble.
And the implications of this are staggering: We can trust what God does because we can trust who He is. When we can’t know his hand, we can know His heart, which in turn causes us to trust his hand all along. When we can’t exactly decipher the ‘what’ behind our circumstances, we can know the ‘Who’ behind it, which in turn causes us to trust Him with the ‘what’ all along. We can trust God with what we can’t or don’t know because of what we can and do know: his unconditional, steadfast love for us in Christ. God giving us a knowledge of who He is through Jesus is the foundational basis and only fuel that will compel unconditional, persevering, unshakable, and joyful trust in Him. Because of the gospel, God gives us more than a reason to trust Him with everything.
It alone provides us a reason for trust that supersedes circumstance, deepens trite platitudes, fills hollow hearts, and relieves white knuckles. By applying the gospel to our lives, we not only find a solid grounds for why we can truly trust God, but we also find peace in the midst of life’s storms and light in the thick of plaguing uncertainty. Truly, the answer for why we can trust God is because—through the gospel—we can know who God is.
Without the gospel, we could not fully have a reason to trust in God and his goodness. However, we know that God loves us and only has good intentions for us because He did not withhold his own Son from us, but gave him up as a ransom for our sins. And if God didn’t withhold his Son from us, then we can be assured that He is trustworthy and good—even when the circumstances of life are dreary or painful. God shows us who he is when he took upon himself the worst of what we deserved so that we wouldn’t have to endure it. In light of that, every other circumstance can be accepted—not avoided—with a powerful reason to trust in goodness of God.
The gospel is the truest, strongest, firmest truth in the universe, and so it intersects every aspect of life, making it foundationally important in terms of how we understand, perceive, and value everything else. Thus, every situation, hardship, joy, doubt, uncertainty, etc. should be perceived through the filter of and interpreted in light of what God has lovingly done for us in Christ—not in the absence of it. In sum, the gospel alone is the greatest basis, reason, and fuel for our trusting in God.
To bring it full circle, why we ‘let go’ is because of ‘Who’ we trust when we do so. And ‘Who’ we trust gives us more than a reason for why we should ‘let go’ and trust in the first place.
The lyrics to “Cornerstone” by Hillsong United particularly apply here:
When Darkness seems to hide His face
I rest on His unchanging grace
In every high and stormy gale
My anchor holds within the veil
Christ alone; cornerstone
Weak made strong; in the Savior’s love
Through the storm, He is Lord
Lord of all
Even though I can only see the darkness now, I can be comforted by the fact that the sun has not stopped shining, and will eventually poke through the clouds. Thus, by trusting what I know to be true in all circumstances, I am empowered to face any and all temporal circumstances.
