I recently had a big decision to make. I was confident I was following the “right” path. I had consistent confirmations I was headed in the right direction. I was faced with no hesitations or cautions…so when the first warning light flashed, it was blinding and disorienting.

Had I heard wrong? Was I completely off track? What was I supposed to do now?

“Give it to God, and ask him not to give it back to you until he’s done with it.”

I greatly respect the man who gave me the advice. He shared a personal, convicting experience with me. I was confident God was using him to guide me through the next step.

You see, I was trying to reason through the situation, making sense of it. Reason isn’t a bad thing. God created us as thinking beings – we’re created in his image, and he’s an organized thinker – but I can take it to an extreme. When my God-given capacity to think draws me away from God instead of pulling me toward him, what he gave me as a strength becomes a weakness. I was trying to make sense of something that God wanted me to rely on him through. He wanted me to rest in him.

I did.

I gave the situation to God and asked him not to give it back to me until he was done with it.

A couple days later, he handed it back to me. Done.

It wasn’t the outcome I would have expected based on the prior months. It didn’t make sense. It wasn’t consistent with what I’d experienced. But I knew…it was done. I said no to something I thought I’d say yes to, and while I wrestled with it a few days earlier, struggling to make sense of it so all the pieces fit the way I expected them to fit, I was at peace. All the pieces fit – not in a way I could explain or even understand, but in a way I could trust.

God is reliable. He is trustworthy. He is compassionate. He is just. He is good.

I’m not recommending this approach to you as a cop-out. Don’t try to give something to God, expecting him to give it back to you in a neat box, when you’re actually hanging onto it the whole time. If you’re going to surrender something to him, you’re going to need to completely relinquish it. And you’re going to need to accept what he gives you in return. It might not be a beautiful box tied neatly with a bright bow. You might not “get it.”

Getting it isn’t the goal. Getting God is.

Lord, I trust you. I have said, “You are my God.” Psalm 31:14