‘Let Go and Let God’: Is It Biblical?

Question 4067.

Few slogans have travelled further or faster through Christian circles than let go and let God, and I am regularly asked whether it is actually biblical or just a comforting piece of folk wisdom. My honest answer is that it is a half-truth, and half-truths are slippery, dangerous things, because the half that is true makes the half that is false sound thoroughly respectable.

So let me handle this carefully and fairly. I want to honour what is genuinely right in let go and let God, because there really is something right in it that I would not lose for anything. And then I want to expose plainly what is wrong with it, because taken as a whole philosophy of the Christian life it can do real and lasting damage. Stay with me on this, because it touches directly how you fight your sin every single day of your life.

Where the slogan comes from

The phrase let go and let God grew out of a particular strand of teaching, often called the higher life or Keswick teaching, which arose as a reaction against a Christianity of grim, joyless self-effort. That reaction had a real point to it, and I will not pretend otherwise. Plenty of sincere believers were trying to sanctify themselves by sheer willpower and white knuckles, and they were quietly burning out under the strain. Into that exhaustion came the message, stop your striving, surrender it all, and simply let God do the work.

I genuinely understand the appeal, and I feel it myself. If you have been wearing yourself out trying to be good in your own strength, then let go and let God sounds like cool water on a hot day. And there really is cool water in it. The trouble is not the rest it offers; the trouble is what else got quietly smuggled in alongside that rest, namely the idea that the believer’s part in all this is essentially passive, that I am to do little or nothing and simply wait.

The true half of let go and let God

Let me give the slogan its full due, because it deserves it. There is a genuine letting go right at the heart of the gospel. I cannot save myself, I cannot sanctify myself by raw effort, and the harder I strain to be holy without depending on the Spirit, the more I simply prove that I am still secretly trusting in myself. So there is a real surrender involved, a real resting in God’s finished and ongoing work rather than in my own performance and resolve. That much is bedrock truth.

Jesus Himself said, come to me, all who labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest (Matthew 11:28). Paul himself said that it is God who works in you. So if let go and let God means stop trusting your own strength and start leaning hard on the Spirit, then yes, a thousand times over, yes. That much is not only true but gloriously, liberatingly true, and many a worn-out believer has been set free by rediscovering it. I would never want to take that half away from you.

Where let go and let God goes badly wrong

But here is where the slogan goes badly off the rails. If let go and let God comes to mean that the believer becomes essentially passive, that I simply step back, fold my arms, and wait for God to live the Christian life through me without any active effort on my part, then it collapses entirely under the weight of the New Testament. The Bible is absolutely full of strenuous, sweating verbs aimed squarely at me. Fight the good fight. Run the race. Put to death the deeds of the body. Strive to enter. Make every effort. Press on.

Paul does not say, work out your own salvation by relaxing and waiting. He says, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, and then gives the reason, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work (Philippians 2:12-13). God’s working is the very ground and reason for my working, not the replacement of it. The same Spirit who gives me rest also rouses me to action. Surrender and effort are not rivals here; they are partners working together. To pit them against each other is to misread the whole Christian life.

A picture that sets it right

Think for a moment of a sailing boat out on the sea. The sailor does not row that boat across the water by his own muscle and sweat; he depends utterly on a wind that he did not make and cannot command or summon at will. In that real sense he lets go, and he must. But notice that he is anything but passive while he does it. He hoists the sails, he trims them constantly, he holds the tiller, he reads the weather and the water, and he works hard the whole time precisely so that he can catch the wind that does all the actual driving.

That is the Christian life to the very life. The Spirit is the wind, and every ounce of the real power is His and His alone. But I am the sailor, and I am called to be busy setting the sails of obedience, prayer and the Word so that His power can move me where He wills. So let go of your own strength, yes, with both hands; but for the love of God do not let go of the rope. The believer who lets go of the rope does not sail; he simply drifts wherever the current happens to take him.

Why this matters so much

I am not splitting fine hairs here for the sake of it. I have watched the passive version of this teaching leave believers spiritually limp and useless, forever waiting for some special feeling of surrender to wash over them before they will obey a plain command, treating clear instructions as optional until God overwhelms their reluctant will. That is not rest at all; it is paralysis dressed up in the language of piety. And worst of all, it leaves sin completely un-fought, because putting sin to death is something Scripture explicitly tells me to do, actively, by the Spirit (Romans 8:13).

The healthy, growing believer holds the two halves firmly together at once. I depend utterly and entirely on the Spirit, and therefore, not instead, I get up and obey. I expect nothing whatever from my own native strength, and at the very same time I throw my whole will and energy into the fight. You can see this same balance worked out from another angle in my answer on walking by the Spirit, which is the Bible’s own way of describing this partnership.

Holding rest and effort together

If there is one thing I would have you carry away, it is that the gospel never asks you to choose between resting in God and labouring hard for Him. The whole error of the passive reading of let go and let God is that it forces a choice the Bible never makes. Paul could say in the same breath that he worked harder than any of the apostles, and then immediately add, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me (1 Corinthians 15:10). Hard work and total dependence, side by side, in one sentence.

So do not let anyone sell you a version of let go and let God that quietly cancels your obedience. Rest your whole weight on the Spirit, and then, leaning on Him, get up and run. The deepest rest is not the rest of doing nothing; it is the rest of no longer trusting yourself, even while you strive with all your might. Learn to work from God’s acceptance rather than for it, and you will have found the true half of the slogan without its dangerous tail.

So, now what?

If let go and let God has genuinely helped you stop trusting in your own willpower, then hold on to that with all your might. Keep depending moment by moment on the Spirit, because in your own strength you really and truly can do nothing of any lasting worth. That part is pure gospel, and you must never, ever lose it or let anyone talk you out of it.

But do not let the slogan talk you onto the sofa to wait for a feeling. Hoist your sails tomorrow morning. Open the Word, put the besetting sin to death, run the race that is set before you, and do every bit of it leaning hard on the Spirit who supplies all the power. Rest in God and work like mad, both at the very same time and without contradiction. So which half of that have you been quietly neglecting lately?

“Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.” Philippians 2:12-13