What Nobody Tells You About "Just Give It to God"

We say it in church. We say it to each other in hard seasons. We say it to ourselves at 2 a.m. when we cannot sleep.

Give it to God.

It sounds simple, while we continue to wonder why we can't seem to do the one thing everyone keeps telling us to do.

I want to talk about what that phrase actually means, and more importantly, what it doesn't.

What it doesn't mean

Giving something to God does not mean it goes away. This is the first misunderstanding, and it's the one that does the most damage.

When we frame surrender as release, we set people up for a cycle of guilt.

They hand it over in the morning and pick it back up by noon. And because they believe surrender should result in the thing being gone, every time it comes back they feel like they failed.

They didn't fail. They encountered the actual nature of surrender.

It also doesn't mean you stop feeling the weight of it. Paul prayed three times for the thorn in his flesh to be removed. ( 2 Corinthians 12:8-10)

It wasn't.

He gave it to God and still carried it. What changed was not the thorn. What changed was his relationship toward it.

What it actually means

Giving something to God means releasing your grip on the outcome.

Not releasing the circumstance, not releasing the feeling, not pretending the hard thing isn't hard. Releasing your demand that it be resolved the way you need it to.

That is a much more repeatable act than we've made it sound.

You don't give it to God once.

You give it to God every time you notice you've taken it back.

Every morning when the anxiety returns. Every time the fear resurfaces. Every time the grief catches you off guard.

Each of those moments is an act of surrender, and each one counts.

The phrase Philippians 4 actually uses

Paul writes in Philippians 4:6-7: "Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus."

Notice what the promise is.

Not that the situation will change. Not that the feeling will disappear. The promise is peace that transcends understanding.

Which means it doesn't require the situation to be resolved. Nor does it require you to understand how it's going to be okay.

It just requires you to present it to the God who knows all things, again and again. However many times it takes.

That is giving it to God. Not a one-time transaction. A repeated practice of presenting what you're carrying to the One who can actually hold it.

What to say instead

So the next time someone is in a hard season, and you want to tell them to give it to God, here's a more honest version:

"You're going to need to keep handing this back. Probably every day, maybe more. You’re not failure. That's what surrender actually looks like."

It's less tidy, but it’s true. And the people in your life who are struggling need truth more than they need tidy.

If you want to go deeper into where surrender shows up across every area of your life, the Circle of Obedience assessment was built for exactly that.