When we lose sight of who we are, anxiety often increases because we no longer have a solid foundation beneath us. But sometimes the real challenge is not knowing what to do. It’s surrendering the outcome.
Taking action feels much easier when we believe we can predict the results. Confidence comes naturally when success seems likely and the risks appear manageable. We prefer situations where we feel in control because control gives us the illusion of certainty.
As adults, we have far more influence over our lives than we did as children. When we’re hungry, we can walk to the refrigerator. If there’s no food in the house, we can drive to the store. We don’t have to sit helplessly and wait for someone else to care for us.
And that’s a good thing.
Part of maturity is developing agency—the ability to make decisions, take action, and steward the life God has given us. Scripture never calls us to passive resignation. We are meant to cultivate, build, create, lead, and serve.
But agency is not the same thing as control. And this is where many of us get stuck.
God has given us the freedom to act, but He has not given us the power to determine every outcome. We can choose our actions, but we cannot guarantee the results. Every meaningful act of obedience therefore requires faith.
Faith requires us to trust a God who refuses to be managed, tamed, or otherwise placed in our box of predictable and safe outcomes.
Consider Abraham.
When God asked him to sacrifice Isaac, Abraham did not know how the story would end. He only knew what faithfulness required in that moment. The writer of Hebrews tells us that Abraham trusted God’s promises so deeply that he reasoned God could even raise Isaac from the dead if necessary.
Abraham was willing to surrender what he loved most because he trusted the One who had given it to him. But before Isaac was returned, Abraham first had to loosen his grip.
The same is true for us today.
Anxiety often gets the best of us when we become attached to a particular outcome. We imagine losing something we love—a relationship, our health, our reputation, our financial security—and so we scramble to regain control.
We tell ourselves that if we can just manage things well enough, think hard enough, or prepare thoroughly enough, we can prevent pain and guarantee success.
Yet much of life remains outside our control.
Health fails.
Relationships break.
Plans unravel.
Unexpected losses come.
In those moments, fair-weather faith is exposed. We discover whether we trust God only when life is going our way or whether we trust Him when the future feels uncertain.
This does not mean denying the stress that uncertainty creates. Nor does it mean becoming passive and refusing to act.
Faith is not passivity.
Faith acts.
Faith plans.
Faith prepares.
Faith takes responsibility.
But faith also releases what it cannot control.
Like Abraham, we are called to place what we love back into God’s hands. Often the sacrifice God asks of us is not the thing itself but our insistence on controlling it. And when we surrender control, something remarkable happens.
We discover freedom.
The exhausting burden of trying to manage every outcome begins to lift. We remain fully engaged in our lives, but we are no longer driven by fear. We act responsibly while entrusting the results to God.
This is the paradox of faith:
The tighter we cling, the more anxious we become.
The more we trust, the freer we are.
When we release our need for control, anxiety begins to lose its grip. We learn to live within a larger story—one in which God remains faithful even when life unfolds differently than we expected.
And that kind of trust produces a peace that control never could.
