Hold it at Four: Learning to Loosen the Grip

After playing tennis the other day, my hand was hurting. I mentioned it to my tennis coach and she said, “When we play harder players, we try to hold our racquet tighter, so the racquet does not go flying.” I thought I was going to need some hand-strength training! But to my surprise, she asked me to “hold the racquet at a four” and adjusted my form to ensure solid hits without killing my hand.

What does this have to do our spiritual growth? Everything!

Solid Hits

In life we are given some solid hits (pun intended!). It may be through broken relationships, shattered dreams, sickness, and much more. We try to hold so tightly to what we believe will keep the relationship from failing, the dream alive, and the sickness at bay.  But gripping harder will only hurt us.

Jesus desires us to “be still and know” that he is God (Psalm 46:10). He wants us to release our grip on fighting so he can fight for us (Ex. 14:14). Yet, in our limited humanity, we try to hold on tighter because of a host of reasons: we’ve been taught to do that, we feel we have no option but to hold tight, and/or letting go frightens us. However, the harder we try to hold on, the wearier, strained, hopeless, and heart-broken we may become.

When we learn to loosen our grip and release what needs to be released, we open the opportunity for God to give us a peace that surpasses all understanding (Phil. 4:7), rest for our weariness (Matthew 11:28), and hope that overflows (Romans 15:13). And it is within that sacred act of surrender that we begin to rediscover what it means to be held, not by holding so tightly to everything, but by the steady, faithful presence of God.

Three ways to Loosen the Grip

1)        Trust

Many times our gripping is related to our understanding. We feel if we had all the information, all the understanding, then we could surely let go, right? However, if we rely on our own understanding, our own need for things to make sense, we may never have enough to let go of what we are holding on to.

Proverbs 3:5-6 directs us to “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your understanding; in all your ways submit to him…” (emphasis mine). God does not call us to understand first; he calls us to trust him first. Furthermore, he does not require us to understand anything before we submit to him. In fact, we are told to not lean on our own understanding. This is beyond hard in your human capacity. We want things to make sense, and when we can make sense of it, then we will loosen the grip. But this is not God’s way. His ways are higher than ours. We are called to trust and when we trust in him, we gain the strength to loosen our grip.

 2)        Grieve

Another component to loosening the group appears an odd one: grieving. However, grieving is often necessary to release what we hold tightly to. Maybe we are holding onto vengeance, relationships, jobs, dreams, or versions of life we thought would unfold differently—yet God is calling us to surrender.

To surrender is not to pretend it (whatever we are holding on to) didn’t matter. In fact, surrender requires us to acknowledge that the things do matter. In our surrender we sit with the weight of what we are giving up. However, grief becomes the sacred space where we loosen our grip—not by force, but by submission.

As we grieve, we release what we’ve gripped for so long. We trust that God will do what only he can and that He is not asking us to let go without purpose. He meets us in the surrender—gently reminding us that what we release into His hands is never wasted.

3)        Strength

As we have explored, we need strength to loosen our grip and/or to fully let go. In our humanity, we want to know that outcomes before we let go. But that is not trust. God wants us to actively submit to him so we learn that strength does not come from death gripping our lives; rather, it comes from resting and submitting to him.

And God does not take this submission lightly. He knows what it means to let go of what he held so dearly: his son. Jesus, who could have saved himself from the cross, chose to let go and submit to the Father, chose death on the cross for our sins. Oh, but the day of rejoicing for such acts came as he conquered death and hell!

That same power that rose Jesus from the grave, that made the lame to walk and the blind to see, lives in us. That strength is what leads to say, “Your will be done” (Matthew 6:10).

Final Thoughts

We will have solid hits that come our way. The enemy roams the land “seeking whom he may devour” (1 Peter 5:8). He wants the hits to keep coming and for us to have a death grip on things so that God is our last choice, not our first. However, we can do all things through Christ, who gives us strength, even the strength to let go (Phil. 4:13). We are the apple of His eye (Psalm 17:8), and we can trust, even though we may grieve, that he “is the strength of my heart, and my portion forever (Psalm 73:26).