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Relinquishment

This is giving up our right to something we feel we deserve. It can also be the act of giving up someone we may have taken responsibility for protecting or enabling. Relinquishment encompasses three distinct actions:

• To loosen one’s hold on something or someone.
• To surrender a right.       
• To put aside a plan.

Relinquishment is not a familiar term for most of us. In its simplest sense, it is “letting go.” For those of us who have grown up in the church, it is the biblical concept of “dying to ourselves.” Christians also give the advice to “just give your problems to God.” These are both means of relinquishment. Experience has shown, however, that most of us aren’t sure what “letting go,” “dying to ourselves,” or “giving our problems to God” really means, and the application of these processes has not really taken place in most of our lives.

The saying “Let go and let God” has become a familiar phrase in the church. Anyone who is truly able to do this has learned relinquishment. The real sin that hinders relinquishment is our unbelief. It is the act of taking things out of God’s control and attempting to bring about desired results in our own way and according to our own time frame. Even Abraham struggled with relinquishment by taking matters into his own hands and conceiving a son with the servant Hagar. Everything we try to accomplish in the flesh by manipulation and control will only make the situation worse. Stop it! Look at all the negative consequences experienced by Abraham and the descendants of Isaac—the child of the promise—brought about by the birth of Ishmael and then his descendants.

The mother of a young man addicted to drugs took our class many years ago. She knew he was going to kill himself if something didn’t change. After learning about relinquishment, she fell to her knees and repented. While she was praying, she received a vision from the Lord. In the vision, she was holding on to her son by one hand while he hung over the side of a bridge. The Lord was standing at the bottom, telling her to let go of her son. She argued, “But Lord, if I let him go, he will fall to his death.”

Again, Jesus said, “Anna, let him go.” Eventually she let go.

As she released her son’s hand, she said to the Lord, “I can’t save him. Only You can.”

This vision happened a few days before Christmas. Her son came to her house on Christmas Day. She asked her son’s forgiveness for trying to control him and for not treating him as an adult. She said, “Robert, I prayed for you, and I released control of your life into the Lord’s hands.”

He stopped her and asked, “When did you do that?”

“Monday,” she responded.

“What time?”

“About ten o’clock,” she said.

“Mom, I am free. That is when Jesus revealed Himself to me. My addiction is gone.”

Robert married the girl he was dating. The last we heard, they have a child, and he is doing well, maintaining a steady job.

Relinquishing a Relationship

If we have lost relationship with someone, we may need to let them go. Loss of relationship can happen through a break between people or life circumstances such as a close friend moving to another state or even dying. Friendships fall apart, families move away, relationships break up, and loved ones pass on. Bondage comes when we hold on to the rights to these relationships in our hearts and refuse to release them.

Example 1: A child may have difficulty releasing the right to always having her biological father with her. The father may have even abandoned his biological children and chose to spend all his time with his new stepfamily. The biological children might carry resentment for this type of offense well into their adult lives. One option for healing, which brings incredible freedom, is releasing one’s father to the other family and giving up one’s right to the relationship.

Example 2: We may need to grieve over the loss of a friendship. Sometimes life circumstances cause us to say good-bye to friends for what turns out to be the rest of our lives. It can be very helpful to pray and release those relationships to the Lord. Otherwise, we could feel a sense of loss well into the future and not understand why. This kind of loss could affect relationships in the present, causing us to remain distant or to fear getting too close.

I experienced such a loss and did not realize it until several years later. As my wife and I were driving down the highway near our home, an empty feeling came over me. It was a combination of both grief and feeling homesick. I soon realized that my feelings concerned Bruce and Trevor, young men we had spent several months working with in missions. We had become very close during that time. In fact, they were like family to us. When our outreach was finished and we all went our separate ways to new commitments, we said our good-byes and flew to different parts of the world. Then, several years later, I was experiencing the loss of those relationships. I needed to allow myself to grieve over that loss. When we got home, I called some co-workers in our ministry and asked if they could do some ministry with me. They assisted me in praying through this loss and releasing Bruce and Trevor to the Lord.

This grieving is probably a more natural process for women. When women experience a loss like this, they are much more likely to cry and grieve. Men are not so quick to do this. We just get on the plane and leave.

Example 3: Close family members who have died. It can be very difficult to release these people to the hands of God. The final stage of a healthy grieving process is letting them go, which can seem almost impossible at times. We must, though, or the burden will eventually become more than we can bear. For us to be healthy, we must release them to God, so He can take care of them, and we can be free. A twin can feel an incredible burden if the other has died. The surviving twin may eventually also release this sibling to God.

Example 4: Experiencing a miscarriage, a child being stillborn, or an abortion. We must release these children and be free of any guilt we may feel. Many times, the mother will blame herself for miscarriages or children who are stillborn. Sometimes, women can even believe it is God’s way of punishing them for something. Release the child and be free. Jesus came to earth that we might be set free from all bondage. In the case of abortion, confess the sin, and accept forgiveness. The sin is not unforgivable. Jesus died for that sin also. We can experience real peace by releasing these children and be free of any guilt we may feel, allowing time for the grieving process to run its healthy course. After a healthy period of grieving, walk in the freedom Jesus accomplished for you on the cross.

Redemption from a Broken Relationship

Seekers can take time to consider who they might be hanging on to, taking responsibility for, or even expecting a response from in a relationship that is not happening. They can go to God in prayer and release the other person—or the child— into God’s hands. The seeker may need to give up the right to this relationship that’s over. Sometimes we put so much value in a relationship that it crosses over into idolatry. This could cause a person to feel valueless without the relationship.

Relinquishing Control and Responsibility

Another area of relinquishment is to release control of—or responsibility for—another person who may not be meeting our standards of living in a way we approve of. (A common occurrence within the relationship of parents and adult children.) It is common for some to accept responsibility for another person’s behavior, choices, or life decisions. Many times, when someone does this, they are not respecting the person as an individual, and we are often unknowingly enabling them to continue in their wrong choices. (Bailing out financially, rescuing, etc.)

When we assume this position in a relationship, we are not trusting God is there for this person. In fact, if we are enabling, we are interfering with God by preventing the other from experiencing the consequences of his or her behavior or decisions. We are also committing a sin of unbelief and attempting to take the place of Christ as someone else’s savior. We are not their savior; they already have a Savior. It would be more effective to allow them to both accept and submit to His authority. The hard truth is you can’t help someone that doesn’t want help. That is why relinquishment is your only healthy choice.

Sometimes, the person making poor life choices is trying to escape from the control. Controlling parents can be the driving force behind the very behavior they want to prevent. By exerting inappropriate control and responsibility for a child’s choices, a parent is reinforcing the child’s feeling of not being good enough or unable to handle the circumstances of life. The child will feel more controlled and more stressed. The parent in such cases is negatively affecting the child’s self-worth and limiting what God can do in the child’s life.

Life was Out of Control

Many came from a home where life was out of control. Some are products of an alcoholic home. Some come from an environment of anger, rage, and forms of abuse. As children they try to avoid any wrongdoing that might cause a grenade to go off in the home. When meeting with these adult children many have described their home life was like living in a mine field. These adult children attempt to control their environment at home, in the workplace and most family relationships.  

They have a fear of being out of control, this fear causes them to have unhealthy boundaries with others. This need to make things right will invariably push others away, because no one likes to be controlled.

Because of this life experience relinquishing control is a challenging. People from this circumstance must deal with the issues in their past, forgiving and giving up control of the many times in their early years when life was out of control. Ask God to bring peace where insecurity has been most of their lives.

Relinquishing is Not Abandonment

Relinquishing is giving someone up; abandonment is giving up on someone. When we let go of someone we love, we stop taking responsibility for them, but we don’t stop fulfilling our responsibility to them. We can relinquish by not rescuing a person from consequences (legal or financial) but continue to support them spiritually and emotionally. We can cease trying to control, condemn, and enable them while maintaining a loving relationship of compassion, empathy, and communication.

When you can release someone into God’s care, you are set free from inappropriate responsibility, the associated guilt, and the emotional roller coaster that accompanies the attempt to control something that in the end is beyond your control. The act of letting someone go brings freedom for both of you.

Relinquishing our Rights

Society will continually tell us all about our rights. Television ads tell us about our rights. Credit card companies tell us about all the things we deserve. The world tells us we are entitled to this, and we are destined for that. The truth is that, thankfully, no Christian will get what we truly deserve. Praise God. When we hold on to rights, we believe we deserved, it keeps us either stuck in the past or stuck in unmet expectations of the future—both of which end up bringing us grief.

When determining whether we are in bondage of this type, we should examine the “if onlys” in our lives. “If onlys” are impossible and illogical demands of the past or the future, placed on either others or us while in the present. These wishful obsessions deny reality as it is now, and they are one of the most effective tools the enemy uses to prevent us from functioning rationally.

“If Onlys” of the Past

I once asked a woman if she could give up the right to have had a normal childhood. She responded indignantly with her hands on her hips. “Didn’t I deserve a normal childhood?” she asked. “That was certainly God’s intention,” I replied, “but you aren’t going to get another childhood.”

As soon as we relinquish the right to that normal childhood God intended for us to have, He can bring His healing and “reparent”us Himself. When we deal with where we came from and release those “If Onlys”, we begin to see that where we came from does not have to be who we are. Scripture promises us that if we have put our faith in Jesus, we are new creations; the old is gone, and we are to put on our new selves. It’s true; we only must believe.

“If only I had a different father or mother ….” “If only I had someone to love me ….” “If only I could have gone to college ….” “If only my parents hadn’t gotten divorced ….” “If only I’d had a normal childhood ….”

We all have needs as children. Wounds of injustice are devastating. No one should deny these truths, but we are not powerless or without hope. Regardless of what happened in the past, God is willing and able to heal us. Continuous focus on the past can become idolatry, which enslaves us in self-pity, anger, and depression. What good does it bring if we become stuck in the notion that “life” still owes us something? Unfortunately, life can never pay us back. We can’t be born into another family. We can’t change even what happened one second ago. Nor can we change what was done to us. What we do have the power to change—and control— is how we respond to these things.

We are all well-served to consider our situation both in faith and with logic. God tells us in Scripture that He fashioned us in the womb and that all our days were known to Him before the world began. If this is true, it logically follows that God not only chose our parents but was well-aware of the environment we were being born into. He has had a plan for our redemption since long before our parents, or grandparents, were even conceived.

Relinquishment is very closely related to forgiveness and is an integral component of the forgiving process. We have only truly forgiven when we have given up a right as it is described in one of the forms of relinquishment. Let us, for a moment, revisit the woman spoken of earlier who was a survivor of incest. She believed her father owed her respect, shoes without holes for school, love, and many other things. Her father had been dead for years, but he was still controlling her from the grave because of the resentment she harbored toward him. Her childhood was stolen when her brothers were given permission to practice sex with her and her sister. Eventually, through much painful work, she relinquished every one of her childhood rights. We prayed through each one and gave up the right to a normal childhood. After receiving her own healing, she began to help others and share God’s love in several different ministries.

“If Onlys” of the Future

“If only I were married ….” “If only I could have my own business ….” “If only I could win the lottery ….” “If only I could have children ….”

These are all identity issues: “If only I could have _______, I would be complete.” The fundamental problem with looking for completion outside ourselves is that when we put our own happiness in someone else’s hands, we are doomed to disappointment. Our true wholeness can only come from God. We can ask God for a healthy perspective, keeping those things first which deserve to be first. When we can relinquish the unrealized future, we can be content in the present. Success is something that can come to us, but success can never become our identity.