“Let Go and Let God” Isn’t a Verse — Here Are the 12 Scriptures It’s Actually Made Of

By Hayley Louisa Mark

There’s a particular warmth that climbs the back of your neck when you’ve typed something into the search bar three times, each time more carefully, and the answer still won’t come. You wanted the reference. Book, chapter, verse. You were going to write it on a card for someone, or paint it on a little board for the windowsill, or — and you wouldn’t say this out loud — get it somewhere on your skin where you’d see it every day. And the whole time, underneath the searching, there was a small thin voice asking: what if this isn’t actually in there?

I want to answer you gently and right away, because you came looking for the truth and you deserve it before anything else.

Is there a “let go and let God” verse? The honest answer, first

“Let go and let God” is not a verse in the Bible. You won’t find that phrase in the King James, or in any translation, because it isn’t a quotation — it’s a faith-summary. It seems to have come out of early twentieth-century devotional and recovery circles, a kind of folk-shorthand people made to hold a much larger idea in four small words. So if you went looking and couldn’t find the reference, you weren’t failing. There was nothing there to find. The phrase is real and the comfort in it is real; it just isn’t Scripture itself.

But here is the part that makes the search worth it. The phrase didn’t come from nowhere. It’s a distillation — four words pressed down out of at least a dozen real scriptures, the way a whole bottle of oil gets pressed from a hillside of olives. Below are the twelve the phrase is actually made of, in the King James, with what each one truly says. Any of these is something you can put on a card, a board, or — yes — your wrist, because each one is genuinely in the Book.

The short answer: There is no let go and let God verse in the Bible — the phrase is a modern faith-summary, not a quotation. The idea it carries is drawn from real scriptures such as Psalm 46:10 (“Be still, and know that I am God”), 1 Peter 5:7 (“Casting all your care upon him”), and Proverbs 3:5–6 (“Trust in the LORD with all thine heart”). If you want a reference to keep, choose one of those — they are in the Bible; the four-word phrase is not.

A note before the list: I’ve put a small jump menu below so you can go straight to the one you need. And I’ve kept the Hebrew and Greek light and hedged — I’m a journal-keeper, not a scholar, so read those as a candle, not a floodlight.

Jump to the scripture you came for

1. Psalm 46:10

“Be still, and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth.”

If “let go and let God” has a single source, this is it. The Hebrew behind be still is often given as raphah — and I hold this loosely, the way you’d hold a borrowed thing — but it carries the sense of let drop, slacken, cease your striving. Not collapse. Not giving up. More like un-gripping. That is exactly the motion the folk phrase is reaching for, just done in older and steadier language.

Body practice: Let your jaw fall open a finger’s width — not a yawn, just unhinged — and let the next breath leave on its own without your help. That small slackening is the verse.

A short prayer: Lord, You are God and I am not. Teach my hands what stillness means.

2. 1 Peter 5:7

“Casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you.”

Here is the “let God” half of the phrase, named outright. The Greek for casting suggests a throwing-onto, the way you’d sling a heavy pack off your own shoulders onto a cart that can actually carry it. And notice the reason given: for he careth for you. You’re not throwing your worry into the dark. You’re handing it to Someone who was already paying attention.

Body practice: Cup both hands in your lap, palms up and open, and name one care out loud as if setting a stone into them. Then turn your palms over and let it fall.

A short prayer: I am giving You this one thing, because You already care about it more than I do.

3. Proverbs 3:5–6

“Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.”

This is the planner’s verse, and it’s where “let go and let God” gets its backbone. Lean not unto thine own understanding doesn’t mean stop thinking — it means stop putting all your weight on your own thinking, the way you’d stop leaning on a fence rail you weren’t sure would hold. Trust gets the full weight instead.

Body practice: Press one palm flat against a wall and lean into it; feel how much weight you’re trusting it to take. Now step back and let your own spine hold you, and let that be the picture of where your trust goes.

A short prayer: Where I cannot see the path, I will not pretend I can. Direct it, Lord.

4. Psalm 55:22

“Cast thy burden upon the LORD, and he shall sustain thee: he shall never suffer the righteous to be moved.”

Almost a twin to 1 Peter, but older and more weathered — David wrote it in betrayal, not in calm. He shall sustain thee is the promise that makes the casting safe: you don’t go light and then totter; you go light and then get held up.

Body practice: Sit back fully into your chair until it takes your whole weight — shoulders, spine, the held-up tiredness of you. Feel it hold. Let that be sustain thee in your body.

A short prayer: I have carried this far enough. Carry me now, and carry it too.

5. Matthew 11:28

“Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”

This is the invitation underneath the whole phrase. Notice it’s addressed specifically to the heavy laden — to the one still carrying, still searching the bar at midnight. The promise isn’t figure it out and then come. It’s come, as you are, mid-carry, and rest is what He gives.

Body practice: Let your shoulders drop down and back, away from your ears, the full inch they’ve been refusing all day. That dropped inch is you accepting the invitation.

A short prayer: I am heavy laden and I am coming anyway. Give me the rest You promised.

6. Psalm 37:5

“Commit thy way unto the LORD; trust also in him; and he shall bring it to pass.”

Commit is a quieter word than cast, and I love it for that. To commit your way is to hand over not just one burden but the whole direction of the thing — and then to stop renegotiating it every morning. He shall bring it to pass is the rest you get for not taking it back.

Body practice: Make a loose fist, then turn it palm-up and open the fingers slowly, like setting down something you’ve been carrying without realizing. Don’t re-curl them.

A short prayer: I commit this way to You — not just today, but tomorrow when I’m tempted to grab it back.

7. Psalm 118:8

“It is better to trust in the LORD than to put confidence in man.”

Often noted as the middle verse of the whole Bible — and whether or not that holds exactly, there’s something fitting about trust sitting at the center. This one names the quiet exhaustion of leaning on people, plans, and your own steering, and offers the better place to lean.

Body practice: Notice one place in your body that braces when you depend on yourself — often the upper back, between the shoulder blades. Breathe into it and let it soften by a degree.

A short prayer: Where I’ve leaned on what can’t hold me, turn me back toward You.

8. Isaiah 26:3

“Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee.”

The peace here isn’t the absence of the storm; it’s a kept peace, guarded from the outside in, given to a mind that stays — that keeps returning, keeps leaning back toward God when it drifts. “Let go and let God” is really this verse described as a feeling: the peace you get for staying stayed.

Body practice: Pick one fixed point in the room and rest your eyes on it for three slow breaths. When your gaze wanders, bring it gently back. That returning is stayed on thee.

A short prayer: Keep my mind from running. Stay it on You, and keep me in Your peace.

9. Philippians 4:6–7

“Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God. And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.”

Be careful for nothing uses careful in its old sense — full of care, anxious. So this is “let go” spoken in instructions: don’t carry the anxiety, carry it to God instead, with thanks. And the result is a peace that passeth all understanding — meaning you won’t be able to explain why you’re calm, and you won’t need to.

Body practice: Take one slow breath in through the nose for a count of four, then let it out for a count of six — the exhale longer than the inhale. Do it three times before you ask for the thing.

A short prayer: Here is the request, and here is my thanks before the answer. Keep my heart.

10. Psalm 56:3

“What time I am afraid, I will trust in thee.”

I’m quoting this one slowly because it’s easy to misremember. It does not say “when I am afraid” — the King James says “What time I am afraid.” It’s an honest verse: it doesn’t pretend the fear is gone. It says, in the very hour the fear arrives, that is when the trusting happens. Letting go isn’t waiting to feel brave. It’s trusting while afraid.

Body practice: Place one hand flat on your sternum where fear tends to flutter. Don’t make it stop. Just let it be felt under a steady hand, and breathe.

A short prayer: I’m afraid right now, and right now is exactly when I’ll trust You.

11. Romans 8:28

“And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.”

This is the verse that makes letting go bearable — the reason you can take your hands off without the world ending. Notice it doesn’t say all things are good. It says they work together for good, like instruments you can’t make sense of one at a time until the whole piece is played. You don’t have to conduct it. You only have to be one of them that love God.

Body practice: Unclasp your hands if they’re gripped together, lay them separately on your thighs, and let each finger rest at its own weight. You are no longer trying to hold the parts in formation.

A short prayer: I can’t see how this works for good. I’ll trust the One who’s playing the whole piece.

12. Psalm 27:14

“Wait on the LORD: be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart: wait, I say, on the LORD.”

The phrase ends here, on the hardest part — the waiting. Letting go is rarely a single brave release; it’s mostly the long, quiet stretch afterward when nothing has visibly changed and your hands itch to take it all back. This verse says the waiting itself is where the strengthening happens. And it repeats the command at the end — wait, I say — the way a steady friend says a thing twice because they know you didn’t believe it the first time.

Body practice: Set both feet flat on the floor and feel the ground take your weight for the length of one unhurried breath. Waiting, too, has a posture: planted, not poised to grab.

A short prayer: While nothing changes that I can see, strengthen my heart, and help me wait.

A note on the science

Several of the body practices above ask for the same small thing: a slow release of the jaw, the shoulders, the breath. There’s a measurable reason these settle the nervous system. A long, unhurried exhale — longer than the inhale — preferentially engages the parasympathetic branch of the autonomic nervous system, largely via the vagus nerve, which slows the heart slightly on each breath out and signals the body to stand down from its braced, ready-to-act state. Deliberately unclenching the jaw and dropping the shoulders removes a steady stream of muscular tension-feedback the brain otherwise reads as ongoing threat. None of this is a substitute for clinical care, and it makes no claim about the spiritual content of the verses beside it — it simply describes what the body does when you stop gripping. The practices and the scriptures live in separate rooms; this note speaks only to the body’s side.


The body-science here reflects established neuroscience of the nervous system. What the science actually says about a settled body → · the research behind these pages

So what do you write on the card?

If you came here for something to keep — a card, a board, a small tattoo you’ll carry for years — please don’t write “let go and let God” as though it were a chapter and verse, because someone will eventually ask you where it’s from, and you’ll have to say nowhere, exactly. Instead, pick the one above whose words found you, and write the words and the reference. Psalm 46:10. 1 Peter 5:7. Psalm 56:3. Those are real. They have an address in the Book. And every one of them carries the whole tender meaning the four-word phrase was only ever trying to summarize.

The phrase pointed you somewhere true. It just wasn’t the destination — it was the sign.

Keep the twelve where you’ll see them

I made a free, printable card with all twelve of these scriptures laid out in the King James — the kind of thing you can tuck into a Bible, tape to a mirror, or keep in a drawer for the next hard hour. You can download it free here: The 12 Scriptures Behind “Let Go and Let God” (it comes with a few gentle companions in our free library).

And if you’d like to live in these verses rather than just keep them — a guided page for each one, with room to write your own letting-go in your own hand — that’s what our Stilling Waves devotional journal was made for.

Keep reading in this series

Frequently asked questions

Is “let go and let God” in the Bible?
No. The exact phrase “let go and let God” does not appear in the King James Version or in any standard Bible translation. It is a modern faith-summary — a four-word distillation of biblical ideas — most often traced to early twentieth-century devotional and recovery movements, not a direct quotation of Scripture.

What is the closest Bible verse to “let go and let God”?
The verse most people are reaching for is Psalm 46:10 — “Be still, and know that I am God.” For the “casting your cares” half of the idea, 1 Peter 5:7 — “Casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you” — is the closest single verse. Both are genuine and easy to cite.

If it isn’t a verse, where did “let go and let God” come from?
It appears to have emerged from twentieth-century devotional, holiness, and recovery circles as a memorable phrase rather than a quotation. People built it to hold a large biblical idea — surrendering control to God — in a form short enough to remember. That’s why it feels scriptural even though it isn’t a line of Scripture.

What verse should I use instead for a card or tattoo?
Choose one with a real reference so you can always cite it: Psalm 46:10, 1 Peter 5:7, Proverbs 3:5–6, or Psalm 56:3 (“What time I am afraid, I will trust in thee”) are all short, true to the meaning, and unmistakably in the Bible.

Does “let go and let God” mean I should stop trying?
No — and the source verses make that clear. Proverbs 3:5–6 says to trust and lean not unto thine own understanding, not to stop acting altogether. The biblical idea is releasing the outcome and your grip on control to God, while still doing the next faithful thing in front of you.