Midweek Faith Lift
November 12, 2025
The Power of Release-Let God & Let Go!
Rev. Deb Hill-Davis
Spiritual Passages
November 4, 2025
Thich Nhat Hanh, as a boy, one day looked into a large, water-filled clay jar and saw a beautiful leaf of many colors. It rested at the bottom of the water, out of reach of his arm. He found a stick, but no matter how he swirled the water, he could not make the leaf rise to the surface. Giving up, he walked away. When he returned, a few moments later, the leaf lay upon the surface of the water, and he picked it up. The water had continued to swirl while he was away, bringing the leaf to the surface. This is how our unconscious minds work. When we have a problem to solve, struggling with our conscious mind becomes futile at a certain point. We must be able to stir the water and step away for a moment."
- Thich Nhat Hanh
Authorities recently dug up the grave of Ludwig van Beethoven and, when they opened the casket, they found the great German composer lying there with a sheet of music and an eraser on his chest. He was decomposing. (this may not be a true story)
Affirmative Prayer for today: Infinite Wisdom of the Universe, open my eyes and my heart so that I may see with my higher self that which no longer serves me. Open my heart to that higher consciousness that knows without knowing how it knows and allow my human mind to listen and learn. Amen.
I love the Thich Nhat Hanh story, which so eloquently describes this release process of letting God and letting go over something so simple as a desire to hold a beautiful leaf. We so frequently hear the phrase as “Let go and let God” which in my experience puts the cart before the horse. I have all these cords attached to me today as a demonstration of how hard it is to let go of what I think is going to work. I keep plugging into dead outlets, and there are a few on this platform for sure. I keep thinking that if I pray enough, I say constant words of affirmation, well then the outlet is going to work, right? ! Affirmations for sure will work and the light will come on!
Well guess what….all the prayers in the world will NOT make a dead outlet work! Stop watering dead plants was the affirmation for last week. Stop plugging into dead outlets is our affirmation for today! In this very human experience of looking for a live outlet, I went through a trial and error learning process that was frustrating and time consuming. This actually happened, when I was very new here, so I thought everything worked! Ha Ha, Ha…. Let God and let go, Deb…..so how do I do that? Walk away from it for a moment, pause and pray, and then look at it from a different perspective. What was I not seeing, not hearing?
Well, go back to the beginners mind and let go of my human need to always “know everything!” Are you stuck with that pattern that says, for goodness sake, this is easy, you should know how to figure this out! Use your head, think, Deb, think! Maybe there is a switch that turns on this outlet, maybe that will work! That’s it! Just find the right switch and turn it on and the outlet will work? Maybe the extension cord is bad and doesn’t work! NO, there is no switch, no magical solution, it’s not the cord: this outlet simply doesn’t work. You can’t use it for the light, for the boom box, for anything, Deb, because it doesn’t work!! When will you get that through your head and stop trying to make it work when it doesn’t?
Well, learning how to let God and let go is not an easy lesson, is it? And this is such a simple thing, how will I ever do that with the harder stuff?!? So I walked away from the platform and let go of my human need to know everything and I prayed, “God knows and God shows!” As I said this, I began walking around the piano and over to the side of the platform! And guess what I saw! More outlets with things plugged into them which in my infinite wisdom I concluded they must work! So I used one, and lo and behold the light came on! I had literally seen the light and I laughed out loud at myself even though I was the only one here! God and I had an inside joke right here at Unity Church of Ames!
That is how I began to work with the phrase “Let God and let go!” because it put God first and directed me to look at what belief I was holding onto that I needed to release. Because here’s the real truth friends, our human self has been a fairly reliable resource to this point and often continues to be reliable, so we don’t feel the need to let go until the human self runs into a wall, stops being reliable or we wake up to the truth that it was never all that reliable in the first place! We say in Unity, change your thoughts, change your life like it is as easy as changing a light bulb. It is not that simple and sometimes it is easy, but often, well, my mind is plugged into a dead outlet and I don’t even know it.
I learned something really fascinating from Neil Douglas Klotz’s book, Aramaic Jesus: Book of Days. He is exploring the Beatitude from Matthew 5:8 “Blessed are the poor in heart for they shall see God,” which seems to emphasize seeing. According to Klotz, what Yeshua is offering in this statement is “the opportunity to feel completely within the heart, seeing life lit up, outlined in light and clarity.” (p.48)
Remember last week, we learned that true release is a process and it takes place within the heart because it is where constant release, the gather and scatter process takes place in the flow within our body. So when we really want to let God and let go, we need to go the heart because that is where it happens. We truly have a change of heart, not of mind.
Unity is described in the religious realm as esoteric Christianity because its focus is on what is unseen, the energy of Spirit, of consciousness. It is not so much on the story of Jesus, but the unseen Christ consciousness that he was always speaking about. “Pure in heart” meant to ancient peoples of Jesus’ time “complete and full to overflowing within the heart.” Klotz says this, on pl 48-49,
Remember that ancient peoples felt that the heart in our flesh was an expression of an unseen reality, of perception, thinking, feeling, loving and willing. As noted earlier, there was no word for “mind” or “brain” in ancient Semitic languages…..The words usually “see God” are the Aramaic nehzun l’Alaha, to have one’s sight illuminated as though in a lightning flash, by Reality itself.
When we go to the heart, we connect with that higher consciousness that is always there no matter what. When we let God and let go, we unplug from our human need to control, be in charge, know what’s what, and we see and know with the heart.
The spiritual Power of Release is about transformation and that happens in those lightening flash moments when we see with the heart and we are changed at depth. And then we let go of what no longer serves our highest good, of what no longer serves the highest good of others. Each experience of this heart opening lightning flash brings our human/divine self more in balance where we can truly travel the path of “Let God and let go.” The Power of Release is the power of really waking up to that Reality that is greater than we are and putting our human self in service to that higher Good, that greater reality that is the Ground of all Being.
You know the story of the hymn Amazing Grace. It began as a poem written by a ship captain who was engaged in the lucrative slave trade between Africa and the United States. He had a heart awakening where he truly saw the horror of human suffering that he was causing by continuing to do this. He had a spiritual awakening that changed his heart, opened his eyes and as he wrote in the poem, “I was blind but now I see.” He called it Amazing Grace, “how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost but now I’m found, blind but now I see.” Yes, he did see, and he stopped participating in the slave trade; his change of heart changed his life for the higher good of all.
Often in Unity, we will change wretch to soul to “Unitize” it and make it sound better, less awful. I think that is misguided and does not help us have the kind change of heart that we may need to have. I don’t want to look at my human self as a “wretch” but I also want to cultivate the humility to admit that what I have said or done was wretched and caused suffering. We need to fully see and embrace our humanity so that we can hold it, love it and allow Spirit to wake us up in that flash of light and transform our hearts. We may not realize what pain our human beliefs and attachments have caused for self and others. We are blind, but when we plug into the heart we truly see, we let God and let go.
In 1 Corinthians 2:9-11 we read
“What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the human heart conceived, what
God has prepared for those who love him.”
When the heart leads, miracles happen. May it be so.
Blessings on the Path,
Rev. Deb