Let Him Do to Me Whatever Seems Good to Him: From Resignation to Rest

There was a season in my life when suffering didn’t take turns. It came in waves. One after another. It began with unmet expectations: something I had earnestly prayed for, hoped for, waited for, only to watch it unexpectedly fall apart. It was heavy. Crushing. A week later, losing a dear friend. It didn’t feel real. But it was daunting. A few days after the burial, just when I thought I could catch my breath, came Dad’s first memorial. The kind of pain that breaks something inside you that you didn’t know could break. Grief doesn’t check your calendar. I found myself reliving the ache all over again. Then came Babu’s passing. Death, that so-called mighty foe, seemed to hover close, looming in the silence, trying to steal my hope, as though it still had the final say. And yet, each loss still tore through me like a fresh wound.

In the thick of that season, I was stripped of words and willpower. I couldn’t make sense of God’s providence (Read Lord, to whom shall I go?). I couldn’t pray except to groan. I wept. Lamented. Like Jacob wrestling through the night, I contended with God. But unlike Jacob, I didn’t walk away with a blessing. Just a limp. In that silence, the enemy whispered, Maybe God has changed His mind about you. Maybe you are not His afterall. Perhaps you’ve exhausted His mercy. And in my exhaustion, those lies didn’t sound so outrageous. They sounded eerily possible.

Unlike Asaph, my feet stumbled. Weariness made compromise feel justifiable. The guards I had once held up against sin were quietly lowered. I indulged. I found myself echoing David’s words in 2 Samuel 15:26, “Let him do to me whatever seems good to him”. It wasn’t a declaration of trust. It was a defeat. At the time, those words were not Holy. They were not brave. They sounded more like ‘kama mbaya, mbaya’, the Kenyan shrug of passive resignation. A spiritual sigh. A helpless, bitter acceptance that God is too big to fight and too mysterious to understand. I wasn’t resting in His sovereignty. I was collapsing under it.

A Dangerous Kind of Surrender

It’s possible to say the right thing with the wrong heart. That’s what I did.

David spoke those words in deep sorrow, on the run from Absalom, his own son. His kingdom was crumbling. His closest friends were betraying him. His heart was breaking. And yet he said,

“But if He should say thus, ‘I have no delight in you,’ behold, here I am, let Him do to me as seems good to Him.” (2 Samuel 15:26, NASB95)

At first glance, it feels like spiritual apathy. But David wasn’t shrugging God off, he was laying himself down. There’s a difference. One is giving up because we feel God doesn’t care. The other is giving in because we know He does.

“Then the Lord said, ‘Because this people draw near with their words And honor Me with their lip service, But they remove their hearts far from Me…’” (Isaiah 29:13, NASB95)

That was me. I knew how to sound surrendered, but inside, I was still holding back, uncertain if God was truly for me in that season.

What Changed?

The weight didn’t lift all at once. But slowly, quietly, God began shifting my perspective, not by removing my suffering, but by revealing His character.

I began to search, not for reasons, but for who God is. The Sovereign One who wounds and binds up (Job 5:18). The Shepherd who walks with us through the valley of the shadow of death (Psalm 23:4). The compassionate Lord who, though He causes grief, will still have compassion according to His steadfast love (Lamentations 3:32). The Man of Sorrows acquainted with grief (Isaiah 53:3).

During a seminar themed “The J-curve”, I came across the book The Sweet Side of Suffering by M. Esther Lovejoy, which helped me know and understand His character in seasons of suffering. The more I looked at Him, the more my “whatever seems good to Him” became less of a throwaway phrase and more of a prayer of faith.

I started to see that He is not just Powerful, He is Wise. He is not just Sovereign, He is Kind. He is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit (Psalm 34:18). He is faithful in every season, a refuge in the day of trouble (Nahum 1:7). He does not grow weary, nor does He forget His own.

The God Who Sees

I think of Hagar, alone in the wilderness, carrying pain no one else saw, and how in that moment, God revealed Himself not as distant or indifferent, but as El Roi, “The God who sees” (Genesis 16:13).

And here is the mercy: even when our surrender is messy, even when it starts as bitter resignation, God sees. He does not despise the one who breaks down before trusting. He receives even the smallest seed of faith and grows it (Matthew 17:20). That is what He did for me.

“A bruised reed He will not break, and a dimly burning wick He will not extinguish…” (Isaiah 42:3, NASB95)

Over time, my limp turned into a lean. I began to lean not just on what I wanted God to do for me, but on who He had proven Himself to be: Faithful (Deuteronomy 7:9), Tender (Psalm 103:13–14), True (John 14:6), A Father to the fatherless (Psalm 68:5). A Fortress for the weary (Psalm 18:2). A Comforter who does not grow tired of comforting (2 Corinthians 1:3–4)

Now, when I say, “Let Him do to me whatever seems good to Him,” I mean it differently. I mean:

“Even here, even now, I trust that You are good and You do good. When I don’t understand Your Hand, I will trust Your Heart.”

That kind of surrender is not weak. It is not passive. It is the bravest thing we can do in that moment. Because it says, “I know who You are. And even in this, I’m Yours, and I trust you.”

The God Who Saves

But more than seeing, God stepped in.

The hope I’ve come to know is not just that God notices our pain, it is that He entered it. Jesus, God in the flesh, did not stay distant from sorrow. He became acquainted with it. He wept. He was rejected. He suffered loss. And ultimately, He took on the deepest ache of all: our sin.

On the cross, Jesus bore what we could not carry: not just grief, but guilt. Not just wounds, but judgment. He died the death we deserved, so that we could live the life we never could earn. And in rising again from the dead, He did not just give us comfort, He gave us Himself.

This is the heart of the Gospel: that while we were still sinful, still broken, still wrestling, still unsure how to surrender, Christ died for us (Romans 5:8). He didn’t wait for our faith to be strong or our words to be right. He met us in the mess. He made a way.

And because of Him, surrender doesn’t have to be bitter. It can be safe.

“The hands we are falling into are scarred with love. They are strong enough to hold the universe and gentle enough to hold us.”

From Resignation to Rest

In that season of suffering, at first, I thought I was surrendering. But really, I was just giving up. My version of “Let Him do to me whatever seems good to Him” was not born from faith; it was fatigue. I wasn’t saying, “God, I trust You.” I was saying, “I’m tired of fighting.” And while that might look similar on the outside, the heart behind it matters deeply.

Resignation says, “God is too powerful to resist, so I might as well stop trying.” Rest says, “God is too wise and loving to doubt, so I’ll place myself fully in His hands.” One is bitter. The other is brave.

I had to learn that true rest does not come from giving up on what I wanted. It comes from giving myself fully to the One who truly knows what I need. It is the rest that only comes when we stop demanding answers and start clinging to the character of God. He reminded me that even that season was appointed by Him for my good. I thought I could not handle all the losses and the pain that came with them. But then He reminded me:

“No temptation has overtaken you but such as is common to man; and God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will provide the way of escape also, so that you will be able to endure it.” (1 Corinthians 10:13 NASB95)

In time, I started looking not for an explanation, but for His face. I needed to know: Is He still good, even when life isn’t? And He was. He is. I no longer say David’s words with a shrug. I say them with a settled soul: “Let Him do to me whatever seems good to Him.”