Prayer Unfiltered: How do I Pray and Actually Let it Go?

If you’ve ever prayed about something… and then kept worrying about it anyway—you’re not alone.

In this episode of Prayer Unfiltered, we answer a powerful question:
👉 How do you actually release your burdens to God and stop carrying them?

So many of us pray for the people we love, but instead of feeling peace, we walk away feeling heavier. Why? Because we’re holding onto what God never asked us to carry.

In this conversation, Kimberly Roddy and Elizabeth Powell unpack:
✨ The difference between godly vs. ungodly burden-bearing
✨ Why prayer can feel like “worry on your knees”
✨ What Scripture really says about carrying burdens (Galatians 6)
✨ A practical tool to help you release control
✨ How to trust God with outcomes—even when it’s hard
✨ What happens to your mind, body, and spirit when you don’t let go

You’ll walk away with real, practical ways to:
✔️ Stop over-carrying what belongs to God
✔️ Pray with peace instead of anxiety
✔️ Trust God more deeply with the people and situations you love

Subscribe for more from Prayer Unfiltered, share this with a friend who’s carrying too much, and leave a review so more people can find the show. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:04

Hey friends, I'm Kimberly. And I'm Elizabeth, and this is the Father's Business Podcast, born out of Sylvia Gunter's heart for people to know who God is and who they are in him.

SPEAKER_00 0:15

So wherever you're listening from today, we pray that you will sense his nearness and know that you are his beloved sons and daughters. We're really glad you're here with us today.

Listener Question About Letting Go

SPEAKER_01 0:27

Welcome back, everybody, to our podcast. We're in a series called Prayer Unfiltered, where we are answering some of the questions that we have and may be afraid to ask about prayer. We have been so excited to get your questions, and we've gotten one from Debbie, and I just want to read her email to us. She says, First, thank you so much for your podcast. I was first introduced to the Father's Business by a friend who recommended for the family, which is one of our books. I have prayed many of those prayers and shared them with others. It's such a blessing. My question regarding prayer is how do you release yourself from the burdens of prayer and not carry them? I've been a Christian many years and pray regularly for family and friends, but have a hard time letting the prayer go. I look forward to each week of your podcast. May God continue to lead and guide you as you share his goodness with so many. Well, first off, Debbie, thank you so much for your encouragement and your sweet words and for praying for us at the Father's Business. And I think you're asking a question that a lot of us struggle with, which is how do we take things to God in prayer and then leave them there? Kimberly, can you relate to that at all about wanting to hand things to God and then also carry them at the same time?

Burdens Versus Loads In Galatians

SPEAKER_00 1:38

Sure. I think part of that is we care so much. Like if we're bringing something to God, we obviously care a lot about it. And we also care about the person if we're bringing a person to God. So I do think, especially if we love someone and we're praying for them, we can feel their burdens deeply because we care deeply. The struggle isn't that you care too much. It's that you just may be carrying it more than God asked you to carry it. Scripture gives us language for this tension. And we actually do some teaching about this, Elizabeth, which I would love for you to share that Galatians passage and how we wrestle with that tension.

What Happens When We Hold On

SPEAKER_01 2:14

Absolutely. I find it so interesting the way these two verses are so closely together in Scripture because we're commanded in Galatians 6, 2 to bear one another's burdens. That is part of what we're doing when we pray for other people, is we're to bear other people's burdens. There are a lot of people, and I would say myself at times can struggle that you start finding your identity in the fact that you're bearing burdens for other people, and I'm needed, I'm wanted, and I'm important because I'm bearing, and it's just so godly to bear the burdens of other people. And in some places it is. But if you go down just three verses later, Galatians 6, 5 says, for each one should bear their own load. So what what wait, you just told me I'm supposed to bear each other's burdens, but we're all supposed to carry our own load. And again, we we like to talk about tension on this podcast, don't we, Kimberly? Everything is tension. But here we are in the tension again of we're supposed to carry other people's burdens, but everyone has to carry their own load. Yes, we are called at times to pray and carry burdens for others to God, and yet we we are not built, we're not equipped to carry the load of other people on our shoulders. And that's really hard because oftentimes prayer, especially when we're praying for family members or friends that we care a lot about, feels a whole lot more like worry on our knees. I mean, I'm just being honest for me as well. And so it is having to step into a place where you can find a way to carry their burden to God and yet not carry it on your shoulders. And it that's not easy to do. So, Kimberly, what do you think happens when we don't let go? When we pray about it, but we don't let go? What happens?

Godly Versus Ungodly Burden Bearing

SPEAKER_00 4:02

Uh, I mean, I think a ton of things happen, right? I think we do worry. I think we're not fully trusting God. I think we're carrying it, so we are we are weighted down. If you think about a burden, it's an overwhelming weight. If you think about a load, it's when you were talking about that minute ago, a load is what belongs to each person. God says, carry your own loads. When we don't release it, I think we are owning it, we're holding on to it. People develop sicknesses over that, if we're honest. It affects our physical body, it affects our mental capacity, it affects our relationships because we we're not relaxed, we're stressed, we're not trusting, like I said, we're not really trusting God. We're more, I don't know that we're aware that we're controlling it, but we're holding on to it. And it's not the idea of release. You know, if you think about holding on to something, clenching your fist versus releasing it, setting it free. And like I said, it's it's we don't have peace. We have the opposite of that. We have anxiety, we have worry. So, you know, Psalm 55, 22 says, Cast your burden on the Lord. And I'm not at all saying that this is easy. We wouldn't be having this conversation if it were easy, but there is a call there, a command there. Let's look at Matthew 11, 28 through 30. Jesus says, Come and keep on coming to me, all you who labor and are heavenladen and overburdened, and I will cause you to rest. He says, I will continue to ease and relieve and refresh your souls. Keep on taking my yoke upon you, keep on learning of me, for I am gentle, I am humble in heart, and you will continually find rest for your souls. That is relief and ease and refreshment and recreation and blessed quiet. For my yoke is wholesome, which means useful, good, not harsh, not hard, not sharp, not pressing. It's comfortable, it's gracious, it's pleasant. My burden is light and easy to be borne. So that's what Jesus is saying that in Matthew 11. So there is a bit of a command there to come and keep coming to him and allow him to carry the burden. Now, I'm not gonna slap you on the hand and say, shame on you for not taking the burden to him and releasing it when you pray. This is a normal tension because we are human and we do care. I mean, we see you have the story in Mark of the friends taking their friend, their paralytic, to Jesus because he could not take himself. But but that's an idea of what we would call godly burden bearing, where he was unable to do it for himself and they took him and they trusted him to Jesus, and Jesus healed him and took care of it, right? So it's not that we are not called to carry people to Jesus and pray for them and walk them to Jesus, but when we don't release it, see our burden down, and that's the opposite of what Jesus tells us in Matthew. So, Elizabeth, I just mentioned godly burden bearing. Can you break down what we see as godly burden bearing versus what we mean when we say ungodly burden bearing?

Three Questions For Prayer Assignments

SPEAKER_01 6:49

Yeah, the way that we define godly bearing is we're teaching about this, is things that are assigned to you by God, and God is the one who sustains you through it. Specifically talking about prayer, it is taking people to God in prayer for the amount of time that he tells you to do so, and then surrendering the outcome of what happens with that person to God. And so there's ungodly burden bearing is kind of what you were just talking about, Kimberly. It's feeling the weight, the worry, the fear. It is feeling like you're responsible for the outcome of the prayers you're praying. Uh, you feel the emotion of it all, like weighted on your shoulders. You maybe you can even start to notice. Do you feel tension in your shoulders, your neck? Sometimes I feel myself going, like I have to all of a sudden I take a deep breath because I realize I haven't really been breathing deeply. And that's a good signal for me to check in again. Okay, is this my own stress or have I just gotten off the phone with a friend or gotten an email from someone and I'm carrying something that I'm not supposed to carry? Yes, I'm supposed to be concerned for that person and pray for them and take it to God in prayer. But when I take the weight of that person upon me, I can often feel it in my body. And so it's ungodly burden bearing. Ask questions like, if I don't, who will? Like if I don't pray for this person, who will? Or if I don't serve in this particular way. There's a phrase that I grew up hearing my mom say all the time. And it's true here, which is the need is not your call. There's a thousand needs out there. Some of them God will call you to be a partner with him and helping with, but not every need is yours. And so there's three easy questions that I've learned to ask. When someone even asks me, will you pray for me? It's not an automatic yes. Um, if they're standing right in front of me, maybe I'll pray for them for a few minutes, but will I pick up a prayer assignment to pray over time for something? I first ask, God, is this you? Like, is this is is this your idea that you want me to be a part of this? And then my second question is, what is my part? Okay. Maybe my idea of, well, that means I need to spend 30 minutes every day in prayer for this person is not, that's not what God had in mind. So, God, okay, what is my part to play in this? Sometimes God's answer to that to me is enjoy me in worship. Okay. So sometimes it's not even intercessory prayer for that person. So I am glorifying who God is for that person's situation, but I'm not even specifically praying for that situation. And the third one, and this is an important one, how long? And it I'm not saying as soon as someone says, You pray for me, God and I sit down, I have these three questions, and he gives me those three answers, boom, boom, boom, boom. This is part of that ongoing conversational lifestyle with God. But there are seasons where God calls us to pray for someone or something. And then there are seasons when God says, your assignment is up. And I I have been in those situations. One sticks out to my mind very clearly there was a particular project I was supposed to pray for, and blood, sweat, and tears prayed for it for about three years, and even went away to have kind of a half day with God, enjoy him. Part of my time there was also really to look through the scripture and pray about this situation. And what I heard God say that day through his word in the Old Testament, which was basically, your time on the wall is over. Like the season is done. But there was not resolution to the project or the problem. But God said to me, You have been a watchman on the wall and your season is up. And I was like, Okay. And I felt a release and I felt a piece that that was not mine to carry anymore. And I didn't. And it was kind of like not that an audible voice told me this, but the sense I had was I was there to pray for a season to give this particular project in person time and grace to repent, change their mind, choose a different path. They did not. And God said, Your season's up. Now, did he pass that assignment on to someone else? Don't know. That's not my part. But I do know that my season was over. And I I can tell you that as of today, it it hasn't gotten better. And I often wonder about that, but I still firmly believe God was like, you were a watchman on the wall for a season and your season's up. So maybe someone else is carrying that assignment. It really is about being in tune with a father's heart when it comes to those things. Does that make sense, Kimberly?

The For Jesus To Do Box

SPEAKER_00 11:12

Yeah, I think that makes sense, Elizabeth, in many ways. We don't sometimes pause and ask God, is this mine to do? That's the way I phrase it. You know, is this mine to do? And and when we don't pause enough to ask the questions, we can take on a lot. And that that reminds me of Moses in Exodus 18. Everyone was coming to him. He was trying to take it all on, fix it all, take care of it all. And his father-in-law said to him in verses 17 and 18, What you are doing is not good. You and these people who come to you will only wear yourselves out. The work is too heavy for you. You cannot handle it alone. And that's what happens when we don't pause and ask the question, is this mine to do? Is this my time to do for a season? How long should I do this? How long do you want me to participate in this with you, Lord? In this with you for these people? When we are choosing to carry something that God did not assign to us or give to us, then I mean it's back to we're wearing ourselves out. But we have a tendency to do that. So what's a practical way that we can wrestle with that?

SPEAKER_01 12:09

Yeah, and my mind bounces back to last week when we referenced that that verse in James about you have not because you ask not. And that was my fear and is always my fear of if someone asks me to pray for something or I feel like I need to pray for some situation, it's like, well, what if it doesn't happen because I don't pray about it? And so it it is that that need to ask him about it. But I have a really practical thing. We have taught this at our Rock Journey conferences. We call it the For Jesus to do box. And even uh a couple of years ago, we did a podcast, an audio podcast on the For Jesus to do box. And so I won't go through the entire teaching of that again, but it this is just a simple tool because sometimes I need something concrete to help my emotions be in check. So I have a big black box that sits in the foyer of my house, and on the front of it are FJ T D, for Jesus to do. And in the top of the box, I cut a cross out like a hole in the shape of a cross. The idea is for anything that is worrying you, bothering you, even if Kimberly, you've got something going on with your family, your mom, your your dog is going to the vet, whatever, one of the first things I'll do is I will go, okay, we're gonna pray about that. And I'll ask God, God, what do you what do you want to pray for my friend Kimberly in this situation? And I will I will pray for you. And then I will get out a sheet of paper and I will write down just shorthand Kim's dog or Kim's mom or whatever Kim's got going on in her life that day. And I take that piece of paper and I fold it in half, which is a symbol that I'll I'll tell you about in just a minute, and I put it in the box as just almost like in the old testament, we saw it over and over again. They would come to a place and they would build a remembrance stone or they build an altar to remember what God had done there. This is kind of my remembrance stone of, okay, God, I have done my part. I have prayed for this, and now I understand it's for you to do. So I'm putting it in your box. And there's a verse in Isaiah that talks about how God has paid double for all of our sins. And oftentimes we think that means we're getting in like double trouble because of what we've done. But the custom in the Old Testament and that they would have understood in the writing of Isaiah is let's say, Kimberly, you borrow$200 from me. I would write on a piece of paper, Kimberly borrowed$200 from Elizabeth, and I would post it on the door of your house. So the entire community knows there's a debt between the two of us. But when you thankfully, Kimberly, pay me back, I would then go to your door and I would fold over or I would double that piece of paper to say it's finished, it's done. So that verse in Isaiah, when it says he has paid double for our sins, is that idea that Jesus has come and he has doubled over any debt that we have. And so in my mind, when I'm folding the piece of paper in half, not only does that make it fit in the box better, but I'm saying it's taken care of. I can let go of this because I it's doubled and in the for Jesus to do box. And now my role is to trust him with the outcome. Now, true confessions, there is many, many times when it may be an hourly, minute by minute, gotta put it, write it on the piece of paper, put it in the box, write it in the piece of paper, put it in the box because my heart doesn't fully trust that God's got it. This may be a helpful way for all of us when we're carrying things in prayer to first ask the questions. God, am I supposed to even be carrying this? And it's not just for other people, it may be even our own kids. There may be seasons of life where God is going to invite you as a parent to say, you know what, I've got them. There was a season when the prodigal son was in the far and distant land. And the father in the parable did not know where the son was, but God knew exactly where that son was. And there were things that God needed to do in that child's life. One of my favorite phrases in the Bible is the prodigal son, he's lost all his money, he's spent it on all these immoral things. And there's this little phrase that says, and when he came to himself, he returned to his father's house. And so for a lot of us, if God has said this is your assignment, then you get on your knees and you war like crazy on behalf of those people in your life. But there may be a season where he's gonna say to you, you know what? I've got things I need to do in them, and I've got things I need to do in you, and this is not your task. And you need to leave the weight of the situation with me and just go ahead and start celebrating the outcome of what I'm going to do, even if we don't see it. And that's what happened in that story I was telling you, where God said, You've been a watchman on the wall, your season is over. He then invited me to go ahead and worship me as if it's already been accomplished and focus on your relationship with me. And it does, the burden lifts when my perspective changes from focusing in on what's going on to I'm gonna celebrate the God who fights on my behalf and already knows what's gonna happen and celebrate the goodness of God before I see it with my own eyes.

Releasing Control And Trusting Outcomes

SPEAKER_00 17:14

Yeah, it's remembering that truth, the battle does belong to the Lord because again, we're we're people who think we're in control. We like to be in control, we want to handle things, we want to fix people, we want to fix ourselves, and so it's easy with with good intentions to focus on holding on to that burden, but it will weigh you down. And so I think I think a simple prayer that you can also pray is, Jesus, I've prayed. I trust that you love them more than I do, and I'm placing them in your hands. Show me if there's anything you want me to do, but I release what only you can do. And just simple prayers like that to say, Jesus, I trust you. And even the act of praying that is a is a prayer of help me in my unbelief, help me trust you, because letting go is not easy. Releasing the burden is not easy. It it will feel better, it will feel lighter, you will feel more at peace over time, but there's still going to be those moments that come in of like, I am I doing it right? Am I supposed to hold on to? Am I supposed to fix something? Because we're just tension, like you said, all these things have tension. Um, but I do think that when you release that emotional ownership of things, when you release the outcome and and your control and you turn to peace, it takes us back to a verse that I clearly remember my mom implanting in us as a kid of Isaiah 26, 3, you keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you. The truth is that intercession means that we carry it to God. We take it to God on someone's behalf, but it's not us doing something instead of God. It's us doing something, giving it to God. It's not the work that we're doing. We're interceding, meaning we're carrying it to God. We are the the friends carrying the man to God because he could not get there on his own. But we trust God to do everything. We're not trying to do it instead. And I think sometimes we really, really get those confused, even if it's in our best intentions, you know?

SPEAKER_01 19:05

Yeah, and that that's hard because sometimes if you stop praying for some if God says your season's over or you put it in the for Jesus to do box, it feels like you're letting go, like you don't care anymore. I'm not being faithful in the way that I should be faithful. There are places where, and this is where we can't really give a definitive answer to to people's questions because everyone's relationship with God is very specific to them. And as we said, it's not just about what's happening in the other person's life, but it's what God is doing to build your faith and mold your heart through the process of having you participate with him in this scenario that you find yourself in. And so it can feel uncaring to stop praying, or it can feel uncaring just to write it on a piece of paper and put it in the for Jesus to do box. There are times the enemy was like, well, if you really cared, you would pray about that more or you would do more. And sometimes surrender is the most powerful thing we can do and trust that God is in the midst of this and doing far more than I can ask or imagine, and choosing to stay at peace while he works. I think about Jesus and the many storms he found himself in with his disciples. Sometimes one time he was asleep, one time he woke up and calmed the storm, one time he walked across the water and invited Peter to come out on the water with him. But what he never did was panic. And so for whatever heavy weights that we are all carrying, and we we've all got big stuff going on in our lives. And we've got some of us have things that we've been praying for a miracle for a very long time. And we have not seen the outcome of that miracle. Our prodigal is still in the far land and we don't know where they are, and we don't know that they're gonna come home. I just hope our hearts can tune into the compassion and the grace and the love of God that says, I'm in the far country too. I'm not just at home with the loving father looking out over the land, waiting for the sun to come. I I'm in the pig trough, and I'm the one who will help them come to themselves in my way, in my time, in my season. So hopefully that does help us release people to him. And sometimes that's what I have to pray is God, I can't fix this. And so I just have to put them in your hands. I kind of see myself picking the person up and just like putting them in the arms of Jesus and say, I'm gonna need you to carry this one for a while because I can't I can't fix it. I can't do anything with it. And he is such a loving father. That verse you read out of Matthew uh in the Amplified, it's not just come to me, it's come and keep on coming. And so if you need to put it on the piece of paper in the for Jesus to do box, and five seconds later, you're still I I believe help my unbelief, and you got to put it in the box again. That's why my my box is huge, like where you put files in it. And so it it can take a lot of paper because God is not intimidated by us continuing to. And he's okay. He understands our frailty, he understands our hearts, and he knows the deep love we have for the people that we're trying to pray for, but he also wants to invite us into a simple rhythm of come and keep on coming to him and watch what he can do.

SPEAKER_00 22:17

Yeah. For those of you that resonate with Debbie's question, and for Debbie yourself, and for us as we talk through this, we want to remind us that our prayers matter deeply and they matter to God. And yet we were never meant to carry what we pray. We're not meant to hold on to it. And I love to think about Lamentations 3, 22, and 23 in this context, that his mercies are new every morning. So every day we get to release it again. Because we're going to feel it, we're going to hold it, it's going to be there. And yet there's that act of coming and keep on coming, coming and keep on coming. Come and release it. Come and trust me. Give it to me. And so to reiterate what Elizabeth said earlier in a very practical sense, remember that simple rhythm of praying specifically, asking God, is there anything you want me to do? Listen. Listen to Him. Release it into that for Jesus to do box. And when it comes back to mine, resist the urge to pick it back up, recast it, take it back, send it back to Him, let it go. His mercies are new every morning. So we are we are called to bring our burdens to God, not to take them back from Him. And so we encourage you, as we encourage ourselves, to remember that as you're praying and interceding for other people and taking them to our great God this week.

SPEAKER_01 23:29

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