Put God in charge of the wheel
We join our heroes in the midst of a car chase, the man in the driver's seat looks behind and sees the enemy closing in, looking ahead He sees a cliffside with a road of escape below.
Gripping the wheel, and looking in the passenger seat, He takes a moment to speak, “do you trust me?” He says? And then speeds off the cliffside. The car rolls and tumbles, the bumper breaks off, the sides crush, the passengers get a few bumps and bruises along the way, but they land on the road below and escape their pursuers.
“My hero,” exclaims the passenger as a small stream of blood trickles down their forehead; they speed away into the freedom that our hero always promised.
The moment we accept Christ as our Lord and Savior is the moment that we set foot in that car, and we have two choices going forward. We can trust in Him and believe that no matter what He has a plan to get us to where we are going, or we can choose to be the backseat drivers that we love to be and try to yank the wheel away from Him. I’ve seen enough action movies to know that nine times out of 10 we choose the latter, and we become worse off in the situation than we were before. We create our own problems by not trusting Him both in action and in mind.
Someday I must ask, will we as believers ever truly adopt the scripture as it says, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart; do not depend on your own understanding.” (Proverbs 3:5 NLT)
But, of course, this seems a hard ask, as we are so addicted to the idea of control when truly it is a concept that surpasses our ability. What if for once we trusted, that when we called for Jesus to take the wheel we meant it, that when we found our life going off the rails, out of “control” we recognized that it is OK to not be in our control because we would likely mess it up anyways. But should we choose to submit, to trust, to actually look at God face to face and realize that His goodness knows no bounds and that He has a plan even when it looks like rough waters ahead, only then will we see the victory in our life.
I encourage us to say this prayer, “My Lord God, I know how deeply you love me, and so I seek you for refuge, bring me into a place where I set aside my own understanding to fully trust and seek you in the midst of every chaos; and help me to discard the need for control, which I will never achieve, but to hand it over to you, who has all power, all love, and all knowledge to bring about the good for your kingdom! Amen.”
Justin Gardner pastors at River of Life Fellowship, 702 Church St., Sandpoint. The church can be reached at 208-255-7111.