“Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect” (Romans 12:2, NLT).
When I was 15 years old, both my brother Marty taught me how to drive a stick shift in his rusty old Volkswagen bug. It was one thing to start in first gear on a flat surface. It was another thing to start from a dead stop on an incline at a traffic light. Let’s just say that I’m grateful that the drivers behind me left a LOT of space between our bumpers – I needed every inch. Between choking down and winding out first gear at 7,000rpm… let’s just say I learned a lot about standard transmissions that summer.
Flash forward to a few years ago when my son had a 5.0 Mustang convertible. When he was driving semis across the country, he would ask me to drive his Mustang every now and then just to keep it loose. Needless to say, I did my fatherly duty, put the top down, and hit the streets!
Like the VW bug, it too was a standard transmission, but experience and age had made me a clean shifter. Quick, smooth starts, pedal to the metal, no jumps, no bucks, just smooth sailing to 70mph!
I remember these good times to make a point about standard transmissions. They’re not automatic. You have to pay attention. You have to finesse the clutch. You have to shift smoothly. Though the automobile is powerful, you still have to do your part to make it easily transition to higher speeds.
It’s sort of like how we ask God for things. We pray for a change in our situations, but nothing seems to happen and we wonder whether or not God has heard us. But much of the time, God has heard us loud and clear. In fact, He has even put into our hands His authority, His power, His grace, and His love.
But it is WE that have stalled. We expect God to make life automatic so that we can sit back and relax and let Him do all the work. But what would we learn from that? How would we grow from that?
Instead, God allows us to be in the driver seat (that’s His gift of free will), but He expects us to work the gears (go to counseling, tell the truth, stop spending what we don’t have, stop caving to culture run amok) as He powers us forward with His power and grace! He will get us where we’re going, but He expects us to do our part along the journey.
David McCall
Executive Pastor
