My Dear Brothers and Sisters in the Faith,
Have you ever had to deal with a backseat driver? Someone who sits there in the back seat (or the passenger's seat) and tells you how you ought to drive? Irritating! It makes you want to pull over and ask them through gritted teeth, "Would you like to drive?". Anything to get them to shut up about your driving, right?
Well imagine you do pull over and ask the offender just that, only to have them respond, "Well, I would. But I don't know the way." Or even worse, "Well, I would. But I don't have my learner's permit yet."
That'd make even the most Christian among us want to slap them silly, wouldn't it? I mean, you're kind enough to use your time and your vehicle to give them a ride somewhere, and instead of being grateful, they're trying to tell you how to drive! And what's more, they don't even know how to drive themselves! I gotta say, I'd be real tempted to get ugly with somebody if they did that to me.
Backseat driving isn't just annoying; it's rude, disrespectful, and ungrateful on the part of the backseat driver. And guess what? We all do it.
"But I'm always the perfect passenger," you may argue. You well may be, but that's not what I'm talking about. I'm not talking about your friend's car or your parents' car or your older sibling's car. I'm talking about God's car, the one we're all riding in. And we all backseat drive from time to time.
And let me tell you something, folks. I am, without a doubt, the worst "divine backseat driver" on the face of this planet. Ever since He picked my sorry backside up off the side of the road, I've been telling Him how to drive! And half the time, I don't even realize I'm doing it, that's how bad it is!
So please know, although this lesson may seem a bit critical, that I am speaking first and foremost to myself, because this is a daily struggle for me.
But admit it, y'all. You've done it too. You've thought your life is your car and you can drive it wherever and however you want to, without any regard for God and His plans. When you try to tell God what to do, and then dig in your heels and refuse to accept that there are other ways it could be done, you're saying, "Lord, I am incredibly obnoxious and stubborn. I foolishly believe that I understand Your divine plan better than You do. Please whack me upside the head with a giant two-by-four and put me back in my place." And we've all had a moment or two (or a hundred) where we were practically screaming from the rooftops that we need the Great Divine Two-by-Four to pay us a little visit. All of us are guilty- at least from time to time- of thinking we are driving our own lives.
Your life isn't your car; it's God's car, and only God knows how to drive it. You don't have your license or even your learner's permit. Heck, you're not even qualified to operate that little button thingy that rolls the windows up and down. And you don't have the map, either; stop fooling yourself into thinking you do. And yet, you sit there and tell Him where you want to go and how you think you should get there. How obnoxious is that?
But you can learn to be a more pleasant passenger in God's car, as I am working daily to learn myself.
To my brothers and sisters who are old enough to drive a car, you know that there are few things more frustrating than a tricky driving situation. Maybe you didn't do such a stellar parking job, and now you have to do one of those fun little three-hundred-point turns to get out of it. Maybe another driver who got up on the wrong side of the bed this morning decides to give you the single-finger salute. Or maybe you're half an hour late to begin with, and wouldn't ya know it, you're stuck behind someone who drives slower than your eighty-year-old grandma on tranquilizers.
Whatever the situation is, there's one thing that will always make it worse: having some jerk in the passenger's seat hollering, "HIT THE BRAKES! HIT THE BRAKES! HIT THE BRAAAAAAKES!" in your ear. Isn't driving so much easier when the people in the car trust that you know what you're doing?
This can be a hard rule to follow in any car, and it's especially hard for most of us in God's car. I don't know about you guys, but I'm a meddler at best (and at worst, a total control freak). It's human nature, I think, to try to control things that are out of our control.
But you've got to let it go! When you bring a problem or a question before the Lord, you have to be willing to totally give it to Him and trust Him to work on your behalf. You have to truly believe that He will deliver you, rather than thinking you have to meddle. You must trust in His unfailing love (Ps. 13:5) and believe with every fiber of your being that He knows what He is doing one hundred percent of the time.
Is this level of trust easy to reach? Heck no! I'm a new Christian, and I know I'm certainly not there yet. And I know plenty of people who have been in the Faith their whole lives who aren't either. It's something that comes with time and hard work, and it's a result of a continued relationship of trust with God.
"'For I know the plans I have for you,' declares the Lord, 'plans to prosper you, and never to bring you harm, to give you hope and a future.'" (Jer. 29:11) He does have plans for us, as we learn in that well-known scripture from the book of Jeremiah, and they are for our good! We must all strive to trust God and His plans for us.
Proverbs 3:5 tells us that we must "trust in the Lord your God with all your heart, and lean not unto your own understanding." Hear that, brothers and sisters? The phrase 'your own understanding' refers to backseat driving! Trust the Driver, not what you (falsely) think you know that He doesn't. In other words, let Him do His thing, because He knows what He's doing. As my very wise friend Kathy once told me, "God won't take it off your hands till you take your hands off it!"
My beloved friends in the faith, I witness to you from the bottom of my heart that God knows where we need to go, and He will get us there if we can find the humility to trust Him. I want to witness to you also of the precious blessings promised to those hearts who can find that place of faith. We all have times in our lives as Christians where we don't know what to do in a situation.
But God's answers can be hard to understand, and sometimes it's not always clear what He wants us to do.
Well, brothers and sisters, let me tell you what He wants us to do: give it to Him! He wants us to say, "God, I know You're the one true God, the only one with the power to fix this. I know I can't do it myself, and I know You can. So please, lead me. I'm listening for the gentle voice of Your spirit. Just tell me what I need to do, and I'll do it." When we find that humility, my friends, that is when God takes over.
Brothers and sisters, I pray tonight that you will seek that sweet and trusting bond with our Savior. I pray that you will recognize your natural human tendency to meddle, and that you will work earnestly to learn to entrust all your problems and struggles to God.
Remember, friends, this is God's car, and there's no backseat driving allowed! God bless you all.
~BYR
