Most of the time when I am in an automobile, I am the driver.
But, every now and then I am in the passenger seat and someone else is driving.
This is not normally my first choice….
I like to drive…. I feel more in control… I trust myself
Just this week I found myself riding as a passenger.
There are many things that happen when you are a passenger.
For one thing you are not in control…. You have placed your life in someone else’s hands.
I think it would be interesting to video record the actions and motions passengers sometimes go through..
You might see them stomping down on an imaginary brake peddle…
Or even see them stomp down on the gas peddle.
You might see their head swivel from side to side as they check out other vehicles around them
It might be even more interesting if the thoughts of the passenger could be recorded….
My, wouldn’t that be something! Maybe a little like the Mel Gibson movie, What Women Want.
Most times the passenger is silent… but what if those thoughts were verbalized? What if you could somehow hear what the passenger was thinking?
But there are times when keeping silent is impossible
We may find ourselves giving instructions….
Or telling the driver what we would do if we were driving.
We are a passenger because there is somewhere we need to go…
But sometimes as a passenger we find ourselves going where we do not want to go.
The driver might say, “do you mind if I stop over here for just a moment?”
Or the driver might say “I need to go by such and such a place first”
Many times what we say in such a case and what we are thinking are not the same.
Sometimes we are in a hurry to get somewhere….
We need to go faster….
We may feel we know a better route to take…
But we are the passenger… we have lost a certain amount of control..
Sometimes we get nervous…..
Sometimes we get afraid…..
Sometimes we just get flat out irritated.
Ever rode with someone and it seemed like they hit every pot hole in the rode?
You might have even told them to go back… there was one they missed!
Riding with someone else can be an experience
In many situations it boils down to the fact we just don’t trust the driver!
I had a grandmother that was one of the most praying women I had ever been around..
This was especially true when she was in the car riding with someone she did not fully trust or have complete confidence in as a good driver.
She would hold on to the door handle and just say over and over…. Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.
The story is told of two men that went to Heaven.
One was a preacher… the other was a taxi driver.
When they got to Heaven St Peter met them at the gate.
He spoke to the taxi driver first and welcomed him…
He told him there was a mansion prepared for him with the best furnishing available and a Roles Royce to drive.
Next St. Peter welcomed the preacher….
He told him he had a nice house that had many conveniences in it and a new Chevy to drive.
The preacher said, wait a minute….
The taxi driver gets a mansion and a top of the line Cadallac… I get a regular house and a Chevy… WHY?
St. Peter said, “because when you preached every one slept”.
“But when the taxi driver drove everyone prayed!”
>>>Many times being a passenger is not fun….
>>>You may not be sure of the driver’s ability…
>>>It can boil down to just a lack of trust and not being in control, not being able to do it your way.
LIFE ITSELF CAN BE THAT WAY—
There are times when we find ourselves traveling along as a passenger… not the driver.
Our walk with God is much like that…
We find ourselves in a situation where we are not in control
We are in the passenger seat… God is driving…
>>At first this seemed to be OK…
But as we travel along we find ourselves getting nervous
There are pot holes in the rode…. It seems like God is hitting every one of them. We are getting jarred… that is not a comfortable feeling.
Maybe we feel we need to go faster than God is traveling…
Or sometimes we just don’t like the way He is driving…
We hit the brakes when He stomps on the gas…
We have our hand on the door handle ready to jump out.
Our neck is sore from twisting from side to side trying to see what is coming.
Our imagination is about to get the best of us.
We can just see ourselves crashing and burning..
We might even want to ask the question…” where did you get your drivers license… in a box of cereal?”
Sometimes God makes unscheduled stops along the way.
There are time when He takes what appears to be the long way around….
We know a short cut… He does not listen.
GOD IS MY CO-PILOT -
A few years ago someone coined the phrase,
God is my co-pilot.
There were bumper stickers available… other types of signs.
Having flown a lot I never did fully understand that phrase.
Do you know what the co-pilot does?
He takes over when everything is going well…
Or he might take over if the pilot was somehow incapacitated….
If God is not in control….
If God is not able to get the job done..
Just what is it I am going to add?
I think it was in 1980 I was flying co-pilot with a fellow by the name of Mike. We were traveling from Florida to Indiana in a Twin engine Rockwell 700 Commander.
It was dark out when we hit an ice storm over the mountains of Tenn.
It almost gave me vertigo… hard to tell if you were flying straight and level…
All at once the power went out…
My heart came clear up and lodged on the backend of my tongue.
Where would we be today if Mike had of turned to me and said… “Hey Gordon, you take over, I’m out of here”!
I’ll tell you were we would be… we would be fertilizer for the grass on some Tennessee mountain!
It’s the pilot that is in control… not the co-pilot. The pilot is the Captain!
I cannot say this about very many things where God is concerned… maybe only this one area…
But there is something where God and I are alike… neither one of us like Back seat drivers!
This is especially true with God.
He wants our total trust…..
In Ps 46:10 He says for us to BE STILL and know that He is God.
He is not just a god…
HE IS THE GOD…HE IS THE ALMIGHTY.
He is the one that built the car we are riding in…
The writer here exhorted the people to observe the saving mighty deeds of God.
These deeds portray how God brings peace to His people
How He destroys weapons throughout the earth.
God Himself calls for the people to trust in Him and know that He is God.
A few years ago I did photography as a hobby….
Even made a few dollars doing it…
I did some political photography but picked the wrong party.. they lost and so did I.
I got involved in taking pictures at race car events…
Different types of races…
Stock car and demolition derbies…
In both of these races one object was to hit your opponent and knock him out of the race.
The driver would try to blind side another car… hit him when he was not expecting it….
Kind of like, coming from out of nowhere…
The race of life is like that….
We have an enemy that tries to blind side us…
Hits us when we least expect it….
But God says that no weapon formed against us will prosper.
That does not mean you won’t get hit…
What it does mean is… the weapon will not defeat you… it will not usurp victory over you unless you allow it.
Ever watch one of these movies where there are a lot of gun battles going on and one of the main stars, one of the good guys, gets shot and down they go…
Man, that really gets to you… you think, o no, why did that have to happen…
No one wants to see the good guys go down.
Then in the next scene the fallen hero gets up… they had body armor on…. They were hit.. they went down… but they were not dead.
That is how it is with our walk with God..
We get hit… we may go down for the moment… but in the next scene we rise again!
The presence of God is our body armor… no weapon can penetrate that presence.
Sometimes we do not understand what God is doing or why He is taking so long…
We are in a hurry…. We need to get there now…
We want the ride to be over…. Maybe we have been riding for quite a while… it has been a long journey and it is not over yet.
But it seems like we are going around in circles..
Ever been in a hurry and tried to take a short cut through some neighborhood and found yourself just going around in circles and the more you go the more irritated you become.
Riding with God can sometimes seem like that…
We got it all worked out in our minds…
We know just what would work if we could just get the job done…
We even approach God and want to share our expertise…
We have already made a mess of things….
Or we are already in a situation that is beyond our control..
And yet, many times we want to continue on with our wicked way…
Wicked here simply meaning that which opposes God.
But here is what God has to say…
In Isaiah 55: “let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts and let him return unto the Lord and He will have mercy upon him and to our God for He will abundantly pardon…
God goes on to say…:for my thoughts are not your thoughts neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord for as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.
In conclusion –
To be successful and have peace of mind all one needs to do is apply the verses to their life that we read from Proverbs this morning.
>>>>look at verses 5 & 6---
“Trust in the Lord with all thine heart and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge Him and He shall direct thy paths” Pro 3:5-6
To trust in the Lord wholeheartedly means one should not rely on his own understanding, because human insights are never enough.
God’s way can seem incomprehensible yet He is trustworthy.
As a person trusts in the Lord and acknowledges Him…this is not a nod of recognition but an intimate knowledge of God…he finds that God makes his paths straight.
This means more than just guidance… it means God removes the obstacles, making a smooth path or way of life…. Or better yet….bringing us to an appointed goal.
We do have a destination…. But many times we are in the passenger seat…
That can tend to make us nervous or even afraid…..
If we get too nervous… or too upset… or too afraid… we can make matters worse.
A couple of years ago when the Kirby’s were here from India I let Kallie drive up I-17.
I could not have picked a worse time….
Rush hour traffic….
Most of you probably know just how it is on I-17 from about the 101 to Anthem Way…
Bumper to bumper…. Big trucks… little trucks…
Cars of all description…. Sane drivers… insane drivers…
And Kallie is driving…
There are not too many things that scare me.. but that day I got scared>
We were running on the inside lane…. She is passing a semi… cars all around us… and she keeps moving closer to those great big tires on that truck.
I am getting very nervous… she knows I am nervous…
The more nervous I become the more she becomes…
I look over at her… she is setting straight up with both hands locked on the wheel.
She looks scared to death… and that’s what I am thinking we are close to… death!
Her knuckles are turning white…. That is saying a lot seeing how she has beautiful brown skin…
I’m turning whiter…
She starts to perspire… I start to sweat!
I thought, o God, get us out of here.
My actions and reactions was making it all much worse than it was.. I did not have confidence in Kallie’s abilty to drive at that moment.
God wants us to fully trust in Him.
He is the driver… we are the passenger…
He is the pilot…. We are the co-pilot….
He knows just how to get us to where we need to be…
He planned it all out before we were ever born.
He said, trust me with all your heart…don’t depend on your own understanding.. acknowledge me in all your ways… I WILL DIRECT YOUR PATHS….
When we fully understand that then the Passenger Seat is not a bad place to be!
