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Surrendering The Driver’s Seat
Have you ever been driving and had someone in the vehicle comment constantly on your driving telling you what to do and how to do it? Did you like it? I’ve never met anyone who likes a backseat driver. According to Miriam-Webster online, a backseat driver is a passenger in a vehicle who is not controlling the vehicle but who excessively comments on the driver’s actions and decisions in an attempt to control the vehicle. We’ve all experienced it from someone in our lives. They make comments about your driving, especially when they feel like you’re taking a risk that they wouldn’t take. What they don’t realize is that backseat driving increases the risk of having a crash because of the added stress and distraction.
When you and I accept Jesus as our savior, we put Him in the driver’s seat of our lives. We, in effect, step out of that role and become a passenger. The church phrase is, “surrendering your life to Christ”. Yet how many of us have truly surrendered our lives to Him? We don’t mind surrendering the parts of our life we struggle with, but being a Christian is about surrendering everything. Remember the old hymn “I Surrender All”? Somewhere we have lost what it means to surrender our entire life to Him. When we are both trying to control the outcome of our life, we become a backseat driver to Jesus and increase the risk of messing things up. We start telling Him what we think He should do when we don’t have all the information He has as the one in control.
Jesus said it best in Matthew 16:24, “Anyone who intends to come with me has to let me lead. You’re not in the driver’s seat; I am” (MSG). You and I have to surrender the driving seat to Him. One way I do this is each morning before my feet hit the floor is to pray, “Lord, I open myself up to you. Fill me with your Spirit until I’m overflowing. Speak through me, love through me and live through me today. Let my words and actions be reflections of who you are. Use me in anyway you see fit. I surrender to your will.” Surrendering the driver’s seat isn’t natural. It has to be a daily and sometimes hourly. God is good and has a plan for your life that is greater than your own plan. Getting out of the driver’s seat and allowing Him to take over is the best thing you can do for your life.
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Throwback Thursday is a feature I’m using to help build some margin into my schedule to pursue other ventures. Each Thursday I’ll be bringing you a previously written devotional that still speaks encouragement to us from God’s Word.
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Restoring Your Walls
One of the coolest things to see is a city like Jerusalem that still has walls around it. They’re high, thick and wrap completely around the city. You can imagine how formidable the city must have been thousands of years ago to an invading army. Cities had to have walls back then to protect themselves from enemies and nomadic warriors who went around stealing food. The size and strength of the walls were a measurement of their ability to withstand attacks. There are places in the wall around Jerusalem where you can see evidence of attacks on the city and how the wall protected its people.
If you go back a few hundred years before Jesus was born, Israel had been in captivity for about 70 years in Babylon. Cyrus became king of Persia and had it in his heart to rebuild Jerusalem. He sent many Jews back, led by Ezra, to begin the process. After about twenty years, one came back to visit family in Babylon. His brother, Nehemiah asked how it was going. When he told him that the rebuild wasn’t going well, Nehemiah wept, and God put it in his heart to return and rebuild the walls. After he arrived, he went out at night to assess the situation. He called the leaders together. In Nehemiah 2:17 he said, “You see the bad situation that we are in—how Jerusalem is desolate and lies in ruins and its gates have been burned with fire. Come, and let us rebuild the wall of Jerusalem, so that we will no longer be a disgrace” (AMP).
As Christians, we have an enemy that seeks to steal, kill and destroy what’s important to us. How are the walls in your life that are to protect you from his attacks? Are they in shambles making you vulnerable? It’s time to rebuild them so you can be a strong Christian who is a refuge for others as well. You build them through reading the Word of God that increases your faith as a shield. Remember that Jesus used the Word of God as a wall of defense against Satan when He was tempted. You also need to partner with other believers who will sharpen you. Work together, through the power of the Holy Spirit, to bring healing and restoration in your life in the broken down areas. You will still be attacked, but you will be fortified against it.
Take an assessment of where your walls are broken down, seek God’s help in rebuilding them and begin the work of restoration.
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Follow The Leader
Leadership is as important in the Church as it is in business. We need leaders and we need followers. All throughout my life, I have been blessed with great leaders in church. From my early childhood children’s pastors who taught me the foundations of faith, to my junior high teachers who helped me understand the doctrines of the church, to my high school teachers who helped me learn to pray and to memorize Scripture, to my pastors that have kept me grounded in God’s Word. I learned these things from them, but I also watched their lives. They were consistent in living what they professed. That’s what leadership is truly about.
In almost all of those leaders, I remember hearing them repeat 1 Corinthians 11:1 to me and to others. It says, “I want you to pattern your lives after me, just as I pattern mine after Christ” (TPT). The King James I grew up on said, “Imitate me as I imitate Christ.” As a kid, I remember hearing that as an instruction to look at their lives as a pattern for mine as long as they were living for Christ. It was the openness and honesty that is required of leadership. If they’re not following Christ, it was time to learn from their mistakes and to quit patterning my life after them. It’s always important to remember that church leaders are human just like ourselves. They have the same propensities to sin, and do sin. Leadership isn’t about being perfect, it’s about being real and open. What do they do when they sin? How do they respond to defeat? How do they deal with things when they’re under life’s pressures?
As you go through similar things in your life, look to the lives of the leaders God has placed around you. Hebrews 13:7 says, “Remember your leaders who taught you the word of God. Think of all the good that has come from their lives, and follow the example of their faith” (NLT). God has given the Church leaders so we can follow their examples. We are also called to be leaders ourselves. People are watching your life to see your example of faith just as you watch the lives of others. They may never tell you, but they are. It’s important that we keep our eyes on Jesus and not on a person only. He is our ultimate leader that should guide and direct how we live. I’d like to change a famous quote just a little: Lead (preach) at all times. Use words when necessary. Your actions will speak louder than your words ever will. Follow someone whose life lives what they preach, and be a person who does the same.
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Raising Your Lid
In his book “The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership”, John Maxwell starts with the Law of the Lid. It basically states that your leadership ability determines your leadership effectiveness. There’s a lid on your ability to be an effective leader. The good news is that it’s based on your abilities. Every one of us have unique abilities, and we are able to increase our abilities thereby increasing our effectiveness. The problem most people face is that we get stuck in our ways and become complacent with our level of effectiveness. The choice is up to us to do the work, enroll in classes, read and spend the time and effort it takes to raise our lid. When we do, it exponentially increases our effectiveness.
There’s a spiritual law that works the same way. Our spiritual disciplines determine our spiritual effectiveness. There’s a lid on our ability to be effective Christians. Just like the other lid, it can be raised but it takes efforts on our part. In both of his books to Timothy, Paul was writing to him to help him increase his level of effectiveness. We know 1 Timothy 4:12 where Paul tells him not to let anyone despise his youth, but to instead be an example to all. He was reminding him that age has nothing to do with his ability to be effective. It had everything to do with how we utilized his spiritual gifts and attended to his spiritual disciplines.
2 Timothy 1:6 says, “I’m writing to encourage you to fan into a flame and rekindle the fire of the spiritual gift God imparted to you when I laid my hands upon you” (TPT). There are things we must do to keep the spiritual gifts we’ve been given active and effective. We must fan them, add fuel to them and rekindle them. Our daily spiritual disciplines will do that. When we add fuel to our fire by increasing our knowledge and understanding of Scripture we increase our effectiveness. When we increase our time in prayer, we increase our ability to hear God. When we increase our study and meditation of God’s Word, our lives increase exponentially. If we want to be more effective as believers, we must raise our lid through spiritual disciplines.
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Having Enough
Every year, Americans spend over $80 billion on lottery tickets. It’s hard not to spend money on a ticket when lottery prizes are upwards of $300 million. However, nearly 45% of lottery winners go broke within 3-5 years. The problem is that we are trying to get wealth without earning it. When that happens, we don’t have an understanding of money, thinking it is an endless supply. You can search for “The lottery ruined my life” to see the countless stories of people who are worse off after having won the lottery than before. I also think there’s a heart problem here for most people. Who are you trusting to care for your needs? God or the lottery?
Each of us have prayed The Lord’s Prayer thousands of times. In it we pray, “Give us this day our daily bread.” It’s interesting that Jesus taught us to ask for daily bread, but we are always seeking more bread. When the Israelites were in the desert, God told them to gather just enough manna for one day. If they gathered more than a day’s worth, it rotted and became full of maggots. God has always been about making sure we have enough. He’s not against us getting rich or trying to make more money, but He is concerned with our motives. Are we trying to replace Him as the source for our lives?
In Proverbs 30:8-9, there is a great prayer by Agur. He prayed, “Empty out of my heart everything that is false— every lie, and every crooked thing. And give me neither undue poverty nor undue wealth— but rather, feed my soul with the measure of prosperity that pleases you. May my satisfaction be found in you. Don’t let me be so rich that I don’t need you or so poor that I have to resort to dishonesty just to make ends meet. Then my life will never detract from bringing glory to your name” (TPT). We need to find our satisfaction in Jesus, understanding that He gives us our daily bread. Jesus said that when we seek His Kingdom first, all these other things would be added to us. Is He enough in your life? Are you satisfied with Him? Or are you trying to replace the need for Him?
Photo by Travis Essinger on Unsplash
Throwback Thursday is a feature I’m using to help build some margin into my schedule to pursue other ventures. Each Thursday I’ll be bringing you a previously written devotional that still speaks encouragement to us from God’s Word.
Filed under Uncategorized
Filling Your Mind
Have you ever thought of your mind as a gas tank? It can be full or empty, and what you fill it with shows up in your life. Proverbs 4:21 says, “Fill your thoughts with my words until they penetrate deep into your spirit” (TPT). Solomon was teaching this principle to his son. The same applies to us. When we fill our thoughts with God’s Word, we put truth into our mind that cleanses it. We also give the Holy Spirit the opportunity to bring back to our remembrance what God spoke and promised. His truth then becomes what we stand on in hard times, what we think about and what we speak. If you’re struggling in your thought life, begin filling your mind up with the Word of God.
Once your mind is full of God’s Word, it’s time to begin meditating on it. Meditating is simply keeping that verse or story at the forefront of your thoughts. It’s breaking it down, looking at individual words in it and thinking about how it applies to you. As you do that, you begin to change healing for your mind and body. Proverbs 4:22 says, “Then, as you unwrap my words, they will impart true life and radiant health into the very core of your being.” God’s Word is life to all who find them and unpack them. Your thoughts are so powerful that they can manifest in sickness or healing in your body. It’s important that we put God’s Word in our mind and then unwrap their meaning for ourselves.
The next verse, Proverbs 4:23, tell us what happens next in this thought process. It says, “So above all, guard the affections of your heart, for they affect all that you are. Pay attention to the welfare of your innermost being, for from there flows the wellspring of life.” After your inside is healed, you will then begin to bring life to others. You speak life. Your thoughts have the power to shape your life despite your circumstances, and they have the power to bring life and healing to others. All this starts with you filling them with God’s Word rather than what someone else said. What you think about matters and reflects in your life. Choose carefully what you fill your mind with.
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Speak To Your Storm
How do you respond when your world is shaken? Fear? Panic? Calling out to Jesus? Blaming Jesus? Does it drive you to a vice or coping mechanism? None of us are exempt from having our world shaken and turned upside down. Our response when that happens is what matters. I’ve let those times push me away from God, cause me to be cold towards Him and find coping mechanisms to deal with the pain. I usually try to repair the situation myself first, and if I can’t (or make things worse), I then go to God. In the long term it’s boosted my faith. However, I believe God uses life altering moments to give us an opportunity to exercise our faith.
In Matthew 8:23-27, Jesus and the disciples get into a boat, after a long day of performing miracles, to cross the Sea of Galilee. Jesus was exhausted and fell asleep while the disciples rowed. Verse 24 says, “Suddenly a violent storm developed, with waves so high the boat was about to be swamped. Yet Jesus continued to sleep soundly” (TPT). The Greek word for “violent” in this text is the same word used for earthquake. Their world was being shaken and Jesus was asleep giving them the opportunity to exercise their faith after watching Him perform miracles. Instead they turned to fear and panic. They woke Him up and He calmed the storm. Jesus asked why they had so little fear implying that they could have spoken to the storm and calmed it themselves.
When’s the last time you spoke to the storm? It’s good to turn to Jesus in our time of need, but He’s also given us the authority to speak to our storms in His name. Luke 10:19 says, “Now you understand that I have imparted to you my authority to trample over his kingdom. You will trample upon every demon before you and overcome every power Satan possesses. Absolutely nothing will harm you as you walk in this authority.” It’s time you and I began to walk in the authority that has been given to us. Storms are designed to take the training wheels off, not to get us to rely on them more. Speak with the authority of Jesus’ name into your storm, trust God to do His part and walk in faith believing He will answer. Your life shaking storm should cause faith to rise up, not fear.
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Work Hard
One of my favorite lines from Marin Luther’s “I Have A Dream” speech always challenges me. He said, “If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, “Here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.'” Each time I hear that or read it, it pushed me to make sure that I’m doing things to the best of my ability or not. A bad boss or a job I don’t like shouldn’t keep me from doing my job well. Whatever God has given me to do at that time is what He needs me to do my best at.
Paul wrote something similar in Romans 12:6. It says, “In His grace, God has given us different gifts for doing certain things well” (NLT). We each have different gifts and different responsibilities given to us by God. Paul goes on to say that if you have the gift of prophesy, then do it with as much faith as God has given you. If you are called to serve others, then do it well. If you are to encourage others, be encouraging. He lists multiple in this passage and after each one, he encourages us to use it to the best of our ability and to use it in love. We don’t need to compare ourselves to each other because we’ve been given unique gifts to fit our life and the people we’ve been called to serve.
He starts to conclude his thoughts on this in verse 11 by saying, “Never be lazy, but work hard and serve the Lord enthusiastically.” Whether you like your gifts or where God has placed you right now, you should be working hard and enthusiastically as unto the Lord. When we do our jobs or activities for a person, we can let our attitude towards them affect our performance. When we do it unto the Lord with our whole heart, then excellence becomes a natural byproduct. We must remember that our work ethic represents Him as well. What we do and how well we do it is a reflection of Him because we bear His name. So whatever you’re called to do right now, do it as Michelangelo painted, Beethoven played and Shakespeare wrote. Do it with all your might and enthusiastically unto the Lord.
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Devotions by Chris Hendrix 