Thrill Rides

"Oh! May the God of green hope fill you up with joy, fill you up with peace, so that your believing lives, filled with the life-giving energy of the Holy Spirit, will brim over with hope!" (Romans 15:13 The Message)

Back in 1985, my wife and I bought a beautiful 1967 Mustang, with an 8 cylinder 351 Windsor engine that made it like a rocket engine on a roller skate. Our other car was a Chevrolet Citation with a mocking demon under the hood that loved to torture us by not letting it start whenever we wanted to do something drastic, like drive it to the store. The Mustang was a thing of beauty, though. A car from back in the days when Detroit built cars instead of four-wheeled computers. In it, I discovered that Emily had lead weights grafted on her feet which treated me to some seriously white-knuckled, warp-drive excursions.

A friend of ours had a Dodge Colt - a car that went from 0-50 by Tuesday. His car needed some repairs and he had to leave it with the mechanic, so he asked if he could borrow the Mustang for the day while his car was in the shop. Okay, I trusted him, so I let him drive it for the day. When he returned the keys to me, he looked kind of flushed and said "Drew, I want to thank you for the single most thrilling day of my life!"

God doesn't want us to drive an "inadequate-to-simply-adequate" life. We come to the Savior seeking salvation and eternal life, and get a spiritual Dodge Colt to drive around - it will get us around, but not with any real style. Then we get faced with a mocking demon under the hood that loves to torture us with discouragement, rage, defeatism, hopelessness, helplessness, and a whole other range of problems guaranteed to stop us from getting anywhere.

But God is willing to equip the roller skate of our lives with the rocket engine of His Holy Spirit, Who can give us the thrills of a lifetime to take us into an eternal lifetime. We don't have to settle with a spiritually inadequate life. But we have to give up our self-propulsion and give Jesus everything we are. He customizes us into lean mean spiritual machines and turns us loose to make a difference in this sinful, fallen world ruled by despair and death.

Want the keys to a new vehicle? Check your old model with the repairman - get the key to the Spirit-baptized new life by asking in prayer and believing - and drive with a boldness you never knew was possible. You'll handle the hairpin turns and the bumpy roads of life with a power greater than your imagination - and you will be life's victor instead of life's victim.

Blessings from here to eternity,

Pastor Drew