Jesus Take the Wheel

Jesus take the wheel
Take it from my hands
‘Cause I can't do this on my own
I'm gonna let it go
So give me one more chance
To save me from this road I'm on
Jesus take the wheel

This song, performed by country star Carrie Underwood, describes a situation where a woman driving home for Christmas has a near-accident because she was driving too fast. When the car finally came to a stop she reconciled with God admitting she had been living her life too fast and with little faith.

We too are passengers in a car with God. We are the passengers and God is driving us to eternal happiness through a relationship with him. But what is the meaning of true relationship or friendship? True friendship is founded on trust. We trust our friends with our deepest emotions and desires. The interesting part is that our friends sometimes don’t act like our friends. They will sometimes pursue their own interest even if it causes us a great deal of pain. And many of us will have very few true friends in our lifetime. The most interesting realization is that we are more than willing to trust our human friends with our feelings and emotions but we will not give them to God, who is not sabotaged by imperfection. However, if we are to seek true happiness, we have to have faith in God and let Him lead us there. So, what is your biggest obstacle for achieving your own happiness? It is you. We are the reason that we are not happy because we refuse to trust God with our lives. We constantly want to reach over from the passenger side of the car and take the wheel from Him thinking that we can do it better and that we know what we want. But ask yourself this: How have you done so far driving the car? I can honestly say that when I have jerked the wheel from God my track record has been everything but perfect. And the sad part is we do this to ourselves because we want to be in control. But God has a plan for us, and every time we jerk the wheel and head down a destructive path, He lovingly gets us back on the road.

We tend to self-sabotage ourselves by not trusting God with our happiness. Why do we do this? There are many reasons why we do this and I will cover them in more detail in later posts but for now, suffice it to say that there are two central reasons that prevent us from fully trusting in God. The first reason is that many do not really know God and have a personal relationship with Him. We have not truly experienced Him. Many of us go to church every Sunday to hear the word of God but how many of us take that home and practice it in our daily lives? God loves us and He wants us to be happy. The second reason we have trouble trusting God is that we feel we know ourselves better than He knows us. We think we know what will make us happy and we think we know what we need to do to achieve it. When given an opportunity to do something on our own, we will always take it.

So how can we fix this? First, we have to recognize that God is sovereign, that He is good, and that He wants us to be happy. Psalm 56:11 says, “in God I have put my trust, I shall not be afraid.” Having trust is one of the most difficult tasks that we encounter. It takes a long time to develop and can be broken in a second. But we can trust God because he wants nothing more than for us to know Him and have a relationship with Him. His love for us is perfect and cannot be sabotaged. And just like our parents want the best for us, God wants us to be happy and successful. In fact, He wants this so much that He is willing to tolerate the times when we take control of the car to our own downfall and suffering and He suffers sadness with us. So, what can we do in our daily lives to have more trust in Him and His perfect plan for us? We have to pray often for His guidance and recognize that we will inevitably find ourselves in bad situations where we will make bad decisions. He wants to help us and guide us, and He wants us to ask Him! Secondly, we should sign a contract with God and commit to living His purpose and having trust in Him. This does little more for God other than make him smile, but for us, it signifies our absolute commitment and resolve to trust Him with our life. Think of it like this. Imagine the person you trust most in this world and then take away all of their flaws and imagine that all they want from you is a relationship and your eternal happiness. Such is your relationship with God! He simply wants you to trust Him.