Choose Your Engine!

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The little peddle car above is so cute, isn’t it? Don’t you wish you had one when you were little? Or, maybe you did and this pic brings back many fond memories of your first driving experiences in a speedy one-seater (at least as speedy as your pudgy little legs could peddle – approximately 3 mph with a maximum runtime of 10 minutes). And maybe it’s a car just like this one that Lewis Hamilton first drove, giving him a taste for the one on the right that he now drives at F1 tracks. It causes the pulse to race just by its sexy-cool look. And it’s worth mentioning that it moves a tad bit faster than the one on the left (up to 223.6 mph!). Beyond the similarities, (four tires and a steering wheel), there are no reasonable comparisons.

I include these pictures, prompted, I believe, by the Holy Spirit. The tiny and adorable car on the left is a fairly accurate representation of our lives before the empowerment of the Holy Spirit. It is pretty and practical and safe and is guaranteed to bring great joy and thrilling rides to its young owner. Being self-powered, as we all are pre- Holy Spirit, enthusiasm wanes quickly as fatigue sets in. After all, our legs are the motor in that vehicle. And the Apostle Paul laments in Romans chapter seven, that he finds himself incapable, within his fallen self, of accomplishing what he wants to accomplish and guilty of doing what he wants to avoid doing. The F1 car, by contrast, is like us with our new ‘engine,’ the Holy Spirit, who has blow-your-hair-back power to spare.

On the outside, we still look like toddlers furiously pumping our legs and chortling, “Vroom! Vroom!” in a bright blue peddle car, but hidden away inside each of us, now resides a 1000hp, 1.6 liter turbo hybrid engine, eager to be turned loose and put to the test. If someone ever found a way to install that engine in our peddle car, the result would be total disaster. But with God, nothing is impossible! By His design we remain ordinary flesh and blood human beings with faults and failures and fears and white steering wheels, sometimes weak and sinful beyond belief to our own dismay and disgust, and all the while God sees, in us, the fruit of the finished work of Jesus on Calvary and it is His smiling, satisfied delight to run His engine in us, building us up, encouraging us, expanding the Kingdom through us, challenging us to love Him, ourselves, our neighbors, the world. “Who compares with You among gods, O God? Who compares with you in power, in holy majesty, in awesome praises, wonder-working God?” Exodus 15:11, MSG. PD