Hands Free

Soooooo, my Mom got a new car last night, it's pretty cool - it's loaded with features - all of which are very cool, most of which we will never use...

Here are a few of the best ones:

1. The top feature in my eyes is the feature that keeps you in your own lane - hands free! Say it's the middle of the night, and you're on a long road trip... and you start to doze off. (Maybe you should pull over and get a room) But maybe you're hard-headed and so you keep on driving. The car will actually keep you in your lane, thus keeping you from running off the road and killing yourself! (You know I had to test it out - it actually works)
   
2. Another cool feature, one that I'm too freaked out to test... the car has a feature that will keep you from running into the car in front of you. If it senses that you are approaching something at a high rate of speed, and you're not braking, the car will begin to slow down and come to a stop for you - hands free! (well, technically, foot free)
   
3. The car will record up to 5,000 songs from CD's and play them by voice activation - totally hands free!
   
4. It will also call people from your cell phone by just saying their name - hands free!
   

I'm excited about all these features because they have literally been consuming me the last 24 hours. Being that neither of my parents are technologically literate, I have been the one who is charged with figuring out how everything works, and then teaching them how to use the features. (Sidebar, I'm also the one who loads contacts/speed dials into cell phones)

Anyways, I got to thinking about all this hands free stuff... the first thing I remembered, was this hilarious commercial....


lol - and i'll try to lay out my next thoughts in the remaining paragraphs of this blog...

We are a hands free people. If we can do it by voice activation we will not lay a hand on it; maybe it's the convenience, maybe it's just how cool it is, but we are obsessed with being "hands free". I don't guess there's really anything wrong with it (except for making us increasingly lazy :) )... but then again, as the video illustrates, this hands free approach doesn't translate into every area of life - this is especially true in our spiritual lives.

We want a "hands free" faith. We want a gospel that makes our life easier, a "lazy man's faith", a gospel that serves us, and doesn't necessarily encroach on our day to day lives. A gospel that we don't necessarily have to put our hand to: a voice activated gospel, if you will.

Maybe we've found ourself getting out of our lane, maybe we're moving too fast towards a collision, whatever the case may be... we then try to voice activate God.
"God, get me back in the right lane...", or, "God, get me out of this situation..."
We try and try to "voice activate" God, and then we somehow think that our faith or our God is defective when we collide with the troubles in life.

Or, some people would tell us that we can never speak a negative word... that maybe, if we speak enough positive words, everything will just work itself out. Don't get me wrong, I don't believe in speaking negativity and I think it's the wise person who has a positive word on his tongue but if that's all we have, then we don't have much. Words without action do not get God's attention. If we never put our hand to our faith, we will never see the results of our faith.
Faith is not simply something that we talk about, faith is something we DO.
It is not a passive possession, but rather an aggressive action.

Faith is not voice activated, faith is not hands free, in fact faith is only activated when we put our "hand to the plow."

Hebrews 11 (Check out all the action words here...)

• v4 "By faith Abel offered"
  
• v7 "By faith Noah... moved with Godly fear, prepared an ark..."
  
• v8 "By faith Abraham obeyed..."
  
• v17 "By faith Abraham offered up Isaac..."
  
• v24 "By faith Moses refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter..."
  
• v27 "By faith he forsook Egypt..."
  
• v29 "By faith they entered the red sea..."
  

As we see - FAITH IS ACTION! I heard a great preacher say,
"Faith is not saying you believe in God, faith is acting like you believe in God."

Yea, it's more convenient to think that we can voice activate God - but it doesn't yield results.
Yea, it looks way cooler to walk around talking about big faith, rather than quietly going about the "work" of the gospel.
Yea, putting our hand to faith will encroach on our lives - it is supposed to overtake our lives.
No, putting our hand to faith will not be comfortable - it was never meant to be.

But it is when we put our hand to the plow of faith and start to act on God's word - that is when we get his attention. That is when he sees that we are serious about Him. That is when we begin to see the results of faith. That is when God's promises begin to become a reality in our lives.

So, turn your faith on, but it wont by happen by just talking about it. Make a fresh commitment to God, and then act on that commitment. Hands free cars are cool, hands free faith is a dream.

• Talk to your coworker about Christ.
  
• Pick up a family who doesn't have a ride to church.
  
• Teach a Sunday School class.
  
• Get in the choir.
  

Whatever you do, JUST DO IT!!!

-chase