Given this, I sometimes wish my faith, or God's being, or the person of Jesus was more like a muscle car or high end off-road utility vehicle. I could park it in the parking lot of my choosing and invite people to gather around. I could open the Spirit's hood and let people marvel at the engine, turbo, cam, and special intakes. We could peek into and inspect the finer points of Jesus that rank him far superior to other "saviors" and be mystified by the ingenuity of such a machine. I could take people out on test drives with God, show them his power, his ability to climb, turn, out race, out pace, and out perform all others, regardless the conditions or odds. We'd all have a rip-roaring time and everyone would enviously wish they had God to park in their garages as well. Then they'd weep for joy as I told them the price--just believe it is yours, agree it'll be your only vehicle, and allow it to be the highest power and priority in your life.
I could sell 1,000 in a day. Or more.
Elijah had this chance (as recorded in 1 Kings 18:22-39). A bunch of Baal worshipers (the competing God of the times) and Elijah went toe-to-toe in the town square to see which God was the true God. All either group had to do was call on their God and ask him to start their wood pile on fire. The Baal worshipers struggled. Elijah teased them that perhaps their god was sleeping or on vacation at the moment. No matter what they did, Baal would not light their fire. Elijah on the other hand poured water on his wood pile--quite a bit of it. Then, in front of everyone, against all odds, he put the petal to the metal, opened the throttle, and let 'er rip (actually, he said a mighty, confident prayer), and whoom! The wood burst into flames!
Elijah sat in the cockpit of his muscle-car faith, with his muscle-car God, cruising at the speed of sound, looking back through the billowing cloud of tire smoke at his competitor. Take that, Baal drivers. You just got smoked.
Although we may often feel our faith is like a Datsun--only running on 2 or 3 or 4 cylinders, stalling at every green light, sputtering up hills, squealing around turns, unwilling to start in the cold, unable to run in the heat, too easy to steal, too hard to find in a parking lot, unlikely to carry more than a fanny pack sized load, and less likely than any other vehicle to catch the eyes of on-lookers, we know our God IS truly that pure monster muscle car. It's just difficult to see sometimes.Elijah wasn't always able to pull off fire stunts as he did. Nor will we always be able. But far too often, we see the muscle-car God truly is only as the little "Datsun that really couldn't." And we hide it in the garage, just shrugin
g our shoulders as we trust our little "putter" to get us where we need to go--one way or another.
Perhaps it's time to change our perspectives, see who God truly is, and take 'er out on the streets for a whirl. It beats what many of us are doing now!
More to come!
Jason <><
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