I remember the days of learning to drive. I carried the dream and excitement of being able to go all kinds of places and do all kinds of things, once I was able to drive. I remember driving in the hay field. That might have been the first time. It was probably my neighbor, Vernard Webb, who got me started. I remember sitting in the driver’s seat behind the wheel, and he was there to coach me on the use of the clutch, brake, and gas pedal then put it in gear. The farm truck I was driving had a gear called “grandma”. Once in “grandma”, the truck was not going anywhere fast. It would only creep. All I did was steer it and push the clutch in to pause the forward movement of the truck if needed. When it was time to take the load of hay to the barn, somebody else drove to the barn, since I was only eleven or twelve, and not legal, or safe, to drive on a public road. Later, after obtaining my license, and was able to drive on my own, it was absolutely wonderful to go places and do things on my own. We had an old green Ford truck that had been wrecked on one side. That made no difference with me. 007 James Bond (Sean Connery) was my hero in those youthful, idealistic, days, so I put some loud sounding glass paks on the truck exhaust system and a 007 license plate on the front and away I went. I thought I was the hottest wheels in town. I would go into Malvern and “cruise”. There was a certain route between the fast food joints that we all drove along to see each other, the guys to see the girls and the girls to see the guys. Strange thing, I never picked anybody up. I still thought I was hot. It all came about because I got my hands on the wheel and learned to drive.
In the kingdom of God and in the things of God, we never make real advances until we get our hands on the wheel. We can sit around and study the Bible, pray, talk about what happened in the Bible, and we can even teach others about the Bible. But the Bible will never come alive to us until we get our hands on the wheel to actually receive by faith what God has for us, and put our hands to the wheel to do what God said to do. The exciting thing is that when we take action to apply the Word to our lives, we go new places in the Lord Jesus and we do new things that we once only talked about. What that Bible says is true. The truck is in gear and rolling. We just need to lay our hands to what God is doing and roll with him and learn to drive where he leads us to go.