What Is Driving Your Like?
What Is Driving Your Life?
There is a question that cuts deeper than most of us are comfortable admitting: not where is my life going, but what is actually driving it? The destination matters, but the engine behind the journey matters far more. Because you can be moving quickly and still be headed in the completely wrong direction. Movement is not the same thing as progress.
Every person alive is being driven by something. Some are driven by success, others by fear. Some by anger, some by the desperate need for approval. Some carry the weight of past failures like a stone tied around their neck, dragging them down with every step forward they try to take. Others are driven by pain, by regret, by an identity built entirely around what has been done to them. The question is not whether something is driving you. Something always is. The question is whether what drives you is leading you somewhere worth going.
Romans 8:12-17 lays out a clear contrast. Paul writes about two ways of living, one driven by the flesh, and one led by the Spirit of God. He makes the stakes plain: a life governed by the flesh leads to death, but a life in which the Spirit puts to death the deeds of the body leads to life. And then he says something remarkable. He reminds his readers that they did not receive a spirit of bondage leading back to fear. They received a spirit of adoption, through which they can cry out to God as Father. The children of God are not meant to be prisoners of their impulses, their appetites, their emotions, or their circumstances.
That word, prisoners, is worth sitting with. Because so many people are living exactly that way. Imprisoned by a diagnosis they have accepted as a life sentence. Imprisoned by bitterness toward someone who wronged them years ago. Imprisoned by shame over failures they cannot seem to move past. Imprisoned by fear of what change might cost them. And the tragedy is not just the suffering involved. The tragedy is that none of it is necessary.
Hebrews 12:1 calls us to lay aside every weight and every sin that so easily entangles us, so that we can run with endurance the race set before us. Notice that Paul makes a distinction between weights and sins. Sin violates God's command outright. But weights are not always sinful in themselves. They are simply interferences, unresolved hurt, unhealthy relationships, secret habits, the relentless need for others to approve of us, the fear of change, a victim mindset that keeps us circling the same wound for years. These things do not have to be sinful to be destructive. They just have to be heavy enough to slow you down and keep you from where God is calling you.
What we refuse to release eventually restricts us. We cannot carry yesterday's bitterness and run toward tomorrow's purpose at the same time. We cannot hold on to what God has told us to lay down and simultaneously reach for everything he has for us. Repentance is not just a tearful moment at an altar. It is a decision. A decision to lay it down. And sometimes what we need to repent of is not a dramatic sin but a slow, creeping distraction that has quietly stolen our focus from the things of God.
The flesh has a very predictable voice. It says do what feels good. Protect yourself at any cost. Get revenge. Hurt others before they hurt you. Keep the secret. Feed the appetite. Follow the crowd. The Spirit has a different voice entirely. The Spirit says forgive first. Tell the truth. Run from temptation. Make it right. Surrender completely. Love your enemies.
That last one is where most of us hit a wall. Love your enemies. Bless those who curse you. It sounds impossible, and if we are being honest, it can feel offensive. But here is what bitterness actually does to a person: it eats them alive from the inside while the object of their anger goes on with their life completely unaffected. Holding onto bitterness does not punish the person who hurt you. It imprisons you. The moment you begin praying for the person who wronged you -- genuinely, sincerely, asking God to bless them and meet their needs -- something begins to break loose inside you. The dark clouds start to lift. The grip of that bitterness starts to loosen. Because you have chosen the Spirit's way over the flesh's way.
Galatians 5:16 puts it simply: walk in the Spirit, and you will not fulfill the lust of the flesh. The Spirit-led life is not about white-knuckling your way through temptation through sheer willpower. Self-improvement can adjust behavior. Discipline can build better habits. But only God can give a person a new heart. Only the Holy Ghost can bring genuine transformation. Religion may tell you how you ought to live, but it is the Spirit of God that supplies the power to actually live it.
And that Spirit-led life begins with one thing: surrender. Not surrender to your problems or your diagnosis or your past. Surrender to God, so that he can work in and through all of those things. Psalm 119 reminds us that hiding God's word in the heart is what keeps us from sin. The word of God is not a decoration. It is a roadmap. And our lives do not adjust the word to fit our preferences -- the word adjusts us, reshapes us, transforms us from the inside out.
So the question is worth asking again, slowly, honestly: what is driving your life right now?
A person driven by what is behind them is always being pushed. A person led by the Spirit is guided by the One who goes before them. There is a significant difference between being pushed by your past and being led by your God.
The invitation is open. Lay aside the weight. Lay aside the sin. Stop managing what God died to deliver you from. Surrender it. And let the One who goes before you lead you into the life he always intended for you to live.
There is a question that cuts deeper than most of us are comfortable admitting: not where is my life going, but what is actually driving it? The destination matters, but the engine behind the journey matters far more. Because you can be moving quickly and still be headed in the completely wrong direction. Movement is not the same thing as progress.
Every person alive is being driven by something. Some are driven by success, others by fear. Some by anger, some by the desperate need for approval. Some carry the weight of past failures like a stone tied around their neck, dragging them down with every step forward they try to take. Others are driven by pain, by regret, by an identity built entirely around what has been done to them. The question is not whether something is driving you. Something always is. The question is whether what drives you is leading you somewhere worth going.
Romans 8:12-17 lays out a clear contrast. Paul writes about two ways of living, one driven by the flesh, and one led by the Spirit of God. He makes the stakes plain: a life governed by the flesh leads to death, but a life in which the Spirit puts to death the deeds of the body leads to life. And then he says something remarkable. He reminds his readers that they did not receive a spirit of bondage leading back to fear. They received a spirit of adoption, through which they can cry out to God as Father. The children of God are not meant to be prisoners of their impulses, their appetites, their emotions, or their circumstances.
That word, prisoners, is worth sitting with. Because so many people are living exactly that way. Imprisoned by a diagnosis they have accepted as a life sentence. Imprisoned by bitterness toward someone who wronged them years ago. Imprisoned by shame over failures they cannot seem to move past. Imprisoned by fear of what change might cost them. And the tragedy is not just the suffering involved. The tragedy is that none of it is necessary.
Hebrews 12:1 calls us to lay aside every weight and every sin that so easily entangles us, so that we can run with endurance the race set before us. Notice that Paul makes a distinction between weights and sins. Sin violates God's command outright. But weights are not always sinful in themselves. They are simply interferences, unresolved hurt, unhealthy relationships, secret habits, the relentless need for others to approve of us, the fear of change, a victim mindset that keeps us circling the same wound for years. These things do not have to be sinful to be destructive. They just have to be heavy enough to slow you down and keep you from where God is calling you.
What we refuse to release eventually restricts us. We cannot carry yesterday's bitterness and run toward tomorrow's purpose at the same time. We cannot hold on to what God has told us to lay down and simultaneously reach for everything he has for us. Repentance is not just a tearful moment at an altar. It is a decision. A decision to lay it down. And sometimes what we need to repent of is not a dramatic sin but a slow, creeping distraction that has quietly stolen our focus from the things of God.
The flesh has a very predictable voice. It says do what feels good. Protect yourself at any cost. Get revenge. Hurt others before they hurt you. Keep the secret. Feed the appetite. Follow the crowd. The Spirit has a different voice entirely. The Spirit says forgive first. Tell the truth. Run from temptation. Make it right. Surrender completely. Love your enemies.
That last one is where most of us hit a wall. Love your enemies. Bless those who curse you. It sounds impossible, and if we are being honest, it can feel offensive. But here is what bitterness actually does to a person: it eats them alive from the inside while the object of their anger goes on with their life completely unaffected. Holding onto bitterness does not punish the person who hurt you. It imprisons you. The moment you begin praying for the person who wronged you -- genuinely, sincerely, asking God to bless them and meet their needs -- something begins to break loose inside you. The dark clouds start to lift. The grip of that bitterness starts to loosen. Because you have chosen the Spirit's way over the flesh's way.
Galatians 5:16 puts it simply: walk in the Spirit, and you will not fulfill the lust of the flesh. The Spirit-led life is not about white-knuckling your way through temptation through sheer willpower. Self-improvement can adjust behavior. Discipline can build better habits. But only God can give a person a new heart. Only the Holy Ghost can bring genuine transformation. Religion may tell you how you ought to live, but it is the Spirit of God that supplies the power to actually live it.
And that Spirit-led life begins with one thing: surrender. Not surrender to your problems or your diagnosis or your past. Surrender to God, so that he can work in and through all of those things. Psalm 119 reminds us that hiding God's word in the heart is what keeps us from sin. The word of God is not a decoration. It is a roadmap. And our lives do not adjust the word to fit our preferences -- the word adjusts us, reshapes us, transforms us from the inside out.
So the question is worth asking again, slowly, honestly: what is driving your life right now?
A person driven by what is behind them is always being pushed. A person led by the Spirit is guided by the One who goes before them. There is a significant difference between being pushed by your past and being led by your God.
The invitation is open. Lay aside the weight. Lay aside the sin. Stop managing what God died to deliver you from. Surrender it. And let the One who goes before you lead you into the life he always intended for you to live.
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