Who Is Driving the Car of Your Life?

You may have heard the nice little saying, "If God is your co-pilot, change seats". The point of the phrase (as I understand it) is to help people understand that our lives are to be "living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God" -Hebrews 12:1, and to understand that we shouldn't be living for ourselves. However, as a metaphor, I think it is overused, and more than that, I think there are better ways to get that point across.

Here's what that phrase connotates in my mind:
"You should sit in the passenger seat of your own life. Don't worry, God will do everything for you. Just go to sleep, live on auto-pilot, go to church, go to work, eat, sleep. You don't need to work for anything, or try to change things, God will do it for you."

This is not quite the philosophy I try to live my life by.

Instead, I think we need to find something that sends a message more like this:
"You are not a puppet being played by a puppet master. By leaping into life with God, you become more YOU, not a shell of a person or a less real person, but someone more real, more vibrant. God, through His spirit, is always there, and will guide you. He deeply desires a relationship with you, and has beautiful plans for you if you listen to Him speak, and let Him guide you. But each choice is still yours. You are not a robot, nor a passive audience member to your own life. God became enfleshed in the form of Jesus (and died and rose again) not in order to take our free will or freedom away, but to free us from sin. " It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery." - Galatians 5:1.

It is my understanding that God wants to transform our lives, not take them away from us. He did not come to continue the legalistic and judgemental ways of the pharisees. Rather, he came to show us how to live in Love.

I understand the good intentions behind the God in the driver's seat phrase, but I don't feel like God wants to kick us out of our own lives. He created us in His image, and said that it was GOOD. While He wants us to love Him, and be in relationship with Him, but even then, I don't think that He wants us to take a passive approach to life, or feel like our being is somehow less. While some of our habits that push us away from God will have to be left, what fills the space, I hope, is not robotic obedience (if God had wanted that, I don't think He would have given us free will), but an intimate relationship.

So maybe we should understand that as we drive, God has a map, and so we can be sure that when we listen to him, we will be better off, and more on the right track on our journey than if we tried to find the way ourselves.