The Passenger Seat

The hardest part of faith is not the checklist. It is letting God drive.

Scripture quotations are from the New Living Translation (NLT).

I struggle. This whole business of Christian living, of trying to be the good Christian, is hard. And the more I grow, the more I know, the harder it seems to get. I honestly understand why people drift away.

Part of me is always looking for a checklist. If I could just do A, B, C, all the way to Z, then I’d be a good Christian. Then I’d be safe. I know what I’m aiming for: to kneel before God one day and hear Him say, “Well done, my good and faithful servant” (Matthew 25:21).

But here’s the truth. I don’t care how confident I am. When I kneel before God, I’m going to be scared to death. My greatest fear isn’t that He’ll list my failures. It’s that He’ll look at me and say, “Who are you? I don’t know you.”

Jesus spoke those words in Matthew 7. On judgment day, many will say to Him, “Lord! Lord! We prophesied in your name and cast out demons in your name and performed many miracles in your name.” And He will reply, “I never knew you. Get away from me, you who break God’s laws” (Matthew 7:22–23). When I read that passage closely, I notice something. The people He says it to had a checklist. They had done the list. What they…