"God is my Co-Pilot"

God is My Co-Pilot

There was a time when I felt slightly irritated when I would see the bumper stickers and other products with the phrase, “God is my Co-Pilot.”  I understood what it meant, but my mind argued, “Why isn’t He your Pilot??” This morning, the phrase came to mind but I started to think about it differently. There are times in our lives that God most definitely needs to be allowed to sit in the Pilot seat and we just need to let Him do the flying. There are also times where I believe He wants US to fly, relying on Him to guide us.

                When God created us, He gave us free will. As Love, God is incapable of forcing us to follow His will. If He became selfish and decided to MAKE us follow Him, He would cease to be Love (as Scripture clearly says He is in 1 John 4:16 “And so we know and rely on the love God has for us.God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.”). Love is not self-seeking (1 Corinthians 13). God created us to love Him, but cannot make us love Him. He just loves us regardless of what we choose, while we are free to make our choices and go where we want to go. We are our own pilots.

                There have been many times lately that, even though I’m my own pilot, I’ve had to crawl into the co-pilot seat and allow Him the controls because I didn’t have the energy or the stability to do it on my own. That’s what happens when the storms get rough and the turbulence threatens to ground us (in a less-than graceful manner, might I add).

                Now that I’m on the other side of the turbulence (for now), I believe God expects me to get back into the pilot seat and trust Him to be my wiser, experienced, mentoring Co-Pilot to get me where He wants me to be. There comes a point where He expects us to use what He’s given us through the turbulence to fulfill our part of His plan and fly the plane.

                Whether we are piloting the plane or allowing God to when we can’t, the bigger picture is that He’s in the cockpit with us. He’s not going to leave us there alone, to face in solitude whatever is out there. The choice we have is to be stubborn and ignore His all-knowing guidance, or embrace the fact that we have such an amazing, loving God in the cockpit with us and fly when and where he says to fly.