By Barry Howard
I learned how to drive in my grandfather’s 1966 Volkswagen Fastback — a straight shift. Learning to change gears while simultaneously pressing the clutch proved to be quite a challenge. However, once I mastered the art of driving a manual transmission, moving to an automatic was a piece of cake.
Rather than shifting from first to second and then third or grinding around looking for reverse, the options on the column of our 1976 Falcon were PNRDL: “P” for Park. “N” for Neutral. “R” for Reverse. “D” for Drive. And “L” for Low, a gear usually used for towing.
As we come to the end of the summer and as I am preparing to challenge our congregation to “gear up” for the upcoming season of missional opportunities, I am reminded of how easy it is for our lives to get stuck in the wrong gear. In our commitments to Christ, to our church, and to our daily responsibilities we can become lethargic, passive, inactive, and at times, even backslide into old habits, living as if we have not given our hearts and lives to Jesus.
If you are sitting still, seemingly not going anywhere, your life may be stuck in Park. If you are committed to preserving the status quo, content to let others carry the bulk of responsibility, and have no interest in growing, your life is probably in Park. If you have grown comfortable sitting behind the steering wheel but you never leave the driveway, perhaps you need to find a way to get your life out of Park and into a forward gear.
A life that is stuck in Park is not going anywhere, but a life stuck in Neutral can be even more detrimental. When you put a car in Neutral and let off the brake, it is likely to roll one way or the other. Perhaps it will roll whichever way the wind is blowing. Or maybe it will move one direction or the other based on the tug of gravity, which is usually downhill. The danger of putting your life in Neutral is that you live without conviction, you go the way of the crowd or you choose the path of least resistance. And those options are seldom the right way.
If you are continually going backward, or preoccupied with the past, your life might be stuck in Reverse. But it’s hard to go forward while looking backward. Back in the 1990’s, the church I served in Alabama had a faithful custodian named Ralph. Ralph was a retired chemist who came to work at the church as a retirement project. Ralph was a loyal soul — good-hearted and highly punctual. Ralph and I both typically arrived at the church early, often driving into the parking lot simultaneously. One morning, as I pulled into my parking space, I heard a few horns honking at the nearby intersection. I looked up to investigate the commotion and was stunned to see Ralph’s 1972 Dodge Ram approaching the church … backward. Ralph was driving toward the church in a line of traffic tailgate first. He was advancing forward in Reverse. As he pulled up beside me, he quickly explained that his transmission had locked up and Reverse was the only gear that worked. He didn’t want to miss work, so he drove all the way from home — looking backward over his shoulder.
To this day, Ralph is the only guy I know who has ever advanced forward by going backward. But as a minister serving in Baptist churches for over 30 years, I’ve seen a lot of others try to move forward by looking backward, and it just doesn’t work.
To get your life in gear and move forward, you have to move out of Park, resist the temptation to settle for Neutral and avoid Reverse in order to put life into Drive.
Maybe that is why Paul wrote to the Philippians, “Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus” (3:13-14 NIV).
God intends for us to grow forward in our walk with Christ, our fellowship with one another, and our participation in the work of the Kingdom. One analyst put it this way: “There comes a moment when you have to stop revving up the car and shove it into gear.”
Now is the time.
