Teenage Driver!
That term strikes fear in the hearts of most moms of junior high schoolers. They see the child before them and cannot fathom that child behind the wheel. But before those moms can blink twice it seems, they find themselves in the passenger seat beside an eager 15-year-old. While mom is praying in fear, most first time drivers have the “I got this!” attitude going. After all, what’s all the fuss about. Mash the gas. Stop at stop signs. “I’ve driven tons of times on the PS3,” they declare.
But when reality starts settling in for them, they realize its not always as easy as it had seemed with a game controller in hand rather than the steering wheel of a 1 ton vehicle.
One of the most challenging things for young drivers is learning to yield. A stop sign is definitive: see it, do it. But a yield sign is ambiguous: see it and make split second judgment calls. A yield sign offers you a choice and carries with it a responsibility. It involves a quick and weighty decision. Lives hang in the balance if it is ignored or misjudged. Even moderately large cities have high-speed interstate highways that present young drivers with practice in yielding – practice that involves risk and reward.
Just as yielding while merging onto a highway is a skill learned and developed over time and with maturity, so is yielding spiritually. Our first spiritual yielding is to His call to “Come follow me,” just as He called the apostles He walked with throughout Judea and Galilee. Little by little we learn to yield spiritually.
We yield our logic to pursue faith.
We yield our bodily desires and inclinations to become His temples on earth.
We yield our way and choose to do things His way.
We yield our weariness in order to watch and pray when He prompts.
We yield our fears to be ambassadors for the King to an unappreicative people.
We yield our rights to ourselves, and throw ourselves on the goodwill of the Father who loves us unconditionally.
We yield our hopes and dreams to accept His plan.
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Scripture offers up these directives on yielding:
Yield yourself to the Lord.
“Do not now be stiff-necked as your fathers were, but yield yourselves to the Lord and come to his sanctuary.” (2 Chronicles 30:8 ESV)
Don’t yield to anything that would hinder the gospel.
“Yet because of false brothers secretly brought in—who slipped in to spy out our freedom that we have in Christ Jesus, so that they might bring us into slavery—to them we did not yield in submission even for a moment, so that the truth of the gospel might be preserved for you.” (Galatians 2:4-5 ESV)
Do not yield to unrighteousness / Yield to righteousness.
“Neither yield your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin: but yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God…. 19 …for as ye have yielded your members servants to uncleanness and to iniquity unto iniquity; even so now yield your members servants to righteousness unto holiness.” (Romans 6:13 & 19 KJV)
We become the servant of the one we yield to.
“Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness? (Romans 6:16 KJV)
So as you drive down the road this afternoon, with or without a teen driver chauffeuring you, allow those bright, caution yellow Yield signs to be a spiritual reminder to yield your ways to Him every moment, every day.
“I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.” (Romans 12:1-2)
Priceless 