“We who are Jews by birth and not 'Gentile sinners' know that a man is not justified by observing the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ. So we, too, have put our faith in Christ Jesus that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by observing the law, because by observing the law no one will be justified. If, while we seek to be justified in Christ, it becomes evident that we ourselves are sinners, does that mean that Christ promotes sin? Absolutely not! If I rebuild what I destroyed, I prove that I am a lawbreaker. For through the law I died to the law so that I might live for God. I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, Who loved me and gave Himself for me. I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!” (Galatians 2:15-21)

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Some years ago there was a bumper sticker that was somewhat popular – at least among some in the Christian community – because of the succinctness and apparent worthiness of its message. The words were very simple: “God is my co-pilot.” Who could argue with that concept? It's a great image. Whoever came up with the words and the idea of putting them on the bumper sticker probably made a fair bit of money off it, because it sounds great. It's a great image – who'd want to argue with it? It paints this wonderful picture in our minds of life as a journey that I take with God at my side all the way through until I finally reach my appointed destination. Who can argue? As Christians, after all, shouldn't we keep God at our sides all the way through this journey of life? Of course we should! “God is my co-pilot,” after all. It's a great image. So – what's wrong with it? Well, the problem is in both the words and the image. The implicit message behind saying that “God is my co-pilot” is that we're saying at the same time “I'm in charge!” What is the co-pilot of an aircraft, after all? He's the second in command. He might give advice and he might help out and he might even fly the plane for a while – but it's the pilot who makes all the decisions. A little while ago we sang the hymn “All To Jesus I Surrender.” It's a wonderful old hymn with a great message – but if God is my co-pilot then it isn't true. If that's my image of the relationship I have with God, then I don't ever have to surrender control of anything to God – unless I choose to do so, no more than the pilot of an airplane has to turn the controls over to the co-pilot. So this wonderful sounding slogan - “God is my co-pilot” - is in reality as problematic as it may seem wonderful. It leaves me in control – of everything. By this line of thinking, I don't have to surrender a darn thing to God!

Well, in starting my remarks this morning, I do want to acknowledge the practical reality and truth of the bumper sticker. That reality and that truth is that God has given us free will. In a way, then, we are actually in control – certainly not of eternity, but at least for the here and now we get to call the shots. We get to decide what to do, where to go and what to believe. Maybe we struggle to discern God's call upon our lives; maybe we read a lot of Scripture and pray a lot of prayers and meditate upon our experiences and fast until we're starving and go to church every Sunday and listen to all the self-appointed prophets of the modern era – maybe we do all that, but we're in charge. If we don't like what we hear, we'll just listen for something else, and we'll keep doing it until we hear a word we like. The concept of surrender has fallen by the wayside. Surrender is for the weak. We believe in all the self-help gurus, whose basic message is “take control of your life.” Sometimes the church falls into that trap. We reinvent the wheel and our conception of God so often that many Christian heads must be spinning. There is, of course, nothing wrong with constantly re-evaluating our beliefs and making sure that they remain relevant to the times in which we live. The problem comes when we decide that the sole purpose of re-evaluating our beliefs about God is to find something that's both more comfortable and less challenging for us to deal with; something that puts us more in synch with the world; something that doesn't offend the politically correct mindset that's becoming so prevalent in our modern society. When that becomes our goal, we might as well give up on God – because while God seeks to comfort us, God also challenges us, and perhaps as a church we need to be more challenging to the society around us. Maybe the church shouldn't restrict itself to dealing merely with the practical – maybe the church needs to strive for the ideal! Maybe the church shouldn't simply settle for being a reflection of what is – maybe the church needs to point ahead to what could be! Maybe that's the excitement of our faith and the thrill of our calling – to point to something better. To go back to the words I've used the last couple of weeks, if as a church we're called to get out of the building and into the world then we need to ask what vision we're presenting to the world when we encounter it – and maybe the role of the church is to proclaim God's vision and a vision of the world in which God's will will in fact be done. It's the doing God's will part that represents the great challenge for us.

You see, Christianity is a very demanding faith. It's not demanding in the sense that there are a lot of rules and regulations and legalistic requirements; it's not demanding in the sense that there are a lot of things we have to do in order to be considered a Christian. Not at all. What makes Christian faith demanding is that Jesus calls us to give up control – the control that so many of the self-help gurus have told us is essential to our happiness and well-being and the control that so many people have devoted so much of their lives struggling to attain. If we sing the words “I Surrender All” we really should mean it, because the one demand that our faith really does make of us is that we surrender forever the idea that we can somehow take control of our own lives and be in charge of our own future. It's that type of complete and utter surrender to God that creates the type of transformed life that we need to be able to show to the world. That surrender doesn't lead to a life of slavery or drudgery – it leads to real freedom, because if I can let God be in control then I can also let go of fear and I can strive for those things that God sends me into the world to achieve. In other words, it's only by surrendering ourselves to God that we can truly be transformed into what God wants us to be and it's only be being transformed into what God wants us to be that we can have any hope at all of helping to transform the world into what God wants it to be.

Paul discovered how to go about doing this, and he shared his wisdom with us in our passage from Galatians - “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, Who loved me and gave Himself for me.” With those words, Paul was coming to grips with issues of power, control and surrender. For Paul, faith in Christ meant not controlling his actions – it meant adopting a new way of life and embracing a new way of viewing the world. For Paul, faith in Christ meant not changing our conduct but changing our hearts. Those types of fundamental changes come about only as a result of a complete surrender. When Paul wrote the words I just cited, he was saying that the life he lived after coming to faith in Christ was a completely transformed life – the quality of which couldn't even be compared to the life he had led previously. Paul had been “crucified with Christ” not literally but spiritually – the life over which he had claimed control had ended, and he now lived only for Christ; only for the gospel. Paul's life was transformed by the realization that the only thing he had that really mattered was Christ. There were friendships and relationships that he treasured, but it was his friendship and relationship with Christ that guided him. A pastor in Kansas City had enjoyed a successful ministry, serving a succession of large churches to which he had always been invited to come; he had never had to apply and be interviewed for a position – he was outwardly a success, and seemed completely in control. But then, in his own words, “one day I noticed a pain in my throat that was diagnosed as cancer. A week later I had surgery that removed the malignancy but also my voice box. [I was a preacher who could no longer preach. Everything that had mattered was gone.] My life changed drastically. I had to retire from the ministry, we had financial problems, and people seemed to avoid me. Slowly I sank into depression. But one night, when I was imprisoned in that agonizing black void, I saw my Saviour's face lighting up the darkness around me and in me. He put His arms around me and filled me with His grace. [I am now] a very happy man in whom Christ has completely taken over and who stands daily amazed at the goodness of his Lord. You know, when Christ is all you have left, you are not badly off.”

For several weeks now, I've been focusing on the nature and mission of the church. The truth is – the church is hurting. Times are tough. But we still have Christ. As we move into a new world in which the church is no longer at the centre of society but rather finds itself on the margins, we may find – like that pastor in Kansas City – that Christ is all we have left. And if He is all we have left (and, in truth, maybe He was all we ever had) then maybe it's time to really trust Christ and to turn everything over to Him – to sing the words “I Surrender All” and really mean them. It is a question of control – will we give up the pilot's seat to God, and serve happily as the co-pilot?