Are You Living on Autopilot?
In 2019, aviation authorities around the world grounded all Boeing 737 MAX aircraft. Apparently a new automated flight control system was malfunctioning, and had sent two planes into repeated nosedives. The pilots tried valiantly to regain manual control of the aircraft, but were unable to do so. 346 people lost their lives in these airline disasters.
Airline pilots are taught to trust the autopilot systems, but also when to take over manual control. But that hadn’t worked out in these cases.
The autopilot systems on the Boeing 737 MAX aircraft had taken over, with deadly consequences!
I reckon that too many people’s lives are nose-diving out of control. I reckon that too many people are living on autopilot today, and they need to wake up and take control of their lives before it’s too late.
The pilots on those doomed flights were assured by Boeing that everything was working well and that their systems could be trusted. In the same way, we’ve been lulled into a full sense of security that what we’ve picked up by ourselves about life from society, our schooling, and even our parents, is good enough, and that our bearings are right and we’re going in the right direction. We’ve been lulled by our world into a false sense of security. And so, we live our lives on autopilot.
When you choose the salvation that God offers you, you get the control of your life back.
But then, like those poor pilots, many of us come to the point where we realise that there is something dreadfully wrong, and we struggle in panic to correct the course of our lives. We do the things we’ve been taught to do, but in so many circumstances, they don’t work!
But that’s not everyone’s story, and it needn’t be yours. There are some who discover how to get their true bearings in life, and how to really fly!
God tells us in the Bible that without him we are slaves to sin. That’s the autopilot life right there. That’s our default. Have you ever wondered why you can’t escape the patterns of your life. This is why.
But when you choose the salvation that God offers you, you get the control of your life back. Because you have a solid base for your identity in the world, you can grow to become the person you were created to be.
How do you get to that point? The first step is to accept that your life isn’t going in the right direction and that you need God’s help. The second step is to accept his offer of salvation and eternal life. The third step is to step into the new life that he has given you: to consciously let go of the controls of your life and let him take the controls.
Whether you call yourself a Christian or not, it’s easy to slip into the autopilot system the world offers you. It’s deeply flawed and it will literally drive you into the ground!
You can’t trust the autopilot that the world tells you to use. But you can always trust God.
Article supplied with thanks to Dr Eliezer Gonzalez.
About the Author: Dr Eli Gonzalez is the Senior Pastor of Good News Unlimited and the presenter of the Unlimited radio spots, and The Big Question.
Feature image: Photo by Anatolii Nesterov on Unsplash
