Abduction or Adventure: Do You Know Who's Driving?

"Truly, truly, I say to you, when you were young, you used to dress yourself and walk wherever you wanted, but when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will dress you and carry you where you do not want to go." John 21:18

The Hands Taken Off the Wheel

Jesus spoke these words to Peter on the shore of Galilee, after the fish and the fire and the three questions about love. John tells us they pointed to the kind of death by which Peter would glorify God, yet they also describe the life of every disciple who goes on with Jesus. When we are young in the faith, we dress ourselves and walk where we want. We choose our road, plan our steps and ask God to bless the direction we have already taken. Then there comes a day when the hands we have kept firmly on our own lives are taken off the wheel, sometimes gently and sometimes with a force that shakes us to the core, and we are carried into circumstances we never chose.

Our first instinct in that moment is to cry out that we have been kidnapped. A diagnosis arrives, a door closes, a child wanders, a season we counted on falls apart, and it feels as though someone has seized our life and is driving it somewhere we never agreed to go. The question that matters most in that hour is who is carrying us.

The Protest of Anxiety

I am a perfectionist. I like my routine, and I dislike anything that disrupts it. When disturbances come, especially the kind that might signal something serious, I start imagining everything that could go wrong. Fear itself is a gift from God. It warns us of danger and gives us a place to apply faith and turn a different direction. Anxiety is fear that has been amplified until it goes viral, fear on steroids.

Anxiety is the protest of a soul that does not yet know and trust the One who is driving. We give it respectable names such as responsibility, concern, prudence, even faithfulness, but at its root it is the refusal to be carried by someone we have not come to know. We would rather dress ourselves in our own plans. The one who insists on dressing himself will experience every disruption as an abduction, and the one who has stretched out his hands will experience the very same disruption as an adventure. The road is identical. The whole difference lies in whether we know and trust the One at the wheel.

When I get anxious, it is almost always because I have lost sight of who is driving. I feel kidnapped, and I get upset: where are You taking me? And the Lord answers, "I have to take you this way, because the other road is blocked, and the future I have for you is far bigger than what you know."

Prepared in the Hidden Place

Someone I trust deeply has the gift of faith and seems to fear almost nothing. I once asked how they stay so calm, and the answer surprised me: "You can't be calm in the moment when chaos is happening. You have to prepare for the chaos. You know that feeling when you pray and your spirit connects with the Holy Spirit, and everything resonates, and everything feels okay? You need to have that in a constant state. You do it when everything's calm, so when the chaos happens, the calmness overtakes the chaos."

It clicked for me when I remembered a hockey game. I grew up playing in Ontario, and years later a friend invited me to play at a rented rink downtown. I bought used equipment, including a secondhand helmet I should have washed and did not, and I stepped onto the ice after two years away. My heart pounded so hard I nearly fainted, because my body was not prepared for what I was asking of it.

Our spirits work the same way. The trust that holds when life seizes us cannot be summoned in the moment of crisis. It is formed in the unremarkable days, when nothing is pressing and prayer seems almost unnecessary, as we come to know the One who drives. If the voice of God has not become familiar to us in the calm, we will hear only the voices of fear in the storm. The disciple is prepared in the hidden place for the hour when he will be carried.

Adventure or Abduction

I was having dinner with a friend's parents, and his father told me he regularly drives more than an hour across the city to visit family. I said he must be exhausted. He laughed and said, "Not really. I just press the button on the Tesla and it drives for me." He trusts it completely. I could never do that. I have to take the wheel, because I don't trust the "driver."

When my daughter was sick, I grabbed that wheel with both hands. I was googling, calling, trying to fix something I could not fix. I kept calling my best friend on the East Coast, who connected me with a neurologist friend of his. He listened patiently to all of it, and then he said, "Steve, I can't give you all the answers, because Jesus has the answers. This whole life thing doesn't work if Jesus doesn't drive." His wife had battled cancer twice, and he was speaking from experience. I knew he was right, and still something in me pushed back. Mistrust kept my hands clenched on the wheel, and that resistance to surrender exposed how angry I was at being kidnapped.

A kidnapper takes you away from your life; the Lord carries you into it. He sees every pothole and knows every roadblock. He is our guide and our brother, and the Father is our Abba, holding the whole world in His hands and coordinating all of it. Seen from the passenger seat, His coordination can look exactly like chaos, and knowing and trusting the One at the wheel is what turns the abduction back into the adventure it always was.

Peter Carried to Caesarea

Years after that conversation on the beach, Peter was carried somewhere he did not want to go. On a rooftop in Joppa he saw the heavens opened and a great sheet let down by its four corners, full of every kind of animal, and a voice said, "Rise, Peter; kill and eat." He answered, "By no means, Lord; for I have never eaten anything that is common or unclean." The voice replied, "What God has made clean, do not call common" (Acts 10:13–15).

Everything Peter had been taught was being overturned. Centuries of tradition, elders upon elders and high priest upon high priest were all telling him to stay put. What would people say if he walked into a Gentile's house? He was a leader of the church. Then the Spirit said, "Behold, three men are looking for you. Rise and go down and accompany them without hesitation, for I have sent them" (Acts 10:19–20).

Peter was being carried exactly where he did not want to go, and he went. He did not understand the road, but he knew the One who was driving. It was the same voice that had called him from his nets, caught him on the water and restored him by the fire. That is the heart of discipleship: obedience to a voice you know before you understand where it leads. Had Peter waited to understand, he would have missed the door through which the nations came in. While he was still preaching in Cornelius's house, "the Holy Spirit fell on all who heard the word" (Acts 10:44), and you and I were carried into the family of God on the other side of Peter's surrender.

Stretch Out Your Hands

Stop struggling against the hands that are carrying you. The season that feels like a kidnapping may be the very road into the largest thing God has prepared for you. Stretch out your hands, let Him dress you, and let Him take you where you do not yet want to go. Come to know Him in the quiet so that you can trust Him in the storm, and when He says rise and go, go without hesitation. What felt like an abduction will turn out to be the great adventure.

A Prayer

Lord Jesus, I stretch out my hands. Take the wheel of my life, even where it frightens me to let go. When I feel kidnapped, remind me who is carrying me and where You are taking me. Let me know You so well in the quiet that I trust You in the storm. Carry me where I do not want to go, and let me find You there. Amen.

For Reflection

• Where in your life do you feel carried somewhere you did not choose?
• What respectable names have you given to your anxiety that hide a refusal to be carried?
• When has a season that felt like an abduction later revealed itself as an adventure?
• What would it mean for you to stretch out your hands this week?

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