Who is Driving Your Car? Is it YOU, or Have you Given This Responsibility to God? How Can You Tell? The Importance of Discovering the Difference

January 24, 2026 | www.gospelofjesuschrist.blog | River Wilde

I have spent most of my life driving my own car, which I believe is a very common way of navigating the challenges of life. And, I’d like to detail what some people do in their relationship with God as a way that you can tell if it’s You or God that is driving your car through life. The telling evidence is in how we pray.

It’s Honesty time for a moment. Being honest to YOURSELF is the very best way for you to establish a baseline to begin ENHANCING your life.

Prayer is our ability to talk to God. It is a chance to expresses our gratitude for all that He has given to us in our life. I ENJOY this part of prayer immensely, for it gives me a chance to Praise God, as well as remind myself of all of the blessings that I have in my life. A chance to see all of the positive blessings in my life, and recognize God’s hand in these wonderful blessings.

As we continue in our prayers, it is here that we can identify who is driving our car. It is fair to assume that most prayers in this next area are to identify the challenges and problems that we have in our life…and THEN, to tell God the steps that we would like for Him to take in “Answering” our prayers.

This is quite obvious to me that when I have prayed this way, I am simply informing God of my problem, and MY PLAN to solve it… Even giving Him the steps that I FEEL are the best way to solve my problem. Can you relate to this?

Is this the very best approach to getting through the hardships that we are facing in life? Is this truly how God would like for us to approach Him in our prayers?

Just for a moment, let’s try to understand the “Trials” that all of us face on earth. Some trials might have been actually given to us by God Himself. Other trials can certainly just come into our life simply due to “life” or the consequences from others actions.

But if God has given us a challenge, do you think that His intent is for us to just pray it away? To have this trial go away as quickly as possible? Do you really think that He is listening for advice on how to solve our problem? If we are praying this way, it is evidence that we are behind the wheel, and are driving our car, not God.

God has many reasons that He has sent us to earth. He has a PLAN for you and me. And, more importantly, He has a plan to assist us in our development and growth as a result of His intended “Trial.”

He has also given us free agency, to choose what we will do in our life. This free agency includes accepting His plan for us to successfully navigate our way through our trials, or to use our “OWN PLAN” and put His name on the solution by having Him respond as YOU would like Him to. We see things through the lense of “solving things as quickly as possible” and asking God to respond this way with our predetermined steps that God can take to get us there quickly.

I BELIEVE…that the very MOST important reason that we are here on earth is to realize that we need JESUS CHRIST in our life. We are far better off by including Him in our lives, and following what HE asks of us. Can we be successful in life by Making lots of money on this earth without Him… “YES we can,” But is that the purpose of this earth life to obtain material things that are immediately gone when we pass away?

I’d like for all of us to consider prayer in an entirely different way. We identify the problem that we are having, and ask for His help…THEN to express our TRUST that we have in HIS PLAN on how to navigate through the experience. To pray for strength and guidance in getting through the challenge, rather than offer solutions on how we would like the prayer answered. Let HIM tell us…NOT Us tell HIM how to “Drive.”

This key point is also VERY helpful in how we respond to…”Did God Just answer my prayer or not?” A person who thinks that their prayer was not answered simply means that God didn’t follow your solution in answering your prayer. According to you, It was not answered as you EXPECTED it to be.

For a person to have the belief and understanding that God will answer your prayers the way that He has planned for you, YOU CAN ALWAYS say that your prayer was answered…Because it was answered in the way that God sees best for YOU. It was answered because you were open to the teaching and learning that occurred through the process of getting through the problem, not just because the problem just went away.

Let me share a silly example to help you see this concept even further.

Let’s say that you had a child, and they reached the age to start going to school. Kindergarten… the first step in their formal EDUCATION.

After some time, your child comes up to you one night and said: “School is hard. I don’t like it!! I have to learn things that are HARD for me to understand. I’d rather be home with you. It’s just too difficult for me to learn. I want to stop going to school.

As a loving parent, you see the difficulty that they are having…and because you love them so much, you honor their request…their solution, and pull them out of kindergarten, so they will stop suffering and the difficulty will stop.

This would obviously be a ridiculous move for the parent. This would be the worst response, for their entire learning would be affected…And additionally, this would not lead to happiness in your child’s life. A parent responding with the child’s solution, because things were difficult, and they were having a hard time.

Isn’t this how we sometimes ask God what to do for us… To remove us from our difficult class at school…to remove us immediately from the challenge of cancer?

If God followed our request to remove us from every hardship as soon as possible, He would defeat the very plan that He already has for us…Something Greater…An Increase in our “Spiritual Development” and most importantly, our further depth in our relationship with Jesus Christ. Isn’t it BEST, to see ourselves “yoked up” to a Savior to HELP us through our problems, not to remove them from us.

We come to see the Savior as the one who can “pull our plow” giving 90% of the effort when we can only give 10%. In spite of our personal strength, we get through things together…the work gets done, together… NOT REMOVED.

If we trust only in ourselves and our plans, we will fail! We will eventually begin to distance ourselves from God because we think that He isn’t answering our prayers in the way that we told Him to.

We should approach Him in prayer and show Him our TRUST, and invite Him to answer our prayers through His Will, not ours. His solution, NOT ours. We then ask Him for strength, understanding and the courage necessary to do what He asks of US in answering our prayers. To help us understand His plan, and know our assignment, rather than tell God His. This is the way that I believe God wants us to approach Him with finding a resolution to our problems.

When He is a part of our lives, we will see that it is not the problem going away…but our shared ability to “Plow” through them, while learning and becoming even closer to our Savior in the process.

I hope that you will take some time and prayerfully ponder this teaching. It has made a DRAMATIC difference in my life, for I have been the poster child of “Doing it all by myself!” …I have finally switched seats in my car, and am letting God drive me through the avenues of life. I thank Him for the “enhancement” that He has given to me through applying this concept in my prayers.