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Unhappy New Year’s Resolutions and the Undriven Life—The Christian Difference, Part 9
Now that you’ve had 18 days to exhort yourself to reform in those areas you saw failure in in 2018, will you allow me to admit you to rehab? Yes, Rehab. Resolutions are an addiction. They tick all the driven-life boxes: Resolutions give you something to strive for. Resolutions make you feel in control over that which you don’t have control. Resolutions chase away your negative thoughts about yourself. Notoriously unkeepable, resolutions may be the drug of choice for those areas of your life that aren’t working but they serve only to expose. Like the LAW, they expose your ongoing need for a Savior.The GOOD NEWS of the Gospel of…
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The Undriven Life—The Christian Difference, Part 9
It’s not uncommon for those birthed into the Kingdom of God to go back to practicing the external driven-life. The Galatian Christians tried to mix the driven-life with the following-life and Paul’s rebuke to them was the key to my own personal acceptance of the miraculous, Christian Gospel. He said, “You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? Before your very eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified. I would like to learn just one thing from you: Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by believing what you heard? Are you so foolish? After beginning by means of the Spirit, are you now trying…
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The Undriven Life—The Christian Difference, Part 8, by Carolyn Cote
The undriven-life is a peaceful though dependent one. The driven-life can’t be peaceful because it’s rarely at rest because peace comes through activity and activity empowered by your own resources is eventually exhausting. Following Christ requires discerning His call to act and this discernment is honed by knowing what He values and what He doesn’t value. In John 15:16 Jesus says, “that your fruit should remain.” Use this to begin to decipher what sorts of works are of the eternal kind. Are your works the burnable wood, hay, stubble or are they those which remain: silver, gold and precious stones? When I designed what Bethesda Pregnancy Services would focus on…
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The Undriven Life—The Christian Difference, Part 7 by Carolyn Cote
The following-life is so different from the driven-life that it’s difficult to overstate. It can’t be said that they are true opposites because it’s not a perceivable difference, say, like black and white or cold and hot. Following vs. driven is determined by where what we do originates or how what we do is sourced. How is what you do sourced? Where does what you do come from? And what drives you to measure up to that? For instance, say you want to buy an orange tree for your yard. You go to the gardening center and you are told that you have two choices: orange trees with fruit…
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The Undriven Life—The Christian Difference, Part 6, by Carolyn Cote
At 22, I suppose I was unusual to take on such a multi-faceted task as founding and directing a crisis pregnancy center but once you’ve become driven to do good, nothing is too daunting. Good works are like an energy drink—they fuel you. They also tick a lot of those boxes which are common motivators for most endeavors: public approval, happy and grateful customers, a sense of purpose, a creative outlet and money. I volunteered; I felt that to accept a paycheck diminished the goodness of the work but the other motivators were there, lurking, in my subconscious. Prayer? I didn’t pray. Though I’d been a born-again Christian for five…
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The Undriven Life—The Christian Difference, Part 5 by Carolyn Cote
After my first son was born, I felt adrift. Choosing to stay home to care for him during the early 80’s when working moms were much more the norm, left me dealing with a chronic sense of unimportance. I longed to do something noteworthy and I set my sights on figuring that out. The day came when I knew that I had found my cause, my importance. Matthew 7:13-14, describes three characteristics of the driven-life. “For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a…
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The Undriven Life—The Christian Difference, Part 4 by Carolyn Cote
In a nutshell, this is the driven-life: “That’s what Christians do.” No sane person would question the relationship between doing good and Christianity. The two are inseparable; one cannot exist without the other, right? A more important question is, “Can I do good without Christ?” The driven-life sources its power to “do” from your personal resources. You see, you think, you decide, you do. You drive it all, from conception to birth. The following-life sources its power to “do” from Christ. You see, you pray, you obey. You humbly accept that you don’t know what is good or nice; only Christ knows and you must follow Him. “Remain in me,…
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The Undriven Life—The Christian Difference, Part 3 by Carolyn Cote
The impromptu speech I gave that day was thought-provoking but not genius. Abortion became legal by a Supreme Court ruling on January 22, 1973. Average Americans were stunned and Catholics led the protests. They helped expose the truth of what abortion truly meant: innocent babies being killed with saline or dismembered in their mother’s wombs. Making abortion illegal again appeared straightforward—show America what abortion really was and they would never support it. In some cases, this informative approach worked but before long, clinics opened nation-wide and were performing an average of 4000 abortions a day. Still, the information campaign continued. The pro-abortion folks rebuffed every exposing truth: it’s not…
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The Undriven Life—The Christian Difference, Part 2 by Carolyn Cote
If “awesome” has a perfect opposite it would be something pretty close to “awful.” Becoming undriven is a process and that process is necessarily an awful one. If you’re in the midst of awesome’s antonym, this teaching will make your heart soar with hope. If you’re not, well, awful will come because the Lord disciplines those He loves. Seasons of awful are seasons of an autumn-like dropping of those dead things no longer needed to sustain the tree’s life. The winter which follows is a renewing stillness where Truth Himself fills you with what you will need for the seasons of fruitfulness to follow. This fruitfulness is the Lord’s holy…
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The Undriven Life—The Christian Difference, Part 1, by Carolyn Cote
Your undriven life is a “following” life. Can you picture the difference? Your driven-life is a pushed life. Someone or something pushes and you react by moving and doing. Distinctly different is the following-life. Following comes from ahead and you choose to move and follow. Another difference is that your driven-life depends on outside stimuli. A book, a sermon, a parent, a spouse, or, the subtler stimuli of depression, anger, fear or self-loathing. Very different is the following-life. It listens, hears, chooses to obey and then it is empowered to do. This kind of doing is a rest-filled, graced kind of doing because you have a yoke-mate, Christ. “Come to…
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