In Part I we established that God can use situations in the car to grow us – we just need to be aware of it. In Part II we established that we need to respond to situations with scripture if we are to grow in a real way. In Part III, there’s another major point that I want to make.

Most of the time in the car we are going to be focusing on patience – because being in the car involves a lot of waiting.  Sometimes it’s an inanimate object, like a stoplight that makes you wait.  But what’s even worse is when some idiot driver through their idiot driving causes you waste your life away. And yeah, we work on patience. 

And we’ll get to the point where we can sit in our cars and not be bothered sitting in traffic.  We’ll turn on the radio and rock out to Journey.  We’ll even recite Romans 8:28 knowing that God is trying to grow our patience.

But we’d still be missing one major thing. Remember those idiot drivers?  The ones texting about what Cindy was wearing last night? It’s one thing to not be bothered by them, or to let things slide – but it’s entirely different to show love to them.  Even if it’s just in your own head.

So what do we do?

Just like how you yell at them in your car and they can’t hear you, you can do the opposite, have a loving attitude to them even though they can’t hear you. …Say a prayer for them. Remember when Christ was crucified?  He was beaten, tortured and ridiculed.  Then He had nails pounded into His hands and was crucified. Yeah, it’s a little bit worse than waiting ten seconds at a green light because the person in front of you was texting. 

What did Christ say?  “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.” But what I say isn’t quite so loving.  “Go you idiot!  I know you can’t read, so don’t even pretend you can text.  GO!” Now please, if we can’t forgive a stranger for doing something unintentional to us on the road – in the rest of our lives how can we expect to forgive say a family member for intentionally doing something to hurt us?

So we have to take the patience we’re learning on the road and take it to its spiritual end – and that spiritual end is love. We have to go out there and look for instances to show love, to show forgiveness. Think of Christ and tell yourself as you get into the car – I will follow Christ’s example and when those idiot drivers do their idiot driving, I will forgive them, I will show love.  I’ll even say a little prayer for them.

Instead of looking for excuses to complain and ridicule others  – look for excuses to love and pray for them. And while you’re at it, you can also pray for Cindy.  Her outfit last night was a total fail.

1CO 13:4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. [5] It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. [6] Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. [7] It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Take Time To Pray:  Ask God to help you show love to strangers, especially ones that annoy you. Today’s Fruit of the Spirit: Love. As if things couldn’t get worse on the road – now I see people texting while driving.    It’s bad enough when you drive while talking on the cell phone, you’re still actually looking at the road.  But texting?  I mean you take both hands off the wheel, and take your eyes off the road so you can reply immediately to the urgent message of, “omg.  did u see what cindy was wearing last night? lol.”  I know this series is about growing closer to God in the car, but I really didn’t mean literally getting closer to God by dying.