no good without the Spirit

So all my childhood life there were very few things I wanted to do worse than drive a race car. My father had raced since he was a teenager and I had been to the track since I was a few weeks old. Every Saturday as long as I can remember that was where we headed, we loaded up in the morning, ate lunch and then we were off to Gainesville. As I got older and the time for me to drive got closer I started saving my money for a race car. Eventually I saved up enough money to go buy my first car, but my dad talked me into buying a new truck instead so that I would have a way to get the car to the track. I bought the truck and after a year or two of sharing dad's race car with him I was finally able to purchase my own car. I bought it without an engine or transmission because dad already had all of that ready for me. We got the car, and slowly put together basically one of my dreams. I had my own car, painted the way I wanted it to be painted, on my trailer behind my truck. This was a huge step for me to be doing this I can't even put into words my excitement.
Well, we took it to the track, I unloaded it off the trailer went through technical inspection and then drove it down the return road to get the transmission and rearend warmed up to race that night. Then, as I got to the end of that road the car just shut off for no reason. I couldn't get it to fire back up, what on earth had we forgotten to hook up, or what has gone wrong I wondered? Well, guess what. In all of my excitement for that day, that most eventful occasion I had forgotten to put gas in the car. So there I was walking back to the truck to get my gas can and bum a ride back to the car to put gas in it. Because no matter how much excitement, how much horsepower or how beautiful the car looked it wasn't going to budge without gas.

"These have come so that your faith-of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire-may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed." - 1 Peter 1:7

Just like this verse, my life is no good without the Spirit of God inside of me. A religious experience is great, believing in God is important, but without praying and receiving GOd's Holy SPirit within us we will have no drive. It would be religion with no relationship and that will leave us stranded at the end of the return road one day. We'll be all excited and pumped up, yet so empty and weak inside all because we chose to believe but forgot to recieve.
So think about your life, do you have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, or do you just have religion. There's a huge difference and you will know the answer without putting much thought into it.

Thanks for reading and have a great Hump Day!