There’s one moment at The Garage that matters more than any other, and it takes about two seconds. It’s the moment you hand us your keys.
Up to then, everything is just talk. We can listen to the noise, look underneath, and tell you what we think is wrong. But nothing gets fixed until you let go of the car and let someone else take over.
If you’ve ever heard a pastor use the words “repentance” and “faith” and wondered what they actually mean, that moment at the counter is the clearest picture I know. What is repentance and faith? It’s admitting the car is broken and handing over the keys.
Two words that get misunderstood
These are church words, and church words tend to pick up baggage.
For some people, “repentance” sounds like groveling. Someone on a street corner with a sign. A performance of feeling terrible.
For others, “faith” sounds like pretending. Believing something you can’t know, or working up a certain feeling and hoping it holds.
Neither of those is what the Bible means. Let’s take them one at a time.
Repentance: turning the car around
At its simplest, repentance means a change of direction. Not just feeling bad about where you’re headed, but actually turning and taking a different road.
Think about how people handle a warning light. Most of us have driven around with one on. We know it means something. We explain it away, or put a piece of tape over it, and keep driving.
Repentance is the moment you stop doing that. In Under the Hood I describe it as the moment “when you stop pretending the warning lights aren’t on. When you stop explaining away the fault codes.” You stop defending your right to live however you want, and you admit that the way you’ve been living isn’t working and that you’ve done real damage along the way.
Here’s the difference between feeling guilty and repenting. Guilt says, “I feel awful about this.” Repentance says, “I’m done going this direction.” You can feel terrible for years and never turn around. And some people turn around without much emotion at all. The turning is the point.
As the book puts it, “It’s not a groveling performance. It’s an honest admission. And it’s the beginning of everything.”
Faith: trusting the mechanic
Faith is not the same as certainty. It isn’t a feeling. It’s trust in a person, based on who that person is and what they’ve done.
When you hand your keys to a mechanic, you can’t verify everything ahead of time. You can check their track record, talk to people they’ve helped, and get a sense of who they are. But at some point you have to let go. You don’t do that with a stranger. You do it with someone you have reason to trust.
Jesus has given us reasons. He lived a life unlike anyone else’s. He died willingly to pay a debt that wasn’t his. And he rose from the dead, which is the strongest evidence anyone could offer that he is who he said he is.
The Bible puts it plainly: “If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved” (Romans 10:9).
Faith isn’t a leap in the dark. It’s handing the keys to the one who has already shown he can be trusted with them.
They go together
You can’t really do one without the other. Jesus himself put them side by side when he started preaching: “repent and believe in the gospel” (Mark 1:15).
Here’s why. If you hand over the keys but never admit anything is wrong, you’re not really asking for a repair. And if you admit the car is broken but refuse to hand over the keys, you’re still trying to fix it yourself. Turning away from your old direction and trusting Jesus are two sides of the same moment.
What you don’t have to do first
This is where a lot of people get stuck, so let me be clear. You don’t have to clean yourself up before you come.
Nobody washes and details their car before bringing it in for a repair. That would be backwards. You bring it in because it’s broken.
In the same way, you don’t have to:
- have every question answered,
- understand every piece of theology,
- feel a certain way,
- or be good enough. (Nobody is, which is exactly why Jesus came.)
What you need is to be honest, willing, and ready to trust.
What it sounds like
If you want to respond to God, it can be as simple as telling him the truth. Something like the words the book offers: I know I’ve broken things. I know I’ve fallen short. I know I can’t fix this myself. I believe that Jesus paid the bill I couldn’t pay. I’m handing over the keys.
There are no magic words. God knows your heart better than your sentences do. What matters is that you mean it.
A question to sit with
One of the discussion questions in the back of the book is the most direct one in it: “If someone asked you right now, ‘Are you ready to hand over the keys?’ what would your honest answer be? What’s holding you back, if anything?”
Try answering that on paper. If the honest answer is “not yet,” write down why. That’s not failure. That’s the kind of honesty repentance begins with.
And if the answer is “yes,” don’t keep it to yourself. Tell a Christian you trust, or reach out to a local church. At The Garage, every volunteer would count it a privilege to sit with you through that conversation.
Under the Hood ends with a simple prayer for anyone who’s ready to take this step, along with honest answers for anyone who isn’t there yet. If you’re working through it in a group, the leader guide will help you slow down at this chapter. It’s worth slowing down for.