Setting the scene for my gown up object lesson. Tuesday, right after lunch I thought I would spend about an hour changing the outlets in the living room. As you may know, Dear Reader, we had a fire in late December, and slowly but surely Leah and I are repairing the damage and making the house more ours. Leah picked great colors to paint the walls, and a great stain for the trim I put up. The old outlets would no longer work in the new room, so we bought new ones. I have done such electric work before and was not in the least concerned about my ability to install them. I wanted to surprise Leah with the work done and see the smile on her face, so I took a break from preparing for this week's sermon, killed the power to the house and went to work.
Hours later I felt ready to cry, scream and just finish burning the house down. No matter what I did, I couldn't get one outlet to work, and what was worse, the power in two other rooms in the house was completely down. It didn't make sense. I switched outlets. I checked, rechecked, redid and checked again the wiring. I took outlets back off that I knew worked and used them on the trouble spot. Nothing worked. Overwhelmed, frustrated and enraged I stepped away from it to go feed our and my father's animals in the dark. Cursing the situation and praying for help and calm, I got the animals cared for. Meanwhile, Leah remained in the house and prayed for me.
As I finished feeding a thought that could not have been my own came to me. When I got back inside I killed the power once more and took off one of the outlets that worked. This never would have been my thought for a solution. I had plugged something into both ports multiple times. The outlet worked. It was fine. This could not be the problem. The problem was the one that wouldn't work. Except the working outlet was the problem. One wire was loose. Somehow, and I still don't understand this, there was enough connection to power the outlet and light up the scentsy burner I used to check it, but there was not enough of a connection to pass the power the rest of the way down the line. Nothing beyond the outlet had juice. I fixed the wire, turned the power back on, and praise God, everything now worked. For hours I worked and worked on an outlet and wiring that was fine. It simply wasn't receiving power. For hours I thought an outlet that worked was all good, when it was actually the problem.
Now, there is a point to my sharing all this and admitting to my failure to go through this calmly and with a right heart. As I stated before, this is not about how even as Christians we can slip back into the old nature and rage, or about repenting and overcoming that. It's about the outlets. God used what happened as an object lesson for me, when I got quiet enough to be able to hear Him. The outlets are a great example of our lives.
We come to God, come into recovery from bondage, broken and in desperate need of connection to Daddy. He provides that through the work of Jesus on our behalf and the ministry of the Spirit in our hearts and lives. With desperation we submit to His work and do whatever it takes to get close to Him and receive the power we need to make our lives work. And they begin to.We begin to walk free of the things that once held us captive. We are new. It's obvious to those around us. We work, and by that I mean the the light plugged into us is shining. We begin to heal. We hurt less and lose our desperation. We get comfortable with our lives that our now worth living.
And it is all too easy at that point to stop, or at least slow down pursuing Daddy. We are not as quick to submit to the sometimes painful work of constructing or new life and nature. We are shining. We are free. Life is good. But we are not alone. We are not called to isolation. There are others on the circuit of God's design behind is in the flow chart. We can not become satisfied with a life worth living, with our outlet receiving power. We need to continue to let God work in our lives and bring us toward perfection, so that our connection to Daddy is so good, strong and right that what we receive from Him continues on through us to those Daddy has put on our circuit. We are to pass the love, power, ability to have connection with the Creator and the display of the glory of God to those in our circuit so that they too can enjoy the power that makes us work right and sets us free. When we let God redo our wiring, all of it, not just what is obvious or hurts. what He is sending to us will go through us to those we encounter. Only then can we be instruments of the love and power and peace of God and truly help light up the world.
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