January 23, 2017 (Monday)
Last Wednesday night I woke up cold at 3:30 a.m. (actually Thursday morning), and discovered that the furnace was not running. I checked the thermostat and it was still set at the temperature I had programed, so I concluded that it was in need of repair. I pulled out an extra quilt and lit the bathroom heaters and went back to sleep. Then I dreamed of my furnace problem, purchasing the repair parts and calling in a repair person, who turned out to be a woman with serious health problems. (Dreams–how does my brain manage to be so creative?). When I got up the next morning, I immediately began carrying out my plan to repair the furnace. I got dressed, drank my coffee, and began dismantling the front cover of the device, turned off the pilot, and prepared to remove the part I thought may have gone bad. Shivering in the cold house. Well, when I took a close look at the part, I was not quite sure about my next step, so I checked with YouTube for instructions. A nice guy came on the screen and suggested I first check to see that the furnace had been turned on. So I checked. Guess what? It had been turned to its air conditioning setting. The furnace was not turned on. It needed no repairs.
I immediately thought of all those poor souls in the early days of television who called the repairmen to their homes, only to be told that their TVs had been unplugged. I felt like one of those guys.
For all practical purposes, the furnace had been disconnected from its power source. It was turned off.
I think sometimes that happens in our spiritual life. Somehow we get unplugged. We cut ourselves off from the source of power. Life goes downhill from there. Jesus said, “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you shall be my witnesses..”
Let’s stay close to the Lord in our prayer life, in our studies of His Word, and in our daily lives of service to others. The power to do good things for the Lord comes from Him; it does not generate itself. Are you turned on? Connected?
