A Cool Lesson Learned through Losing Power

Warning:  You will hear this in a soon coming message at PCC...whenever it fits well and illustrates the point.  But I couldn't help but writing about it now, too.

Yesterday, because of the 11 inches of snow we got (yes, I measured) we, like many of you, lost power.  I had two generators, but hadn't used either of them for my home since Hurricane Isabele ripped through here over 5 years ago (can you believe it's been that long?!)  So, I gave one of my generators to PCC to use in the IMPACT ministry and wherever else it could be used and the other one I lent to the house building projects.  Yesterday morning, when the lights when out, Chris Ashman and I drove through the back roads that had broken and hanging trees strewn all over them to the Cartersville sites, traipsed through the snow and loaded up the generators for his house and mine.  

Being that I'm not an electricity kind of guy, Chris helped me get everything going and before long, we had heat, hot water, showers, TV, Satellite, Internet, 

lights, refrigerator...life was almost back to normal.

But then, after a few hours, all of the sudden, the TV went out.  In fact, the entire room where the TV is went dark.  The strange thing is the everything else in the house still had power.  'I know,' I thought. 'We tripped a breaker!'  I figured that's what Clark Griswald would check, so off I went to the panel.  But everything was good.  No tripped breakers.  

And then, the furnace went off - so now, the heater stopped working.  but I still had electricity coming into the house, because the fridge was still on and some lights were still lit.  I went out to the generator and checked all the buttons.  I didn't really know what I was looking at, but on the outside chance that Susan or one of the kids was watching, I carefully studied, poked and prodded as if the right touch might add an ohm to an amp to ramp up the volts with the current and send more dc with the ac so we could have total juice-age.  I didn't have a clue.

I got more and more frustrated.  I seemed to have all of the switches right, everything was in place, there was gas in the tank, the motor was running, it just didn't make any sense at all.

And then, it occurred to me to check one more thing.

So I went outside and this is what I saw:

Can you see it...can you see the problem?  Underneath that flap is the plug that runs power into the house.  Over time, through movement and the vibrations of the generator, the plug had slowly begun to work it's way from a fully-connected state to a semi-connected state.  It was only half way plugged in, and my house was experiencing the effects.  In order for my house to receive full power transmission, there needed to be a complete plug-in.  Half way would result in substandard results - we'd be cold or without water or without something else we needed.  Sooner or later, we'd be complaining, mad, arguing with each other, blaming the generator for not doing its job, etc.  

Stay with me.

Then it occurred to me...this is how I often live my life.  I run around as if everything should be fully charged, fully powered.  And I develop my little 'checklist':  Church? Check.  Tithe? Check.  Work hard? Check. Give to someone in need? Check Check.  But then I realize that my life is not running on all the power that I should have.  I lose my passion, I lose my temper, I lose my patience, I lose my perspective...I lose my power.  And my initial conclusion is to blame everyone else - blame my family, blame the church, blame God.

But what's the real problem?  Well, I had all the switches right, but slowly, over time, the natural movement of life itself worked so that a disconnect began to take place between the Power Source and the power recipient.  The situation slowly deteriorates, I get more and more frustrated until finally only certain things work, and even then not all the time and not like they should.

So, we scramble around, double check the list, make sure we're still basically a good person, blah blah blah.  We cycle around over and over again avoiding the obvious, basic diagnostic question that we should have asked from the beginning:

Is the power recipient fully plugged into the Power Source?

When are we going to look at the plug?  When are we going to evaluate the connection between ourselves (the one in need of Power) and the Generator of Power?

God hasn't moved.  He's not hiding.  You just have to do your part to reconnect.  Start reading the Bible - if you don't know where to go, start in Matthew.  Read the NIV or some other translation that's easy, modern English (nothing against King James, it's just that we don't speak King James English anymore).  Take a walk, pray, tell God how you feel, meditate on the life, words, actions, or sacrifice of Jesus Christ.  Listen for Him to speak.  Feel His Power return to your life, or come maybe for the first time, in the form of energy or peace or forgiveness (of yourself or others) or joy or a positive perspective or generosity or any number of ways.  The point is that you will begin to be fully powered - the way you are supposed to be, because you are now fully connected to the Source of Power Himself.