Friday, February 13, 2004
Once you've gotten used to a new convenience you find yourself asking, "How did we ever do without these?" Sadly, my cell phone is one of those new things that seems indispensable now. Especially when you have lots of irons in the fire and you're on the road a lot. Often, by the end of the day my cell phone and I have something in common - our battery is dead and we need recharging. I get into a bed - my phone gets plugged into an outlet. Not long ago, I went through my night-night drill in my motel room, including plugging in my cell phone. It wasn't happy the next morning when I went to turn my cell phone back on. Oh, I had plugged it in - on one end. See, I had connected my phone cord into the phone, but I had forgotten to plug it into the wall. So, my dead phone was still very dead.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Living Unplugged."
When you forget to plug a cell phone into the power source, it's going to be powerless. It's the same for you and me. We're designed by our Creator to regularly plug into our power source. When we neglect to do that, we find ourselves increasingly losing power. Life becomes more and more overwhelming. The old you, the bad you, starts making a comeback. You become less kind and more harsh; less peaceful - more stressed; less about others and more about yourself. And as the demands increase, your power to meet those demands seems to be diminishing. Jesus becomes less real and your cold or fearful heart becomes much too real.
Those are pretty clear indicators that you are trying to live unplugged. You've been "Martha-ed." I know that's not a verb, but it is now. Martha's story is in Luke 10:39-42, our word for today from the Word of God. And it's an all too revealing mirror of what we're like when we have neglected our connection to our power source.
Jesus was a guest for dinner at Martha's house. The Bible says: "She had a sister called Mary, who sat at Jesus' feet, listening to what He said. But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to Him and asked, 'Lord, don't You care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!' 'Martha, Martha,' the Lord answered, 'you are worried and upset about many things, but only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.'"
Pretty amazing: Martha has the Son of God right there in her home, and she is stressed, and critical, and miserable. That's when Jesus lets her know that all the important things she is hustling around doing are not as important as what Mary is doing - sitting at His feet, listening to Him. If life has become way too stressful and overwhelming for you, it's a good possibility you've been making that same mistake. You've let the bombardment and the overload squeeze out your personal time with Jesus - at the very time when you need Him the most! The busier and "behinder" you get, the more desperately you need the perspective and power that comes only from sitting at the feet of the Son of God.
In Psalm 42, the psalmist cries out: "My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God?" That needs to be the cry of your heart. Because a regular time with Him is, as Jesus said, the "one thing (that) is needed." It's time for you to make your time with Jesus not an option, if and when you have time, but the singular non-negotiable of your daily schedule. You just can't afford to leave home without it - with the mercies that the Bible says are "new every morning" (Lamentations 3:23) - mercies that keep us from being "consumed."
If you're running out of power, it's because you've been unplugged from the source of power too long. You're missing Jesus - and He's missing you. Get back to the source of your power.