From Pastor Randy's Sermon

There is a story (told by Max Lucado) about a lady who had a small house on the seashore of Ireland at the turn of the century.  She was quite wealthy but also very frugal with her money.  The people around her were surprised when she decided to be among the first to have electricity in her home.  Several weeks after the installation, a meter reader appeared at her door. He asked if her electricity was working well, and she assured him it was.  The meter reader then asked her to explain something.  He said, “Your meter shows scarcely any usage.  Are you using your power”?  “Certainly,” she answered, “Each evening when the sun sets, I turn on my lights just long enough to light my candles; then I turn them off.”

As Max Lucado further enlightens – this woman was tapped into the power, but she doesn’t use it.  Her house is connected but it is not altered.  Sometimes as Christians we can make the same mistake.  In the great gift of God’s grace we know through faith that we have life forever with God, however, the great trap we can fall into is that once we acknowledge that faith, we stop there.  We become connected but we never fully turn on the lights, we don’t alter our lives.  

From Pamela:  I wonder, are there times that we pray for change in some way with conditions or limits set upon how much we want to change.  Perhaps we may ask for some addiction to be managed.  Then we wonder why during the holiday seasons why we don't want to attend the same types of parties we did in the past.  (I wanted to be changed -- but not THAT much!) 

Sometimes we ask for God's light to illuminate our understanding of the way a co-worker acts.  But then when we look in the mirror and see that same character flaw staring back at us we are shocked.  

Being connected to God is a wonderful thing.  It is also wonder-filled.  Constant connection provides a flow of grace and truth that spills over into all aspects of life.  This connection has its greatest power in our life when we stop trying to plug-in on an as needed basis. 

 I think the term is "hard-wired" when a connection is made that is constant and ideally immune to interruption.  

We often like to be hard-wired for our cable systems.  Why not for our faith system?