Plugged In, But No Power

And here's what I realized. I had the lights. The lights were good. Were there anything wrong with the lights? Were there anything wrong with the bulbs? I had the decoration plan. It all worked out. It all made sense. I mapped it out. It all was seemingly good, but what I didn't have was the power that the lights needed. I didn't have adequate power for them. And isn't that exactly how you and I live sometimes, especially during the Christmas season? We have all the lights. We have all the decorations. We decorate our Christmas with them. [00:05:03] (34 seconds)  #PowerMatters

The problem wasn't my bulbs. It was the power that they demanded. The lights, they were plugged in, but there wasn't enough power. My house was decorated, but it wasn't connected. And so that's where we're going today. We're going to talk about how we can be plugged in and yet still have no power. Because the same can be true for us, I believe. We can have all the lights. We can have all the decorations. We can go to all the Christmas parties. But without connection to Jesus, there's no power. [00:06:24] (31 seconds)  #ConnectedNotJustDecorated

Decorated doesn't mean connected. Decorated does your life seem decorated this December and yet also disconnected? Does it look good, but there's no power? My lights, they look great, like I said, for half a second at a time. Because those lights, they drew so much more power than LEDs. And since I had strung several of the strands together, the moment I turned those on, it was just way too much for my system. And it tripped the breaker. [00:06:57] (35 seconds)  #DecoratedNotConnected

So here's what I want you to see. More decorations, more lights, more stuff, more busyness will always overload a weak power source. Always. Spiritually, I think this is what we try to do every December. We pile on more activity, more expectations, more Christmas. We pile it on. But it's never going to work because we're running on the wrong power source. [00:08:52] (29 seconds)  #WrongPowerSource

I think a lot of Christians try to live in LED spirituality. What I mean is this. They look good. They look okay. They get the job done. You can tell that they're lights, but they're not real bright. I was wondering if anybody would laugh at that. In all the definitions of the term, they're not real bright, because we put out a very dim effort. We're a minimal draw on the system. [00:13:17] (34 seconds)  #LEDSpirituality

We can look put together on the outside. We can look organized. We can look decorated and still be blowing breakers on the inside. We can attend church. We can sing the songs. We can wrap the presents. We can plan the parties. We can host the parties. But if we're not abiding in Jesus, we are going to eventually click and burn out every single time. [00:14:31] (25 seconds)  #AbideInJesus

The point is this, when we work in our own power, all of the effort that is required doing whatever it is that we are doing is useless. We're just spinning our wheels. If the Lord is not in it, all of the work, nobody's saying you're not working hard. It's just useless. You're fighting against yourself. It doesn't work out. [00:15:50] (26 seconds)  #NotByMyOwnStrength

Here's the truth I want you to see. Christmas overloads when Christ is overlooked. When we aren't connected to the vine, when we aren't connected to the power source, why are we so surprised when Christmas doesn't feel like Christmas? Why does that surprise us? I haven't done anything, you know? I haven't focused on Jesus all month. Well, Christmas just doesn't really feel like Christmas this year. [00:17:37] (28 seconds)  #KeepChristInChristmas