In plumbing, leaks can be caused by loose connections between pipes. And because you and I take it for granted that the connections between the unseen pipes at home are sound, once in a blue moon we are surprised when facing the inevitable\u2014a leak.<\/p>\n
In my house, the leak seeped up over the top of the fitting. Somehow the connection had loosened and soundness was compromised. But as quickly as it was discovered it was repaired\u2014the contractor was in the house! Don\u2019t you wish all<\/em> of the leaks and glitches in your home would occur when a repairman was on the scene? Well, here\u2019s good news\u2014the Carpenter is always<\/i> in the house!<\/p>\n The leak in the connection between the pipes started me thinking about the closeness of my connection with God. I hate to admit it, but as I look back over the past 39 years of my relationship with Him, I haven\u2019t always maintained a super-tight connection. Don\u2019t get me wrong\u2014once I was born again, I was connected. But sometimes I was content just to appear <\/i>to have a close connection, while the connection itself had become loose, casual\u2014even sloppy. And upon closer inspection, I can see that the most satisfying times in my life have occurred when I purposefully tightened that connection.<\/p>\n How do<\/em> you tighten the connection between yourself and God? What tends to loosen it up? What are some of the signs that you need to crank that connection more tightly? And if you\u2019re in Christ and He\u2019s in you, why concern yourself about this connection at all? Isn\u2019t connection with Him a given?<\/p>\n The skinny is this: the connection is<\/em> perfect on His end; it\u2019s your<\/em> end that needs watchful oversight, maintenance, and sometimes repair. If there\u2019s any disconnect, it\u2019s on your end.<\/p>\n Remember last week I wrote that I was bombarded by negative thoughts one snowy morning? I ran for refuge that day to a pile of devotionals, knowing in my gut that I would receive direction and help. And interestingly enough, in one way or another, out of every single entry emerged a strengthening, nutritious nugget about\u2014you guessed it\u2014a vital connection with God.<\/p>\n I\u2019ll be writing about what I gleaned that snowy day in the next several blog entries. But tomorrow I plan to backtrack a bit and share a dream that I had sometime last year. You\u2019ll understand why when you read \u201cConnected to the Source\u201d.<\/p>\n Dorothy<\/p>\n “Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me.”<\/em> John 15:4<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In plumbing, leaks can be caused by loose connections between pipes. And because you and I take it for granted that the connections between the unseen pipes at home are sound, once in a blue moon we are surprised when facing the inevitable\u2014a leak. In my house, the leak seeped up over the top of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33,32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4218","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-connection","category-help-from-god"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.firstofallpray.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4218","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.firstofallpray.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.firstofallpray.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.firstofallpray.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.firstofallpray.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4218"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/www.firstofallpray.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4218\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4250,"href":"http:\/\/www.firstofallpray.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4218\/revisions\/4250"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.firstofallpray.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.firstofallpray.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.firstofallpray.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}