| Having a background in theatre, I learned long ago how important it is for the cast and crew of a production to draw energy from an audience. It really is a symbiotic relationship. The cast and crew give energy to the audience and the audience gives energy back to the cast and crew. They feed off of each other’s energy. At least that is the way it is supposed to work. There are times when either can fall short and if they do, the production loses momentum. But when it works, everybody leaves with high energy, even in dramas. People will often look for that same symbiosis in their everyday lives. We often hear that we need to remove the negative people from our lives because they will drag us down and increase the number of positive people in our lives to build us up. I get that. I understand where those teachings are coming from. But if you look at the greatest teacher who has ever lived, we don’t see him removing the negative people from his life. No, he embraces them and often gives them the attention that they are seeking. He doesn’t consider it wasted energy to try and bring a positive energy into their lives. He even did this with the people who hated him and eventually killed him. That man was Jesus. Jesus understood something that we often forget. He drew his energy from his Father, not from the people around him. He expects us to do the same. When we depend on people to feed energy into us, they will often disappoint us. We can’t get to angry with them when that happens if we haven’t told them about the true source of unlimited energy. People who are not connected to the Creator of the universe in a truly meaningful relationship are bound to run low on energy and “good vibes” now and again. That doesn’t mean that we should ignore that positive energy when it comes our way. We just shouldn’t depend on it. As Christians, we tend to treat our energy like we treat our check registers based on debits and deposits. We get so much energy and we give so much energy. If we write too many checks against our energy balance, we come up short. This is a normal process in our brains. It’s why we want to be around positive people (increasing our energy balance) and avoid negative people as much as possible so that it doesn’t drain that energy account and leave us overdrawn. But we do that because we are choosing to live our lives with our noses in that check register and counting on other people to make deposits into us. We live in fear that we are going to be overdrawn. Is it so difficult for us to see that Jesus, in spite of His healing, giving, loving, caring, teaching, praying and patience, never seemed to run out of energy? There always seemed to be plenty to go around, even when He was physically exhausted. That is because He tapped into an unlimited energy source that did not depend on the people around Him. The fuel for His ministry came from His Father. That unlimited fuel soul spilled out of Him and overflowed into everyone around Him. He did not need to worry about becoming overdrawn because He knew, with His every breath, that there would always be more than He would need. And that same energy from God the Father is available to us as Christians. We should remember that we do not tap into it when we need it. But instead, we reroute our wiring so that we are dependent on that fuel from God as our primary source of energy rather than looking for the people around us to fill us up. We need to be substations for God’s energy in a world where energy is in short supply. God expects people to be able to tap into His energy through us knowing that it is impossible for us to come up short. We get tired. So did Jesus. We lose patience. So did Jesus. We feel overwhelmed. Being human, I am sure there were times that He must have felt overwhelmed as well. But Jesus knew that He could always count on His energy source to bring Him back. We should embrace that as well. The really best part of this understanding is that we don’t have to expend energy to plug into God. People who do not make God their primary energy source, have to get their energy from somewhere else, which means they can easily deplete the energy of the people around them. This leads to depression, discontent, anger, malice, and feelings of being used and manipulated. God wants us to take the energy He offers. And it’s free. Time to rethink our primary energy source and plug into all that God has to offer. AMEN |
