A Problem With An Outlet

I remember Mr. B.
He was married to a dear friend of my mother.
We often visited them on a Sunday afternoon.
Since everything was closed on Sundays, many people spent the day visiting.

Mr. and Mrs. B lived in another state.
To me, as a little girl, it was so far away.
In reality, it was just over the bridge.
New Jersey seemed so far away when you are little and cannot see out the car windows.

I remember their house seemed so big to me.
They had a lot of land.
They had a post and rail fence around their property.
I thought it was beautiful.

Mr. B was always building something or fixing something.
Mrs. B never bragged but she did love to show his handiwork.
He was a humble man.
He did not like the attention.

I realized that I am married to a Mr. B.
I have told my dear friend that I am careful about mentioning that something needs to be fixed.
If I am not mindful of the timing of that statement, my husband will fix it then and there.
That is a blessing; however, I want him to finish his dinner first.

I was not thinking and told him about the speaker.
We have a sound system in our house with speakers in various rooms.
The speaker in the living room was not working.
The Everywhere button on the app listed only four rooms instead of five.

The family room, kitchen, dining room, and the upstairs bridge were all working.
The living room was silent.
I love when my music is continuous as I walk from one room to the next.
It seemed unbalanced with one room totally silent.

I was finishing the salad as I told my husband about the speaker not working.
Before I finished the sentence, I realized what I had done.
I turned around and pointed to him.
You are not fixing this now! I said with emphasis.

He already had his phone in his hand.
He was checking the app.
He realized that the account is under my email so he needed my phone.
All of this was done before he put the fork to his mouth.

I could see his engineer brain working.
I could see him troubleshooting.
I could see him formulating solutions to the problem.
He first had to know the nature of the problem.

After he finished his dinner, he tested the speaker in other outlets.
The speaker worked in other places.
A lamp was plugged into the bottom of the outlet in question.
The lamp worked just fine.

My husband turned the power off to that particular outlet.
He determined that the problem was only in the top half of the outlet.
He had spare outlets in his workshop.
He would replace the outlet for me so that the speaker would work again.

This was all before I cleaned up the kitchen after our dinner.
You would pay people thousands of dollars for this service, he teased.
That is something he always says to me after he fixes something.
He is right; we never have repairmen in our home since he fixes everything.

And may your hearts be fully committed to the Lord our God, to live by his decrees and obey his commands, as at this time. (1 Kings 8:61)

David was a man after God’s own heart.
David, who would become king, had a heart fully devoted to the Lord.
Many kings who followed David, had only half a heart for the Lord.
Just like my outlet, half of a heart is not good.

God wants nothing less that our whole heart that is fully devoted to Him.
We cannot have half of our heart attached to other things.
Those other things become idols in our lives.
Nothing should take the place of God in our hearts.

There is only one Throne in our heart and God is on it.
Anything else that we put on that throne is an idol.
We may have ourselves on the throne.
We may have money, power, or another person on the throne.

That place belongs to God alone.
Half a heart will not do.
Ask Him.
Ask God to help you love Him more fully.

Ask God to help you remove anything else from the throne of your life.
Ask Him to change your heart.
Ask Him to keep your focus on the things that matter.
Ask Him to help you focus on Him.

The music is wafting through my house.
My husband found the problem in the outlet and replaced it with a new one.
The new outlet is working both on the top and the bottom.
It is fully functioning and my music is playing.

Ask yourself: Does God have my whole heart or only half of my heart?
It matters.