I’ve learned anew, in a very personal way, just how important it is to have correct connections.  Earlier this week I found out that I had an “extra” connector inside of my heart called a bypass tract. Two days later I was in the hospital getting this situation corrected, as it was deemed dangerous.   It was successful, though a very unpleasant experience.

There is a very specific, God designed way, with which the human heart is meant to pump blood throughout our bodies.  When an extra connector (other than the intended one) gets involved in the process it confuses the way the heart is intended to work.  The electricity can quickly jump from the correct connector to the errant connector.  In my case, the electricity kept wanting to jump the track, finding my available and yet wayward  connector.   This resulted in a “short circuit”, which is not good in an electric toaster, or a human heart.   

All too often in life we deviate from the way things were meant to be.  We see before us many choices of pathways to follow.   When we wander down a different path from the one God intended for us numerous  aspects of our lives get “short circuited”.  Whether it be the standard we use for sin and righteousness, the way we approach marriage or even the choices we make concerning the focus of our time and attention – we can tend to stray from the path of God’s intended track for our lives.  We may tend to make up our own instructions, or search a different road – rather than seeking out the will of God.   The result can be debilitating, or even fatal – now and eternally.  We end up short –circuited!  Though short circuits can produce fireworks for a moment and a “flash in the pan” they will not last. After the sparks die down there is no more power, life or energy.

To keep my electrical charges from further straying, the doctors  got rid of the errant path, or connection.  I suffered “true heartburn”.  They literally burned the deviant connection, in order to prevent it from being accessed and traveled again.   This was a radical, but necessary approach.

Spiritually, we can be tempted to travel superfluous or meaningless paths, different from the clear ones given by God.   How much more important to “burn these bridges behind us”, allowing us to function whole-heartedly – in the ways our God intended.

Deut. 4:39

Acknowledge and take to heart this day that the Lord is God in heaven above and on the earth below. There is no other.

Deut. 5:7

“You shall have no other gods before me.

Deut. 5:32
So be careful to do what the Lord your God has commanded you; do not turn aside to the right or to the left.

John 12:47-50
“As for the person who hears my words but does not keep them, I do not judge him. For I did not come to judge the world, but to save it. [48] There is a judge for the one who rejects me and does not accept my words; that very word which I spoke will condemn him at the last day. [49] For I did not speak of my own accord, but the Father who sent me commanded me what to say and how to say it. [50] I know that his command leads to eternal life. So whatever I say is just what the Father has told me to say.”

John 14:3-6

And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. [4] You know the way to the place where I am going.”

[5] Thomas said to him, “Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?”

[6] Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

Acts 4:12

Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved.”