2 Reasons Why You Should Stay Tethered to God

Last week, I joined the boys in the pond – a welcome relief from the heat and humidity. We splashed around, they climbed me like a jungle gym, they begged me to throw them into the water. When I got tired, I climbed onto the floating dock. I untied the yellow rope from the post of the gazebo and I let the wind drift me across the pond.

By the time the boys wanted to join me, I was clear across the other side. William put on a life jacket and swam out to the dock. Henry put his sandals on and walked around to the other edge, jumping on from dry land. We paddled around and kicked our feet in the water. We pointed out the purple dragonflies. Slowly, we made our way back across the pond to the gazebo. I tethered the dock to the post, leaving a lot of slack in the long rope, knowing we would be content to float out to the middle of the water, easily pulling ourselves back to shore.

That’s the beauty of a tether: you can never be too far gone. There is safety in knowing you can reel yourself in at any time. It’s impossible to drift away when you are securely attached to a firm foundation.

Where is your tether?

Where are you firmly attached? Where have you tied your tether rope. Are you relying on your own efforts and accomplishments to keep you safe and secure? Is it your bank account that you’re relying on to keep you afloat? Your college prospects? Your career? None of those things will stop you from drifting out to choppy waters.

Tethering your rope to God won’t even prevent you from floating out to places you didn’t choose – hard places, painful places – BUT! With our rope tethered to Christ, we can be confident that we will always be secure in Him.

Tethering your rope to God won’t prevent you from floating out to hard places, but with our rope tethered to Christ, we can be confident that we will always be secure in Him.

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When we rely on external factors to keep us safe and secure – our jobs, our relationships, our accomplishments – two things can happen:

1. We become undone by loss. When we lose our job, our bank account, our relationships, even our regular routines (hello, pandemic!) we can be overcome with fear and anxiety. We are suddenly drifting in the middle of choppy waters, with no tether in sight.
2. We are paralyzed by big decisions. When we believe that our safety and security is entirely up to us, we can become overwhelmed by life’s big decisions. Which college should I go to? Which job should I take? Who do I marry? Should we move or stay? Should I quit the rat race or keep climbing the corporate ladder? Do I stay with my company or start my own business?

When our hope is in Christ, however, there is no decision that we can make that will take us outside the reach of God’s tether. We can rest assured that we are safe and secure in Him regardless of the specific paths we choose. And when we are faced with loss, we can remember that God is always with us; we are not floating in the middle of those choppy waters all alone!

The Bible compares God to a solid rock: strong, firm, unchanging. And the hope we have in Jesus is like “an anchor to our soul” according to Hebrews chapter 6. So when we are faced with loss or big decisions, we can take comfort in knowing we are tethered to a God who loves us deeply, to a God who has everything under control, to a God who will never abandon us.

And that is a much firmer foundation than anything we can accomplish on our own!

*Feature Photo by Robert Zunikoff on Unsplash