Hot stuff. Sultry. Sizzling spicy thing… I’m sure you’re conjuring and summoning a lot of images through these words, but I mean another thing. Read on, however.
Some food are better served hot, that’s for sure. When soup’s cold, it’s not soup. So is a believer. God says in Revelations 3:16, “So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth.” People might say it’s hard to be a believer these days. There’s just so much things to grapple against: temptations, sins, compromise and we are ever surrounded by colleagues, friends, and family who do not know Christ and use their heart’s desires as their life compass.
The Bible says: “Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is worthy of respect, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if something is excellent or praiseworthy, think about these things.” This verse provides our direction. This is the standard by which God wants us to be led amidst the strife that is this world. There’s no middle ground and there should be no room for tolerance of the “little things”, the ”harmless” trends, the indiscriminate acceptance of anything. Chris Fabry in his book “The 77 Habits of Highly Ineffective Christians” says that to be an Ineffective Christian, the following advice should be taken to heart: “In this resolve of accepting others no matter what they say or believe, you should perceive yourself as livng a Christlike life, thereby confusing tolerance with love. You will then become unpopular with news organizations that look for sane, tolerant folks to juxtapose to the narrow-minded religious sorts who just don’t want people to have fun. If you get really good at it, you might run for public office.”
Christians should know that even a little of the bad thing is a bad thing indeed. If a Christian wants to be famous with everyone, then he should tolerate everything, or be a Christian whenever convenient, or easy and then get rid of those Biblical values when we don’t want to be perceived as “uncool”.
Lukewarmness is a spiritual condition that is all too common around us, even in the church to be ignored. It’s a condition that’s not hot and not cold. It’s a middle ground status, a safe haven, but something which is an abomination to God. - picket luna
