Luke-Warm

Revelation 3:14-16

"These are the words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the ruler of God’s creation. I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth."

I don't know if you are familar with these words. They are often quoted in sermons and Bible studies, but they have always confused me. I understand why hot is better than lukewarm, but why is cold better than lukewarm? After all, isn't it better to have a little warmth toward God...even if it is just a little?

I had Sunday school teachers use an analogy to help me understand. "I like hot tea. I like iced tea. I don't really like lukewarm tea. That is how God is with us." Well, I understood this analogy for delicious beverages, but it didn't really help me to understand why someone who is lukewarm toward God would be worse off than someone who is cold toward God.

Recently I was thinking about this. I was thinking about water. When you take water out of the ground it is around 52 degrees. I would call this cool or even cold (how would you like to swim in 52 degree water?). So, water starts out cold. For water to become lukewarm it must be exposed to a source of heat. It must remain connected to that source of heat long enough to start experiencing changes caused by that heat. After it has experienced those changes the water must be then removed from the source of heat to keep it from becoming hot.

So what does this have to do with God?

There is only one way that a person can become a lukewarm Christian.

We start out with no passion for Christ...we are cold. Sometime in our life we meet Christ. We stay close to him and he begins to change us. He begins to kindle a fire and a passion in us for God. Then, before we become hot, we remove ourselves from this close intimate relationship. We are luke warm.

There is only one way that a person can become a lukewarm Christian. We must experience the love and grace of Christ, begin to change, and then say, "No thanks. I'm not really interested."

I now understand why lukewarm Christians are such a turnoff for God. In John 15:4 Jesus says, "Remain in me and I will remain in you."

Remain in Christ today.

The Newest Work

It has been two months, so both my readers have probably given up on me, but I wanted to throw out this thought that God has given me in the last couple of days.

The story of the Lost or Prodigal Son is fairly well known. If you are not familiar with it, it is found in Luke 15:11. It is awesome. As I read the story I've always kind of wondered about one of the lesser characters...the brother.

As the story goes, one son asks his father for his inheritance early. He then goes out and blows it all. When he returns to his father, the father throws him a party. Meanwhile, while the first son was blowing it, the other son was at home faithfully working. When the first son received his party, the brother was a little less than thrilled. This son complained to the father that his hard work was not being rewarded.

The father reminded the son that "everything I have is yours." I've always read over this verse and thought "that is a pretty cheap pep-talk. I'll bet the son was feeling better after that." But then I realized the extent of this statement. This wasn't some pep-talk, the father was stating a fact. He was telling this son that every thing he owned would one day be this son's inheritance.

He was telling this son, "Keep up the good work. I've noticed it. You just haven't been rewarded...YET."

Sometimes life isn't fair. We try to follow God, yet things don't work out. Does God even notice that we are trying? The answer is YES. Keep following, keep being faithful. Our inheritance is coming.

Standing Out

Yesterday I started reading "The Life You've Always Wanted" by John Ortberg. There was one paragraph that jumped off the page and slapped me in the face. That is what I want to talk about today.

Here is where the thought begins. The Bible tells us that we are to be separate from the world (in the world but not of the world).

In John 13:35 Jesus commands us to love one another. Love in a radical, real way. Love in a big, bold way. Love in a way that is so pure that when other people see us they automatically know that we are Christians. By having a love like this, we would be separated from the world all around us regardless of our environment. We would be separate like a rainbow in a cloudy sky.

Yet most of the time we fail at loving like this. Because of this failure to be separated by love, we instead try to separate ourselves by making boundries. We make rules like no dancing, no rock music, no movies, no...

Now, I'm not saying that having rules and boundries is bad, because we all need fences in our lives. The problem is that many times as we build these boundries around our lives we forget to have that big, bold love that Jesus commands for us. Additionally many times these fences serve not only to keep us in, but to also keep others out. Fences are no substitute for big, bold love. We must be known by our love. People should know by looking at us that we follow Christ. But this distinction should come by our great love for others.

Here is my last thought. If people cannot recognize that you are a Christian by your great love, maybe it is better that they don't know that you are a Christian at all.

Mid 20's Crisis Part IV

This is part IV of this discussion. As a recap, I've noticed that many of the people in our age group struggle with the same issues. This is designed to be a discussion and a time where we can offer ideas to each other. The main rule is to not gossip about others.

The topic this week is money, or more specifically debt. Most of us have some pretty real issues with debt. I think that this comes from a variety of reasons. On the income side, most of us are on the lower end of the pay scale for our jobs because we haven't yet received promotions and big raises. Many of us are also trying to pay off student loans from college. These are parts of the problem, yet I believe that the biggest factor lies on the spending side. The truth is that most of us spend way too much money. There are many reasons for this, but I believe that the biggest cause of our over spending is that we try to live like our parents live. We live in a house like they live in, we drive the same cars that they do, and our TV is the same size as theirs (or maybe even bigger). I am guilty of this.

What we tend to forget is that our parents didn't live like this when they were in their 20's. I remember that growing up we hardly ever ate out. When we did it was usually McDonalds. When we ate at McDonalds we had to order hamburgers...because cheeseburgers were too expensive. Think about what our financial situations would be like if we could show that kind of discipline! This is really hard for me.

Lets offer each other suggestions this week. Post a comment about your favorite way to save money. What are your favorite cheap restraunts? What is a good way to save on utility bills? What is a great cheap date idea? What other suggestions can you give?

Mid-20's Crisis Part III

If you haven't read Part I, here is the scoop. It seems like many people in our age group are struggling with many of the same issues, so I wanted us to be able to offer ideas, ask questions, and chat with each other. The basic rule is not to share other people's business (gossip) and to be sensitive.

Here is our second subject: singleness. I know that my thoughts are coming only from my point of view, so I really hope that some others can hop in the conversation.

I guess that as long as I can remember I have had a desire for a lasting committed relationship. When I was in elementary school that didn't really mean much. I didn't want to talk on the phone (or in person for that matter) and I didn't like notes. I'm not sure what exactly I enjoyed about "going with someone," but I know that I did love that feeling of someone thinking I was special. My desires grew as I did and they changed to a gut wrenching desire to be married.

I would have never imagined that I would be the first person in my family (extended included) to not be married immediately after college. This reality became more and more difficult as my younger cousins passed me on the race to the alter. The feelings of emptiness were often almost too much to bear. I'll never forget the day that I passed the unofficial/unspoken "fail date" for marriage set by my family. That was a bad day!

Wow...enough sad. Single life wasn't all that bad though. I had more freedom and less worries. I was able to go anywhere and do anything that I wanted. I had more time because I only had one schedule to worry about. And, when I was having a good attitude about being single I had a lot of fun.

I think that the most important thing that I tried to do was to trust God to bring me the right person at the right time. I loved the love stories found in Song of Solomon and Genesis 24/29. I also had to trust that God would provide me with the love and friends that I needed.

Wow. This was a long one. I'd love to hear from you all. How did/do you handle being 20-something and single?

Mid-20s-Crisis Part II

Thanks for the ideas. Remember the ground rules: don't talk about someone else's life! Also realize that none of us have "life" all figured out, so let's make this a discussion.

Here is the first topic. How do we balance our schedules? What do we want our priorities to be and what does our life show that our priorities actually are.

I want my priorities in life to be serving God, loving Darcy, being a good father, being a good friend/brother/son/cousin...and impacting my community. I love my job as a youth pastor, I'm passionate about my role as a coach, and I can't get enough of my wife. Many times this leaves me lacking in the good friend category. I know that I need some lines, so here are some that I've tried to make.

1. A date with Darcy every week
2. Only two or three mornings and two evenings per week devoted to youth group kids (though this might change when our baby gets here).
3. Every Monday night is dinner with my extended family.
4. I love to play softball, but realize that I will probably have to give this up this summer
5. I'm coaching Upward Basketball (which is a good thing), but have already filled my schedule with enough coaching, so I will give that up too.

The place that I get in the most trouble is with coaching. I know that through coaching I can serve God and impact our community...and I love it, but it takes so much time.

I'm a work in progress, so I know things will change. I also know that things probably need to change.

What about the rest of you. What things do you do to balance your schedule?

Mid 20's Crisis

I think that I want to take a few weeks to do something different with the blog. Recently I have been thinking about how this is a tough age for a lot of people. As I look around at our age group I see some pretty common things that we struggle with. Many of us are no longer in the new adult stage of life that is marked with completion of high school or college. Do you remember how bright life seemed then? We couldn't wait to get our lives going.

Well now we are a few years past that...but we still are wanting to get our lives going! Many of us have young relationships, young families and young careers. We know that the foundation we lay now will be critical to the formation of the rest of our lives.

Unfortunatley I know that many of us sometimes struggle with these things. I thought we could take a few weeks to tackle a few issues and give each other some support for these things.

A few ground rules though...#1. Don't share someone else's business! If you do I will delete it. #2. Understand that as we talk about these topics, some will undoubtedly be personal to you. Please understand that I will never be talking about a specific person or friend.

So lets start with a survey. What are the things that you see people our age struggling with. What are the things we should talk about. Please leave your ideas in the comments.

Here is a start: We struggle with balancing schedules (job, spouse, kids, hobbies)