Hello everyone! Today might not be a super fun post because I am going to get down and dirty on what it means to be a lukewarm Christian. Spoiler alert! It is totally unacceptable to be lukewarm in your faith. God even says that he would rather you be cold or on fire to the faith ("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 will spit you out of my mouth." Revelation 3:15-16).
Um, God will spit me out of His mouth? What? I thought He was supposed to love his children equally. I thought He was supposed to be a loving God.
Just because God loves us does not mean He has to tolerate our behavior.
Yes, God loves us deeply and it breaks His heart to see us stray from the promises He gave us, but He does not, in any way, shape, or form, tolerate our sin.
By the way, a quick detour, God's existence does not ride on the purpose of smiting us. He does not say, "Dang it. Looks like Samantha lied again. Better send a lightning bolt down to punish her". Psalm 46:1 says, "God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. " He is there to HELP when we slip up. He knows we are imperfect which is why He is always there to help.
Okay, back on track.
It is our responsibility to live by God's Word. It is our responsibility to go to God and ask for forgiveness. It is our own willingness to follow God that makes a difference between the cold and the lukewarm and the on fire.
I have been a lukewarm Christian for most of my life. I think I only recently started turning away from worldly desire. I still slip up. I still give myself excuses to ignore what God is trying to tell me. I still choose to watch Vampire Diaries or scroll on Instagram instead of building my spiritual armor. I even clean my dorm room if it means straying away from the uncertainty that God wants me to travel into.
It is never a good feeling to know that you are lukewarm. I like to think of it as being wishy- washy and purposeless. Without conviction. The life you live when you are lukewarm means that you have no direction. You don't play for both teams, you play for yourself.
Being lukewarm was scarier than giving my roommate a Bible to encourage her to seek God's help. It was scarier because I knew I was a fraud. And I had refused to change that. I still think of myself as a fraud sometimes. The only difference is that it is the enemy telling me that I will never live up to God's expectations and I will always be a fake. He is right about not living up to God's expectations, but I can try. I can live my life purely for God with His light shining through me, not for the approval of others.
Being this room-temperature coffee does not just affect yourself. It affects others as well. Because you have no direction in life being lukewarm, you start to seek direction from others. You start to become this idea of another person that you look up to. A person that lives a life that seems easier than living a life for God. But you still want the spiritual satisfaction. You still want the "I believe in God" under your belt because, well, you want to be a good person. But you aren't a good person. God designed us to follow Him and become the best versions of ourselves that He designed us to be through Him. Without His conviction in our hearts, we start playing other people. We start projecting false personas in order to be liked and accepted. We mislead them into thinking we are just like them. But when the time comes for our persona to be tested, we always fall short. When that happens, the people we were playing begin to recognize it. Then they leave us. The people we thought we could keep in our lives leave us because God is trying to tell us that we do not need their approval, we need His. He is trying to close this chapter in our life of being lukewarm. He is trying to help us realize that we need Him because he is everlasting and never changing.
It is a sick feeling to live life just droning in between meals. It is numbing to speak sentences, but not know what you are saying. It is absolutely unacceptable to go to church and call yourself a Christian when you absolutely refuse to follow God with conviction and strength in your heart.
This post is getting to be a little long so I will end it here and write a part two another day.
Until then, reflect on your current standing with God. Do you not follow Him? Do you say you do, but live a life for other worldly things? Do you live each moment with and for God?
Let me know.
-Sam
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