My house is COLD! I mean it is COLD! My husband has programmed the heater to turn down at night since we are all under blankets. It makes sense, but I need to go and play with the programming a bit so that it starts warming up again BEFORE I get out of bed. I hate being cold. I don’t even like cold drinks most of the time! It is the worse feeling to me. It is so hard for me to warm up. In college, my roommate and I had a room right next to an open stairwell and the dorm would not turn on the heaters earlier enough. I remember sitting in our room with gloves and hats and coats on trying to get our homework done. It stinks when you are cold.
In one of those “would you rather” games. Someone asked me if I would rather freeze to death or burn to death. I didn’t hesitate a moment, I said I would rather burn! I would be warm, it would be over much faster and I could be a torch for someone for a small amount of time. It would also be much louder, and I am not a quiet person, it might hurt A LOT, but I wouldn’t have to sit and be cold. Someone else said that they would rather freeze to death because there was always the possibility that someone would save them; that they would be found, it was a quiet and peaceful death.
Fire is a really cool thing. It’s heat changes things. Fire’s light lights up and heats up the world. Fire refines things, it can take dull items and refine them, it can make the most amazing steel and other product. Refine – what a cool word! The dictionary defines it like this: “to purify by removing un-wanted substances or material; to improve.” Now, I am not saying lets go light ourselves on fire and burn up quickly and all die. I am however saying that we have to choose to be close to the fire, to “be on fire for Christ”. To let that fire refine us and change us and take the bad out and make us something new.
The good news about the fire of Christ is that it doesn’t usually consume you and melt off all your skin and burn you to ashes. It is a fire within you that motivates you to get off your hindquarters and to get out and do something great for Christ. Get out of the stagnation of life and to get moving in the right direction.
Revelations 3:15-18 “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. You say, ‘I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.’ But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked. I counsel you to buy from me gold refined in the fire so you can become rich; and white clothes to wear, so you can cover your shameful nakedness; and salve to put on your eyes, so you can see.”
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