Hot or Cold; Yes or No
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2 Corinthians 1:19-22
19. For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, whom we preached among you, Silvanus and Timothy and I, was not Yes and No; but in him it is always Yes. 20. For all the promises of God find their Yes in him. That is why we utter the Amen through him, to the glory of God. 21. But it is God who establishes us with you in Christ, and has commissioned us; 22. he has put his seal upon us and given us his Spirit in our hearts as a guarantee.
Revelation 3:14-15
The Amen, the faithful and true Witness, the Beginning of the creation of God, says this: "I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot; I wish that you were cold or hot."
Cold or hot. That’s how I run most of the time! I’m not a “lukewarm” person! Ask my friends and my family: when I decide something needs to be done, I just charge right in and tackle it head on! My friends are generally amused by that character trait; my family? They’re resigned to it! In my faith, though, I do run hot. It is so strong and so sure, that even lately in times that would have troubled me in the past, I keep my faith in God through Jesus Christ.
Yes, I think about the future – mainly for my children and I do confess I have a worry streak. Now, though, as my faith has matured and deepened, I catch myself pretty quickly and lift a prayer to God. I try very hard to not mull over the things I can’t change and to keep trusting that Jesus won such a great reward for me – and for all of us who believe, that anything that happens on this earth is just temporary.
Keeping that in mind, I think of all the many blessings my family and I have received over the years. I never imagined 30 years ago that I would have been married for 29 ¾ years, have a daughter engaged to a wonderful young man, and a son about to graduate from high school! No, we don’t have a half a million dollars in the bank for our retirement. No we don’t go on expensive Mediterranean cruises every year. No we don’t have a lot of the material things that one might think would be important to us.
We do have physical ailments – some of them chronic. We have bad days, and difficult choices to make sometimes. We find ourselves struggling to just live in the world full of other struggling people. And it can be challenging! But we have managed somehow to find Jesus and place Him firmly at the center of our lives. And that has made all the difference!
God establishes us in Christ, too. He wants us to minister to a broken, sin-filled world. The best way to do that is to live a Christian life—not perfect, but striving for the perfection that we will receive in heaven. Our lives will be the testimony to others who haven’t heard the Good News. Or who have forgotten it. Or have longed to believe and just can’t bring themselves to do it. Because the price is great: one must die to themselves. And it’s not easy to be in the care of another. But it is the only way to be happy in this life. The
only way! We must tell others. We must bring them to Christ. It is our commission. And God has given us His spirit as our guarantee that we will be effective and impassioned disciples of His Son.
My prayer today is that you rejoice without ceasing in the blessings you have received. And that you lift a prayer to God to allow you to speak for Him as a disciple of Jesus Christ.
Mary
