Bedhead

Continuing to read through Frances Chan's book, Crazy Love in the small group that I am helping to lead. Read a chapter about what a lukewarm person looks like. Kind of a heavy hitter, as many of the things listed were things I can struggle with on a daily basis.

Jesus tells us so much in the Gospels about how we are to live. He sets the standards high...real high. I think it is so easy to pull the "well, he was exaggerating for effect" or "he was speaking specifically to people back then, it doesn't apply for us" especially when we get to parts of His teaching which are hard to follow.

The question I thought of is...how do we know when we are being lukewarm. Despite the fact that I have lukewarm tendencies (I think we all do), I feel confident in my relationship with Christ and that I'll be with Him one day in heaven. The key in my opinion lies within a verse from Corinthians..."Examine yourselves....test yourself repeatedly". I think deep down we really know where we are falling short and where we are flying high.

I think of it this way. Some days before class I really struggle with getting up early and sleep in later than I should. This results in some bed head. While I can feel it, I don't bother looking in the mirror and fixing it, I just throw on a hat (which will stay on my head the whole day of class) and go out the door. Clearly, I know that there is some issues with my hair, yet I don't choose to look in the mirror to see how I can fix it...I go for the quick coverup (which doesn't really change anything"....see where I'm going with this?

Often times I think my spiritual life resembles this. I know that there are areas in my walk that are not up to par. Yet, I don't always examine myself to see where these areas are. So many excuses can crop up, but let's be honest a lot of times I and I think we as people don't look, because we don't want to accept what we see on the other side of the mirror. We want a quick fix (hat), not the painful process of dying to ourselves...seperating ourselves from the cancer that is sin. It's about saying..."Hey God, there's this sin in my life that I can't deal with....give me Jesus". That's the whole crux to this matter...we can examine ourselves and see our shortcomings, but we are utterly and completely unable to fix our own "bedhead". I believe through careful self examination we can reveal the areas of our lives that we've tried to hide. Christ died for the wholeness of our sins, but I believe that we need to make a conscious effort to acknowledge them and bring them to him. Kind of like Paul said in Romans "Shall I sin more to get more of God?" We need to take off our "hat" that we try to hide behind.

Let's try to live our lives not lukewarm, but burning hot for Christ. While there will be times we don't measure up, may we continually be examining ourselves (not others!) to look for areas to bring glory to God.

PS I love Phillippians 4