Lukewarm People

Chapter 4 from Crazy Love is probably the most challenging. It puts forth some standard events or thoughts in the minds of most of the church-going population today. We are having our small group tonight, so my wife and I decided to type them up and hand them out on a sheet of paper. We did this for convenience for all of us. But what it did is have me take a look at the statements once more. Before I get into any specific statement, I wanted to say something about my looking at these.

When I read these the first time, it took a while. This chapter probably took more out of me and took me more time to really think about than any other. I guess that is sort of the goal with it though. When I read these statements, I would think about my life and the times when I might not have spoke or even said the words, but my life spoke exactly what they said. This past week, I have taken a few moments to read the statement and then I would pray for forgiveness from the times that it was true in my past and ask for God to help me to keep it from being true in the future. I don't think that I allowed it to beat me up, but just took the time to recognize my dependence on God for His strength when I want to take an easier way.

Now, to sort of look at a couple that I both struggle with and just sort of smacked me.

"Lukewarm people will serve God and others, but there are limits to how far they will go or how much time, money and energy they are willing to give."

As a group of believers, we are so willing to give our leftovers. That's next weeks chapter and I am sure that I will have lots to talk about this, but for today, I think that the statement should serve as a challenge to us and see if we are just giving things that cost us nothing. This came up this week to me. I talked about it yesterday, about teaching Financial Peace. My first thoughts were about how I don't want to give up a night during the week to lead the group. Then I thought about how I was already giving this semester and I should just wait till next semester. Is that the type of life that God called us to? NO! I had to confess my willingness to put my personal comfort in front of anything that God wanted for me.

"Lukewarm people think about life on earth much more often than eternity in heaven...Regarding this, CS Lewis writes, 'If you read history, you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were precisely those who thought most of the next. It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this."

How often do we think about what our day will hold rather than what our eternity will hold? Even while in church, our minds wander off to where we eat at or what we are going to do for the rest of the day. Our days are filled with schedules and lists but seldom do we focus on things that not for this world. I love the quote from CS Lewis. I think that more than ever that it is applicable today.


"Lukewarm people do not live by faith; their lives are structured so they never have to. They don't depend on God on a daily basis....The truth is, their lives wouldn't look much different if they suddenly stopped believing in God."

This made me stop and ask, would my life be different, really, if I wasn't a Christian? The hard truth is that for too many of us that life wouldn't be a big difference. I want to say that my life would be drastically changed. The truth is that I don't know if that's true. Yes, I know that I would think differently and that I probably would act differently. I still think that I would be a "nice guy" though. I don't say this to berate anyone. I say all this to make myself be challenged for something more than just a label and more of the close personal relationship that changes lives that Jesus called us into.

I want to link to SCL today because I think its a great post. I will be trying to "give the gift of going second" tonight at our group. I don't want just superficial talk, I want to show them that we can be open and honest with each other even when its not pretty.