What's the temperature of your heart?

Inspired by Julia Lee's email to the sisters, I decided to pose this question to us all, myself included. Let's examine our love life with the Lord and take our temperatures. Are we hot--passionately pressing on, pursuing, growing or are we warm--still going, doing the bare minimum to get by? or are we cold--not together, not pretending, distant?)

This next part is taken directly from what Julia sent out, written by a woman named Melody Green (whose husband died in a plane crash when they were in their late 20s. He was a huge worship minister in the US at the time).

We already know our temperature matters to Jesus. He was clear about it. He wants us to be passionate, fiery hot for Him. To genuinely love Him back. The polar opposites are the cold...those who blatantly reject God's ways, and therefore His love. And the lukewarm? Well, they make Him utterly sick enough to puke. Jesus knows exactly what to do with the hot and the cold. However the lukewarm, well, they turn His stomach and I imagine cause Him pain everyday. Think about being married to someone and just pouring out your life for them, but they take you for granted, stop trying to know your heart, and could care less about how they make you feel. Painful.

"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." (Rev. 3:15-16 NIV) I think this was an incredibly painful statement for God to make to those He loves. But on the day each of us stand before Him. our temperature will be apparent. However, we never need to fall into the lukewarm category. We don't have to hurt God by being so near, yet so far away.

As I wrote back to the sisters, I completely get this. Imagine being in a relationship and that guy or girl always goes back and forth, saying they love you one day and then taking it back the next day or not calling you for weeks. Or going back and forth between you and another girl/guy? How painful would that be, especially if you LOVE that person. You would rather them leave you altogether and not put you through this. Ideally, you'd want them to single-heartedly be devoted to you.

Being lukewarm is very unattractive and useless if you think about it. One foot in the world, one in His kingdom. I get it, you know? I even hate drinking tepid water. And just in general, I'm usually a very hot or cold, all or nothing type of person. So I get it. And I do love Him and desire more than anything for our relationship to grow. BUT THEN, why in the world is it SO hard to actually be HOT for the Lord?

I've been struggling a lot these days, living a life that's certainly not worthy of His calling, not communicating with Him, not listening to Him, just living my life, working hard at work, going out on the weekends doing mindless things...I haven't given Him the time of day, really.

Maybe it's because I've fallen and I feel like what's the point, I'm already down. You know that feeling? Or the discouragement of what's the point when you're going to fail again as quickly as the next day?

In any case, I know one thing is for sure. I desperately want to go back to Him and seek Him and love Him and be loved by Him. I need to stop living this back and forth, lukewarm life and start living a passionate life for Him.

I don't know about you guys, but my heart is really breaking. I've hurt Him for way too long. And I know through all of it, He still graciously loves me, but really, am I going to keep hurting Him like this? I really don't want to...

Our Lord is constantly on the go, working, moving, changing, building, and I want to be a part of it. Stop focusing on my menial life--my daily worries and stress and pain-- and be a part of a bigger picture. Please pray for me.