Hot, Cold, and Lukewarm

It's been a little over two years since I repented from my common, go-with-the-flow uninspired habitual life, and came before God offering to serve Him in any way I could. It took witnessing the tragedy of Asia's tsunami disaster of 12/26/04 to jolt me from being asleep in the spirit. That event caused me to seek God in prayer for the first time in years, and to beg for the truth of this day to be revealed. For a disaster like that to wipe out 200,000+ people was a sign to me that we are coming up to the great day of Judgment that Christ, the apostles and prophets spoke of. I did what all who choose to follow Christ are called to do: reset my priorities and placed God first in my life. Interestingly enough, since that time I have been hated by some, rejected by others, and blessed and encouraged by still others. I took a stand on behalf of my faith, and began to build my life around that conviction. It seems that by taking a stand, I've had a polarizing effect on my little corner of the world. I stopped blending into the background, stopped going with the flow, stopped being lukewarm. And so now when I come in contact with anyone else who is lukewarm, I either heat them up, or cool them down. People are either open to receive, or quick to dismiss, it seems. And I promise that I alone could not have this effect. I'm not doing or saying anything new, just standing up and pointing out what the Bible has always said. God is the power within the truth.

In Revelation 2-3 Christ gives warnings and encouragement to seven different churches. The seventh church is told this,

"I know your works, that you are neither cold nor hot; I wish that you were cold or hot. So then because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spit you out of my mouth. For you say, I am rich; I have prospered and grown wealthy, and I am in need of nothing; and you do not realize and understand that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked. Therefore I counsel you to purchase from Me gold refined and tested by fire, that you may be truly wealthy, and white clothes to clothe you and to keep the shame of your nudity from being seen, and salve to put on your eyes, that you may see.Those whom I dearly and tenderly love, I tell their faults and convict and convince and reprove and chasten. I discipline and instruct them. So be enthusiastic and in earnest and burning with zeal and repent!

Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears and listens to and heeds My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and will eat with him, and he with Me. He who overcomes, I will grant him to sit beside Me on My throne, as I Myself overcame and sat down beside My Father on His throne."

In every one of the seven letters to the seven churches is a warning (mostly to issues of complacency, or unknowingly endorsing wickedness in the name of good) and in each letter is a promise to those who "overcome". The concept of an overcomer group is all throughout the scriptures. They are a righteous people, who are made perfect in the love and blood of Christ, and the grace of God. They will recognize the wickedness that deceives most in the last days, and they will be a voice of warning that pierces the silence of consent. They will be given judgment over the very angels. They will be bold, and they will see the truth. Paul wrote in one of his letters, "let love be genuine, hate what is evil, and cling to what is good." And 1 John 4:17 tells us;
"Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment: because as he is, so are we in this world. There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out all fear: because fear has torment. He that fears is not made perfect in love."

Consider the ways that fear has been used openly to manipulate the will of the American people since September 11th 2001, and more subtly since pearl harbor and through the cold war. For that matter, consider the fear that Peter experienced when he was walking on the waves towards Christ, looked away and then began to sink. Consider the fear that comes when faith is required of us. Consider the fear and hatred of homosexuals, or terrorists being planted in many churches in America. How can fear and love dwell and thrive together? If one must grow in the love of Christ, one must let go of fear. We must not let our worry of provision come between us and the service of God. We must not let the fear of what other people think prevent us from proclaiming uncomfortable truths. We must not be afraid of God's willingness or ability to transform us into new creations.

In the world described in Revelation there are essentially two types of people. First, those who abandon God's ways of love and mercy to worship the Beast, which rules the kingdoms of men. We'll call these people "goats". They refuse to be transformed by God, absolutely refuse to even see the need for any kind of change in their lives. They live in denial, feeding off of a carefully constructed artificial happiness that is full of gratification, and void of God. Revelation tells us that despite the signs, the horrors and wonders, many would refuse to repent, they would remain blind to God's signs and do what men did in the days of Noah, eating, drinking, coupling off... basically remaining blind to the greater truth because of their idolatry of self. Again, Christ said candidly in John 12:25, "He that loves his life shall lose it, and he that hates his life in this world shall keep it into life eternal."

The second group in Revelation, let's call them "sheep", are those who overcome the temptations, trappings and love of this Babylonian system and go "into the wilderness", into a place where life is scarce, and the elements are harsh. These are the people who take the road less travelled. Who seek to know God with the entirety of their being, because they were created to do so. They venture through a refining fire, to come out purified on the other side, while the whole earth endures the burning wrath of great tribulation. These people are called out of Babylon. They are the ones who will receive the promises given in the seven letters previously mentioned. Though they must withstand the hatred of the world in order to reach those promises. They must endure what Christ endured. They must learn to relinquish themselves, to lay down their lives (or their need to control what they do with their mortality) for the service of God. They must overcome obstacles, odds, evil, temptation, persecution and wrongful accusations. This overcomer group is hand formed by God in the heat of daily battle.
The truth is that spiritual war is raging around us, and about us. This battle is for our devotion, for our worship. The truth is that even atheists worship something, and our worship belongs to God, who alone is good and worthy to receive it. But that worship is coveted by Satan, and he will do whatever lying wonder it takes to steal our worship, service and obedience.

So how can we know who we serve? How can we know if we're on the right path? Considering the pervasiveness of deception, it's natural for everyone to assume that they are on the right path, but how can we know the truth?

Well, the first step in discerning the truth of this day is to know our enemy. That enemy is an unholy trinity of the devil, the world system and our own flesh. Within us all is a conscience, be it active or dormant. It is a part of our inheritance. It is the knowledge of good and evil. Deep down, we all know when we do evil. but we can be very quick to rationalize evil, because our flesh and our spirit are at war with each other. That's lesson number 1: there is an enemy within as well as without ourselves. And as far as determining who we are serving, remember this, Christ was very explicit when he said "You cannot serve both God and money". And though it's tempting for people in the lower-middle class (like 20-something up-and-comers climbing on the lower rungs of this wicked corporate ladder) to rationalize their materialism by claiming to be poor, I would remind you of that warning, and to make sure you know whom you serve. Be very careful not to think yourself exempt from greed. For it doesn't take much money to make money into your god.

By the world's standards, Americans are, in fact, very wealthy. If you consider that more than 1.5 billion people around the world are barely surviving on one dollar ($1.00) per day income, and you compare that to the American minimum wage, you can begin to see a discrepancy. The reason that our minimum wage isn't a "living wage" is because we are not a society that uses money solely for the utilitarian purposes of meeting the needs of food, clothing, shelter, and other such staples.

American poverty deals with the weighty issues of our rapidly devaluing currency, childcare, heathcare, insurance etc. But those are standards set to any who would like to live in the lowest rungs of modern capitolist society. Those are costs to be a part of the system.

We meet the basics human needs in our society, sure, but we are a civilization run by the feeding of our desires, our wants. Wants tend to be expensive. Entertainment, comforts, pleasures be they guilty or innocent…these are the forces that drive our society, from the highest rungs of the social ladder, to the lowest. It's just the way of the world as we Americans know it. As Zach De La Rocha sang, "there is no other pill to take, so we take the one that makes us ill". We grow fat on the delicious flesh-satisfying food that is set before us.

But there is another way that we can live our lives. A way that is outside the offerings of this world. This way is the path of repentance, the way of love. It is a path that leads to true life. Christ spoke often of this path, and how we must take it, and stand apart from the world that we are in the midst of. In John 17:14 he prayed, "(Father) I have given them your word; and the world has hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. I pray not that you should take them out of the world, but that you should keep them from evil. They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. Sanctify them through your truth; your word is truth. As you have sent me into the world, so do I send them into the world."

So what does it mean to be "of" the world?
In Luke 12:16-21, Christ describes a "rich man" who most would consider practical, but he used to demonstrate the foolishness of worldliness. "Then He spoke a parable to them, saying: “The ground of a certain rich man yielded plentifully. And he thought within himself, saying, ‘What shall I do, since I have no room to store my crops?’ So he said, ‘I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build greater, and there I will store all my crops and my goods. And I will say to my soul, “Soul, you have many goods laid up for many years; take your ease; eat, drink, and be merry.”’ But God said to him, ‘Fool! This night your soul will be required of you; then whose will those things be which you have provided?’ “So is he who lays up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God.” The moral of the parable was to always remember our dependence on God, and to refrain from planning for an undetermined future. Because God took the life of the rich man as soon as his new barn was built and stocked. And in death the man received a curse. So according to Christ, having wealth enough to retire on is having wealth enough to be vulnerable to the worship money.

Why would that be? I believe it has a lot to do with God's curse on Adam when he left the garden. God said that the ground would be cursed, would produce thorns plentifully, and fruit grudgingly. God said that man was cursed to work that ground by the sweat of his brow all the days of his life (which meant over 900 years of manual labor for Adam alone).

The civilized world, by it's nature, circumvents that curse which God gave to fallen men. In another post I will detail the origin of and meaning behind civilization, how much our daily dependence on God allows us to seek and to see God, and how much our dependence on the world system blinds us from our need of God. For now just see that biblical wealth does not have the same meaning as society's concept of wealth.

Of course, I'm not saying that everyone who retires, or even everyone who has money is damned… But I am saying that the love of this life with it's pleasures and comforts is sinful, is blinding, is a dangerous way to live in this present spiritual war zone. I am reminding you that Christ told us that the love of money is the root of all evil. And there is no society in the world as lovestruck with money as America is. That is a fact. So be careful, because the fires of hell are burning in the soul of this beast we are so proud to be a part of. And even though religious Republicans think that they have outsmarted the devil (also known as the prince of this world) by maneuvering their way into political power, they have not come to power by their faithful worship of God, but have ascended through compromise and conformity to worldliness.

I believe that much of the church (at least in the western world) has become like salt that has lost it's saltiness. It has been weighed down and drained of glory by it's rituals, traditions and the maintenance of it's placement in the power structure of the world. The temptation for power, for riches, for worldly renown has seduced the official church bit by bit, until it has become an institution filled with people that can claim to follow Christ and his teachings, while at the same time openly support an entirely unjustified war that is saturated in sadism and greed. They can turn a blind eye to genocide, profiteering, and even global warming. I know several "christians" who would go so far as to heatedly argue that global warming is a lie.

The congregations of this institutional church have created massive campaigns of bigotry and prejudice, these congregations can scream and point fingers and condemn their neighbors without worrying about the sinfulness of their own lives...and that doesn't weigh on their conscience. They are blind, yet claim that they can see. They can not distinguish between good and evil, because they refuse to address the evil within their own hearts. This is the reality existing in most of the modern church. Anyone can bear witness to it. But those still trapped within the borders of this pale and ugly imitation of the bride of Christ are blinded to their misguidance. They have not been transformed by the renewing of their minds, but instead have conformed to the patterns of this world. They still say that the emperor is clothed in Christ. And so it is as Jesus warned, that they are as salt that has lost it's saltiness.

False shepherds and prophets are everywhere. It is time for believers to turn from the pulpits that inspire fear and hatred. Seek the Lord while he may be found, and seek him through the scriptures. For if a calloused and hateful soul is the fruit produced by being fed at your local church, perhaps you should consider that you are being fed poison.

Choose love, forgiveness, mercy and hope over any spoon fed religious sounding doctrine of hatred, fear or greed. Beware of the deceptiveness of our adversary, for we know the devil disguises himself as an angel of light. Don't let holy-sounding words alone sway you. The proof is always in the pudding. Truth is in acting out what these scriptures instruct us to do. Faith without works is dead.