on lukewarm christians

"I know you inside and out, and find little to my liking. You're not cold, you're not hot--far better to be either cold or hot! You're stale. You're stagnant. You make me want to vomit." - Revelation 3:15...

Not cold. Not hot. Stale. Stagnant. Lukewarm Christians. "Partially developed, casually committed, plain vanilla Christians." Conformed to comfort. Never stepping into danger. Never taking risks for God. Insulated. Isolated. Watch the work of God from afar, never dirtying their own hands. Never tasting the adventure and fulfillment and satisfaction and joy of an authentic God-following life. In the end, useless. Lukewarm Christians, whose only reward is to be spit out of the mouth of our King, the Creator, Awesome God.

Ask yourself a hard question--are you a 'lukewarm' Christian?

Lukewarm Christians are just another brand in a sea of perpetrators. You can call them out by their fingerprints. They leave marks of shunning pain, making prayer occasional, striving for imbalance, cultivating worry, blaming others, taking grace for granted, judging others, holding grudges, shunning joy, and a host of other ailments that diagnose a lukewarm--sadly, useless--God-follower.

There are five major habits of lukewarm Christians. Things we've all struggled with. Things we've all experienced. Things we should learn from. Hear. Listen. Open your eyes. And I pray that if you are challenged to change--change! it is possible!--you will fill your heart with God and run after the change.

The first is editing Scripture. Now. Most lukewarm Christians don't read the Bible. They've got excuses galore. I've heard them all. "I'm too tired..." "I don't like to read..." "I don't get anything from it..." (how are you going to get something from the Bible if you don't read it?). But every now and then one may plop open, and they may catch sight of a verse that makes them uncomfortable or wary. A verse that challenges them. A verse that confronts. So they do one of two things. They ignore it (Thomas Jefferson didn't believe in miracles so he just ripped them out of the Bible; a nice parallel), or they edit it. Find an alternate--but wrong--meaning, rearrange the words to make it comfortable. I used to do this. I used to ignore verses that looked me in the eye. I hope that if you do this, you can find the will to stop and dive into the message of God!

Lukewarm Christians tend to not dig deep into the soul; they don't face problems, never examine patterns of sin and try to stop; they don't question their motivations, confront their frailties, don't face up to their weaknesses and dysfunction. Don't ponder the hard questions of life. God wants us to search ourselves, and yearns to search us and reveal things to us and lead us on the path to real, everlasting life (Psalm 139:23,24). What are some ways we can avoid digging deep, keep skimming the surface of life?

Fill our lives with noise--God often speaks in the silence.

Fill our lives with busyness--God wants us to be still, and know he is God.

Fill our world with superficial friendships--shallow friendships, no real, deep relationships with others. Such people ignore Proverbs 27:17, and while they're at it, ignore all of Proverbs!

Lukewarm Christians emphasize one aspect of God and ignore the others. They see God only as a pal. Or a doting grandfather. Or a great, big, detached Santa Claus. God deserves our awe and worship and allegience and honor and reverence and complete devotion. But most lukewarm Christians don't exalt God, but bring them down to their level--as one man put it, "turning the undeserved grace of God into something one business partner would do for another."

Lukewarm Christians are "chameleon Christians." They blend into the background. At church, they are pious and saintly and reverent. At school, they go against their values and talk dirty and are irreverent. In parties, they go wild (in a bad way) and drink and smoke pot and screw (literally). Here is a great example:

Chris walks up to Lee at the laundry mat and says, "Hey, Lee, I heard you were at a Bible Study. You a Christian?"

Lee replies, "Shhh! Don't let anyone here you; I've got a reputation to protect. But, yeah, I'm a Christian."

Chris pulls the Columbo thing. "Well, I just don't get something. You say you're a Christian, but I see all the things you do, the drugs and the messing around and all that, and I just don't get it."

You'll love Lee's reponse. "You see? I'm a COOL Christian."

Chris smiles. "Really? Did you know they have a name for that?"

"No. What is it?"

"Hypocrite."

Lukewarm Christians never want to talk about God outside church. They don't take risks, they don't risk embarrassment, they don't feel the adventure and life of God, so why tell others about it? But sometimes they may get pinned into talking, and they probably take one of two ways out: skirting around it, never cutting to the core of what it means to follow God, or they scare them, pull the TV-evangelist agenda; throw Christianity in their face. Here's a prime example of someone jumping on the 'scare' technique:

In a movie theater, a man is looking for a seat, and asks a man, "Is this seat saved?" The man yelps, "I don't know if this seat is saved, but the real question is, 'Are you saved?'" Freaking people out doesn't bring them any closer to God--if anything, it pushes them away! No one I know has ever been scared into a passionate and real relationship with God.

I finish this little blog with ten little words:

May it never be so...

May it never be so...