Heart Temperature: Part 1

While attending school at Appalachian State University—I was excited to take a Roman History class. My brother and I were the kind of nerds who were reading Tacitus, Suetonius, and Julius Caesar as kids. I was pumped. The first day of class, the professor shows up with no book, or paper. Nothing. He plops down in his desk and says “everything you need to know about this subject is in Tacitus.” Instead of teaching, the professor would nap, leave for extended periods, or ramble about his personal life.

I later learned he was a tenured professor who was about to retire. He was still teaching but he had no love for what he was doing. This guy was just waiting until the end. He had zero interest in Roman history, much less teaching or his students. He was joyless and disinterested. As a result he made Roman history seem boring and uninteresting.

I don’t want to be the kind of Christian who gets to the end of my life—and I am loveless, disinterested, joyless, calloused, and dead. I don’t want to limp to the finish line. I want the love of Christ and love for Christ to burn in my heart brighter with each passing year until I see the one I’ve loved face to face.

What is the current temperature of your heart when it comes to loving Jesus?

How warm are your affections for Jesus? Do you love Jesus? Not like, respect, or serve. Do you love him?

God’s Word reminds us and warns us that our love for Jesus can grow colder over time.

In Matthew 24:12, Jesus said “because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold.”

One of the greatest needs in this age and every age of the church is to keep our love and affections burning for Jesus. God’s Word says that in the last days, the love of most will grow cold; and people will love self, money and pleasure more than God.

If you could encapsulate American culture in three words they might be self, money, and pleasure. So it’s all around us. Jesus said you can’t serve two masters—you can’t serve God and money. An increasing love and affection for riches will result in a decreasing appetite for God.

Love growing cold is not a sudden choice to hate God. No, it is a gradual hardening of the heart. A lessening of affection. A replacing of desire for God with a desire for stuff, with self- seeking, with an insatiable appetite for pleasure. That’s love growing cold. The fire going out because no one is stoking the flames and you’re distracted by your camping gear.

But if your love is dead cold at least the only place to go is up right? If your love is lukewarm it’s comfortable and you probably won’t even notice something is off.

Jesus being lukewarm toward God is a more dangerous state than being cold.

In Revelation 314-16, Jesus warns the church in Laodicea that the temperature of their heart was lukewarm.

“To the angel of the church in Laodicea write: These are the words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the ruler of God’s creation. 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.”

Jesus says that this church isn’t hot or cold. Cold meaning an utter indifference to the gospel and to Jesus. And they are not hot. This word in the Greek “zestos” means boiling. Their hearts aren’t frozen toward Jesus and they aren’t boiling for him either. They are like tepid bath water.

Jesus is saying it is better to be totally outside the Church and clearly, blatantly un-hypocritically unbelieving than to be a pretend Christian who attends church and does Christian things, but inside there is no true commitment to Christ and no sense of need for Jesus at all.

So what is lukewarm? Look at verse 17. Lukewarm people say, “I am rich. I have prospered. I need nothing,” not realizing you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind and naked. So the picture of the lukewarm person is a person in church who is self-satisfied. I am rich. I have prospered. I need nothing. I have arrived. They are not desperate. They don’t have a true view of themselves.

The first step to change is being honest with where you are.

If you are lukewarm, cold, or getting colder—turn to Jesus and you will find your heart’s true home and rest for your soul. You will find forgiveness. If you are cold. He says taste and see that I am good and all satisfying. To the lukewarm, he says taste and see I am good and all satisfying. When we’ve left our first love He says remember! You’ve tasted my goodness. Taste and see again.