cold

I owned an old house when my wife and I were first married. Right after getting married I quit my job to start a business; oh, the optimism of youth. Well, during this time we were poor. Not just low income, we were running on fumes and our hot water heater decided we needed cooler showers and then really cold showers.

We didn’t have the money for a new one so I went down to the basement, disconnected the hot water heater from the water pipes, opened the two places where the heating coils went in and proceeded to roll and drop and bang the hot water heater for a couple of hours. Do you know why? Yep, it was full of lime. 

The heater couldn’t heat the water because the lime insulated the heating coils from the water. By the end of a couple of hours, the outside of that old beast looked like it had fallen off of a truck. But, I’d broken loose a “ton” of lime and pulled it out through the heating coil holes. 

I installed two new heating coils and the hot water heater heated water! Once I got all the stuff out that wasn’t supposed to be there then the things that belonged there worked perfectly. 

“And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.” (Hebrews 10:24-25)

Every Christian needs maintenance. Regular maintenance, like meeting together and encouraging each other keeps the “lime of this world” from insulating us from God and preventing us from operating correctly. If we put off this maintenance, if we don’t meet with other Christians, if we don’t get spurred on toward love and good deeds, then we get colder and colder until we no longer fulfill our appointed purpose. We’re just cold. 

We must not allow ourselves to become lukewarm. We need to be on fire, spurring others on, encouraging, and always displaying love for that is Christ’s signature on our lives.