When Did I Stop Feeling Anything About God?

Nobody decides to go lukewarm.

We don't wake up one morning and choose to stop caring about God. Worship doesn't move us the way it used to, our prayers got short and polite, and we can't remember the last time we opened a Bible and actually wanted to be in there.

Nothing dramatic happened, and that's what makes it so hard for us to talk about.

Why does Jesus sound harder on this than on almost anything else?

Most of us read verse 15 and hear Him saying He'd rather we be all the way gone than halfway in. That lands like a threat, and it makes sense, because cold sounds like the opposite of close to God.

He's talking about water.

This is a letter to a church, and Jesus is picking His words for the city they lived in.

Laodicea was a banking town, rich enough to rebuild itself after an earthquake without taking the emperor's money.

What it did not have was water worth drinking.

It piped its own in through miles of stone, and what came out the other end was warm and heavy with minerals, and one mouthful was enough to make you vomit.

One town up the road had hot springs people traveled to sit in when they hurt. Another had cold mountain water worth the trip.

Laodicea sat between two places with water worth having and drank neither.

That's the picture Jesus is working with, and cold was never the bad one in it.

Hot water helps you and cold water helps you.

The cup nobody reaches for is the one in between, because it can't do anything for anybody.

Then He tells them what they'd been saying about themselves:

"Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked."

Revelation 3:17 (KJV)

Catch the three words in the middle.

And knowest not. They had no idea.

That's what makes this one so hard to catch, because most things wrong with us announce themselves and this one doesn't register at all.

It's what we drift into when nothing is keeping us near God, and it leaves us just as far from God as if we had quit on Him on purpose.

Nothing in a cup ever changed its own temperature.

We can want it hot, we can sit and look at it all afternoon, and an hour later it's exactly what it was.

The heat has to come from outside.

That's why Jesus doesn't tell them to work up more feeling. He points them back to Himself.

The naked ones in that verse aren't told to go cover themselves. They are told to come to Him and be clothed.

Even the covering is His to give, and never yours to make.

You didn't decide to stop caring, and you can't make yourself care again. Only God can do that.

Three verses later He says this:

"Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me."

Revelation 3:20 (KJV)

The same Jesus who said that hard thing is the one standing at the door knocking.

He isn't out there to yell at them. He wants to be let in so He can sit down and eat with them.

You're going to have stretches where you feel nothing, and this one might run longer than you want it to.

The real fear underneath all of this is that you went numb and God gave up on you. He didn't.

He went and knocked on the door of the very church He had just finished correcting, and He is knocking on yours this morning too.

Here's how we get off lukewarm today:

1. Tell Him the true temperature.

Laodicea's whole problem was a church saying it had need of nothing, not even God. Give Him the opposite sentence this morning, and tell Him you do need Him even when you don't "feel" like it.

2. Put yourself next to Him this week.

Nothing in the cup warms the cup. Open your Bible tomorrow morning and read about Jesus for 5 minutes, whether or not anything stirs while you read.

3. Go to church this Sunday and Wednesday even if you feel nothing.

Go, sit through the whole thing on Sunday, and go back this Wednesday with nothing to show for it.

You're not the one producing the heat. You're just staying close to the God who does.

PRAYER

Faithful God,

I've been going through the motions and telling myself it's fine.

I told You I had need of nothing, and I believed it.

You already know I don't feel much of this right now.

Thank You that You came knocking anyway.

Thank You that You hold out the covering I could never make myself.

Today I'm opening up instead of pretending.

Warm me from the outside, because I've proven I can't do it in here.

Give me one honest hour with You this week.

Let me hear Your voice in it, and give me whatever it takes to answer.

In Jesus' mighty name we pray. Amen.