God wants me hot or cold. This lukewarm stuff is nauseating to him and he wants to “spue” me out of his mouth, a nice way of saying he is disgusted with lukewarm. He’ll take a passionate David any day, even if David is passionately messed up at times, over a person who sits in the back row at church and doesn’t cause trouble but doesn’t change the world. He’s looking for a Saul of Tarsus to turn into a Paul.

Being “hot” does not mean that I am always gung-ho, always energetic, just always focused on relationship with Jesus. Well I’m needing a spark these days. I believe that God is helping me relate to suffering people by gifting me with chronic pain leading to poor sleep. My usual abundant energy is playing hide and seek. True I’ve only to wait to October till I get a new hip and,if all goes well, the pain will decrease and I’ll have more energy. I guess on this blogging thing that I had come to count on all that energy to tack it on top of all the other things that I do. Lately the Lord has been talking to me about seeking his face in regards to prioritizing and doing the blog when I am dog-tired, because it is what he wants. When David went to worship God, the local farmer offered to give the king his oxen and the wood of the plow for the sacrifice and David said “NO why should I offer God that which cost me nothing. So I guess the real act of worship arises more out of doing this blog despite being tired and not out of the work itself.  I want to be HOT not so much in emotional or physical passion but HOT in talking to him and depending on him.

I had a pastor friend who was depressed. He spent many hours trying to stitch together a sermon and then delivered it in a flat monotone due to little energy. The whole time he is thinking, “I shouldn’t be in the pulpit, God needs and deserves enthusiastic pastors to build his church.

At the end of the sermon, as was his habit, he asked those who wanted to pray for salvation or for personal growth to come forwards. Half the church came forwards and the other half knelt to pray where they were and God moved. The pastor swore he heard the Lord say, ” And you thought you had something to do with it!”

So ask the Lord to make you HOT in obedience if not in passion.

All my love to my brothers and sisters in Christ who are in chronic pain and chronic tiredness. Do the little you can. One of the basic principles of life is that doing THE LITTLE I CAN must be enough or God would be unfair. He then takes my effort and makes it worthwhile. It doesn’t take many fish to feed the crowd when Jesus is in it.