Baby, It’s Cold Outside
This morning’s weather broadcast showed the deep trough of cold air that has descended from the north, just as is described in Job 37:9, upon the United States; confirming what we already knew, “Baby, it’s cold outside.” But this too shall pass (2 Corinthians 4:17 – 18), for as Lord said after Noah emerged from the ark, “While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, winter and summer, and day and night shall not cease” (Genesis 8:22).
Woooo! It’s Cold Outside!
Sadly, mankind (as well as many Christians) is just as vacillating as the changing of the seasons. I certainly understand the frustration that resonates from the words of Elijah of he addresses the people of God by asking, “How long will you falter between two opinions? If the LORD is God, follow Him; but if Baal, follow him” (1 Kings 18:21). Indeed, a “double minded man is unstable in all his ways” (James 1:8).
The cold can have a devastating effect on a man both physically and spiritually. This morning we were told that in less than 30 minutes outside one would become susceptible to frostbite. In John 18:18 we read that the servants and officers “made a fire of coals; for it was cold : and they warmed themselves: and Peter stood with them, and warmed himself.” Peter allows the cold reality of the situation he finds himself in, as well as the company and weather, to affect the condition of his spiritual fortitude. He denies the Lord. Jesus tells us that because of sin the “love of many shall wax cold ” (Matthew 24:12).
The Lord wants us our internal, spiritual, temperature to always be on fire. And it would do all of us well to gauge our condition regularly. The prophet Jeremiah once conveyed that he no longer wished to “make mention of him, nor speak any more in his name,” but concluded that “his word was in mine heart as a burning fire shut up in my bones , and I was weary of holding it back, and I could not” (Jeremiah 20:9).
Allow me to challenge us to consider our internal spiritual temperature and then to consider this: If one is cold and spiritually frostbit in this life he will most likely be on fire in the next. Spring is only a few short months away but eternity is much closer and lasts much longer.