Hot, Cold or Lukewarm? The Honest Answer
Drawn from the teaching of Professor Gary S. Maxey · 2 min read
Ask a congregation if they are hot, cold or lukewarm in their walk with God. Professor Gary Maxey says nearly all will answer somewhere in the middle. He makes a hard observation from this. In Revelation 3:16, the lukewarm are the people Christ says he will spit out of his mouth. If our answers are accurate, we are making him sick.
The first step is the hardest
In his closing message in the book on why revival tarries, Professor Maxey names owning the need as the first step toward revival. He says we have repeatedly seen that revivals cannot begin without a conviction of need. Complacency is our enemy. Most of us will gladly go one more day, one more week, one more month without facing it.
How to tell revival is near
He offers a sign. When people begin to confess lukewarmness openly and cry out for more of God, they are starting to wake. They may not yet name specific sins. They sense a deep need. They become aware of their lethargy. They see that their prayers have become perfunctory, routine and manufactured.
Advice for that stage
His advice at that point is simple. Pray on. You are on the right track. Be open with God and do not be afraid to say much of your worship is shallow and perhaps annoying to a holy God.
His private signs
Professor Maxey gives personal markers. When you sense you have grown careless in behavior. When you notice you have become too loose with your tongue. When your prayer life has fallen far below where it once was. Each of these is cause not for despair but for hope, he says, because they show the Spirit has begun to draw you out.
Applying it
Take Revelation 3:14-22 and read it as a letter to you. Do not skip the end of it, where Christ stands at the door and knocks. Then write your honest temperature on a scale of one to ten. Write the date beside it. In three months, compare.
Drawn from the teaching of Professor Gary S. Maxey.
