Most mornings this month I have been driving to work in a car covered with a thick fall dew that seems to have the ability to permeate glass! The gentle night-rain from Heaven has become a bothersome oily layer that smears when I use the wipers and wraps itself into the interior cabin as soon as I open the door to get in the van. It would be a problem easily addressed if I could just crank up the defrost or simply open the window. Here’s the thing, the season is such that it is too hot to turn the defrost up to full power and too cold to keep the windows down. We are in one of the in-betweeney spaces, one of those places where no solution easily addresses the issue at hand.
Life is full of in -betweeney spaces: Times when it’s too dark for us to go without a light but to light for a lamp to effectively shine in the gloaming; Situations where people have done us wrong but nothing so bad that anyone else thinks our anger is justified; Times when we are sick and feel generally crumby but we are not sick enough that the doctor takes us seriously. We all hate the in-betweeneys, the almost-not-quite circumstances
Jesus said, “This is the message from the one who is the Amen—the faithful and true witness, the beginning[e] of God’s new creation:
15 “I know all the things you do, that you are neither hot nor cold. I wish that you were one or the other! 16 But since you are like lukewarm water, neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth!” Rev. 3:14-16 NLT
The human heart can easily become an in-betweeney space. If we are not careful, we can put our own hearts in positions where no solution God brings can easily address our issues. A person who has become an “in-betweeney space” is enough in love with the world that any genuine call of the Spirit will seem like an undue call to sacrifice; But he or she is also enough in love with God to create a Christianity which judges others while giving themself a pass for bad behavior. It puts God in a position where He can neither convict us effectively nor manifest in us sufficiently to change anything in us or the world. He is left with no choice but to spit us out of His mouth.
We must come to hate the in-betweeney spaces in our own hearts as much as we hate them when we confront them in life’s experience.
SO…
What do you do to keep your own heart from becoming luke-warm ?
Soon there will not be an in-betweeney space because ultimately you have to choose sides.