Are you a thermometer Christian, or a thermostat Christian? A thermometer doesn’t change anything around it -- it just registers the temperature. It’s always going up, or down. But a thermostat regulates the surroundings and changes them when they need to be changed. Do you demonstrate the power to change things, or do you simply register the changes as circumstances mold you into the world’s likeness?
The world is filled with thermometers. One only need look at the church and note the seeming desire to conform to societal mores. “New understanding” has given us a permissiveness where professing Christians differ little from those who reject Christ. The “Come out from among them, and be separate” teachings have fallen prey to the belief that one must be “like” them in order to win them.
One should hardly be surprised at the contempt with which the world holds separatist Believers, because they are so accustomed to dealing with thermometers, that the thermostat appears extreme and cultic.
Romans 12:1,2 cautions Believers against being conformed to this world system. We are to be conformed to the image of God, by the renewing of our minds in Christ Jesus. When I stop to examine my own life, I’m appalled by the compromise I continue to allow in my life. Even though I desire to be a thermostat, I find myself registering the changes around me, rather than regulating them.
Lord, Help us this day to commit our ways to you in order that we might become more effective thermostats in the environment where we’ve been placed at this time.
From "A Word For Living" by Mike Rasberry
© Mike Rasberry 2013
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