Bad enough to make Jesus spit …

Making a complete, definite decision about who Jesus Christ is to you, and then acting on and living that out, is the most important thing you can do in your life.

Inaction about Jesus leaves such a bad taste in his mouth it makes Him want to spit …

“I know all the things you do, that you are neither hot nor cold. I wish that you were one or the other! But since you are like lukewarm water, neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth!” Revelation 3:15-16.

Many who profess a faith in Christ today live a lukewarm profession, they are neither “hot” about Jesus nor “cold.” That’s because they want some of what Jesus offers, just not all of Jesus. Kind of like what Wilbur Rees refers to as “$3 worth of God”:

I would like to buy $3 worth of God, please.
Not enough to explode my soul or disturb my sleep,
but just enough to equal a cup of warm milk
or a snooze in the sunshine.
I don’t want enough of God to make me love a black man
or pick beets with a migrant.
I want ecstasy, not transformation.
I want warmth of the womb, not a new birth.
I want a pound of the Eternal in a paper sack.
I would like to buy $3 worth of God, please.

We’re lukewarm about Jesus because we want a few bucks worth of God, but we also want some of what the world claims to offer. The result of pulling ourselves in two directions will be disastrous, like this story told by Wayne Rice:

One of the worst train disasters in history occurred in the El Toro Tunnel in Leon, Spain, on January 3,1944. Over five hundred people died.

The train was one of those long passenger trains with an engine on both ends. On this particular day, when the train went into the El Toro Tunnel, the engine on the front stalled. When the front engine stopped, the engineer on the back engine started up his engine to back the train out of the tunnel. At the same time, however, the front engineer managed to get the front engine started again and attempted to continue the journey. Neither engineer had any way of communicating with the other. Both engineers thought they simply needed more power. They continued to pull in both directions for several minutes. Hundreds of passengers on the train in the tunnel died of carbon monoxide poisoning because the train could not make up its mind which way to go.

The people on that train died because the train had one too many engineers. Many of us struggle as to which way to go with our lives – whether to come to Jesus or to remain in our sin. This indecision can cause us to miss out on the most important decision in our lives. Sometimes we think we can have it both ways, but we can’t. We can’t serve God and also serve the devil. Jesus Himself warned us against trying to live a double life: “No one can serve two masters” (Matt. 6:24a).

Does the reality of your profession of faith leave a bad taste in the mouth of Jesus? Are you pulling your life in two directions, wanting a little of God and a lot of the world? Or have you wholly surrendered your life to Jesus Christ with a genuine love and faith that is “hot” for the Lord?

Scotty