Lenten Reflection #8: Cold

Each morning I try to read my Bible.  There are different things that I will use to spark my reading. Some days it is a devotion that I receive in an email or one that I am following. Other days it is the daily readings that are printed in our church bulletin.  There are also days where I open my bible app and read the daily reading that it suggest.  I also have a good friend that send me a text each morning usually containing a verse.

I don't feel that how I get to reading my bible is nearly as important as the fact that I read it.  I find that when I start my day reading God's word and meditating on its meaning for me and my life my day goes much better.  Not that things are necessarily circumstantially better but I have a lens to see my life and what is going on through.   It helps me to stay connected to God as I "chew" on the word that I have read throughout my day.  It helps me to allow God's word to shape me and the way that I see the world around me.  It helps me to stay in a place where God can write his word on my heart and I can live His word in my life.  It enables me to hear God speak to my life.

This morning it was -3 when I woke up,  I went to my bible app and I typed in the word "cold".  God said to me through His word,
"because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold." 

Love grows cold  as we grow apart from God.  God is love.  Apart from him we can't love.  It is impossible.  I cant love my wife without loving Him.  It is impossible for me to love my children or anyone else without God.

There is also a connection between my ability to love and my wickedness.  Wickedness is a tough word.  I think that most fully wickedness in this context is about living disobedient to God.  It is self centered rather than Christ centered.  It is not a about particular "bad" behaviors" as much as it is about living apart from God and denying him with our lives.  It is about living absent or void of him and rebelliously doing whatever we want not caring about what God wants.  

Our love will give us away.  Is are love growing cold? Are we growing in our love of God and our love of others?

I am going to "chew" on this today.  I want to allow God speak into the cold places of my life and ask him to warm me with his love.

In Christ's love and mine,
Doug