A
Message from Steve
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A
Message from Steve |
I
was preparing my breakfast the other morning and as I stared absent mindedly at
the toaster I found myself thinking about the way that toast is created, and how
easy it is to turn a simple piece of bread into a tasty snack. It’s something
that we all do nearly every day but it is also something that we all take
for granted, we put a slice or two of bread into the toaster and a minute
or two later following the application of some heat, and without any further
help from us, out pops some toast, clever stuff eh?
But it doesn’t end there, because the application of heat to things
helps us in our daily lives a lot more than we probably realise. Take for
instance the application of heat to our washed clothes to dry them, or the
application of heat to our clothes via an iron – to make us look smart. Then
there is the application of heat to water to make bathing a more pleasant
experience or the application of heat to our houses to make them comfortable to
live in; and what about the application of heat to injured and aching parts of
our body to try to alleviate the pain. Most of us don’t give it a second
thought, but we really would be in a pickle without heat.
But
heat can also have different meaning. When our lives start to get busier we say
things are warming up. When we find ourselves in trouble or surrounded by
problems we say the heat is on, and we are all familiar with the saying if
you can’t stand the heat stay out of the kitchen, and so heat as well as
being beneficial to us, has also become associated with hardship or having
problems hence the saying the heat is on, and it is in this capacity that
God uses heat in our lives. The one thing that always happens when you apply
heat to something is that whatever is on the receiving end of that heat changes,
bread becomes toast and clothes dry and become crease free, water becomes more
pleasant to use and cleans us more efficiently and our homes become pleasant
places to be when it is cold, and that same principle of heat changing things
applies to us when God puts the heat on us.
God
allows us to experience heat in our lives precisely because he wants us
to change, and change we must if we are to attain our goal of becoming more
Christ-like. The big difference between us and bread, clothes and water
is that they have no choice in how they respond to heat they must react in a set
way, while we as human beings have got a choice. We can choose to co-operate
with God and allow the change he is trying to bring about to happen, or we can
choose to fight it. To embrace it
and welcome it is to allow ourselves to become the better person that the heat
will bring about, but on the other hand, to fight it is to prolong what is
seldom a pleasant experience with the inevitable result that God will have his
way in the end anyway. Think about it like this, people don’t apply heat to a
piece of bread just for the sake of it, we do it to transform that piece of
bread into something better, and we apply heat to water and clothes for the same
reason. God also does not apply
heat to our lives for no reason, he does it to make us a better product, leaner,
fitter, and better able to perform the task that he is going to require of us.
So if God is applying heat to your life at the moment don’t fight it. Rather welcome it and embrace it in the certain knowledge that you are being improved in preparation for another exciting step in your walk with God.
God bless you all
Steve Waters
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