Having gone to bed fairly early at 10:30 p.m I rose at five o’clock and checked my previous diary entry on Bristol and decided on a whim, or was it inspiration, to write round to every meaningful friend I had saying that I had written the article and I was writing to them because I wanted to share it and also to announce that I was alive and kicking.

No breakfast for me this morning because I’m off to the Frome Christian men’s group which consists of a  delightful assortment of people who attend churches normally in the Frome area. Between them they have had fascinating lives and have much to contribute towards society in terms of wisdom.

I was driving to Frome in the dark and drizzle and turned on Radio 4 News to hear about the trials and tribulations of a lady who had actually dared to pray about something in public with no words or banners, the same thing as I wrote about last night. George Orwell’s ‘thought crime’ was not too far off the mark. I wonder if he had an insight or forewarning  that we did not.

The enjoyment of breakfast

We assembled around 8am.  Breakfast or break-fast is an occasion I always enjoy especially a buffet style in hotels. Today we had an exquisite mixture of sausages, bacon, tomatoes, fried eggs, fried bread, baked beans along with toast and butter.

I seem to have the habit of being first in a food queue. It is not intentional but I don’t hang back politely like other people. I feel I have to set an example to others, to start the ball rolling. To counteract that rather greedy appearance, I also like tidying up and serving people so I guess the two balance out.

Speaker admits to being Lukewarm

So we had a talk from someone called Chris who has visited us from the north of France for the occasion which I think is wonderful of him. He started by telling us how he defined himself, he told us of various missions he’s been part of working in various parts of the world. So far so good.

But then he stunned us all by describing himself as a lukewarm person which is not a compliment. You would expect someone who preaches the Gospel or who takes part in the organisation to be full-on towards Jesus but we hear from Chris himself that this was far from the case.

He admitted his addiction to broadcast news first thing in the morning whilst drinking his coffee, and engaging with his mobile phone without which he confessed he cannot manage. He admitted to us all that this technology was risking undermining his relationship with God and he recalls the phase in his life when he spent time every morning praying and reading the Bible.

He saw that he was starting his day with listening to human issues. To complete the confession session he admitted to playing games on his computer.

Where does the phrase come from?

Lukewarm is nothing to do with St Luke on a hot day. It’s an adjective particularly used in connection with liquid or food that should be hot only to find that it is moderately warm or even tepid.

Lukewarm is also used to describe an event, for example that the film received a lukewarm reception from critics. We look at the antonym we find in reference to feelings that it is ardent, full of zeal.

Let’s have a look at the Bible, Revelation 3: 16  so, because you are  lukewarm – neither hot nor cold – I am about to spit you out of my mouth. Further in Revelation it says I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot.  I wish you were either one or the other.

Being spat out of someone’s mouth was not something we discussed on this occasion but there were plenty more issues to raise.

In order to define the parameters more clearly, Chris used a flip chart and asked us to comment on the various systems of belief and not belief

With refreshing honesty, which I wish everyone who preaches or gives talks could have, he went through his own experiences of his ups and downs towards believing and share with us that his integrity of belief with God was directly in proportion to the quality of his relationship with his wife.If his relationship with God was poor then it was correspondingly poor with his wife. His response led to laughter and chuckles.

Spiritual vs Lukewarm – some considerations

# I find that revival times follow on a period of intense dissatisfaction with life and it seems to need that quality in order to precipitate the change. Chris said that he had become dissatisfied with being dissatisfied because you know that your actions and thoughts are not at the level of commitment with and to God.

# So with regard to the rediscovery of your first love, there is a certain joy almost naivety about it which is in contrast to the self-centeredness, the my my my of my feelings my needs.

I Brian said that satisfying my own needs does the job for a certain amount of time but it soon fades to be replaced by a need for further stimuli and this can have an effect on those closest to me that I sometimes do not notice .

# A Desire for Jesus was contrasted to a desire for other things by which I suppose he meant, things of this world. My comment is that since we are eternal spirits, we cannot be content with priorities that focus on our existence on this mortal plain. It is very easy to get to sucked into social media but then aren’t you comparing noise with other noise and blindness with other types of blindness so what is the point in engaging?

#  no desire to sin versus sin is an alluring matter to me is about priorities and the foolishness of performing actions or thinking thoughts that are counter productive to your relationships. No one says I am now going to sin and I’m going to enjoy it but they see a particular action as procuring for state of mind that is only possible if you reach up to the divine part of your self.

So, it is a *wild goose chase. I’m not sure if this phrase applies to the wildness of the chase or the wildness of the geese or indeed the wildness of the chaser. I know that like many other birds they are difficult to catch 🙂

* The idiom “wild goose chase” comes from a 16th-century horse race where riders followed a leader in a formation that resembled geese in flight. The phrase’s figurative use dates back to around 1600.

# we have to be ready and the lukewarm person is not ready. I suggested to the speaker that a better term than ready was ‘vigilant’ which basically means proactive rather than the implication of ready which is reactive. For example I am ready for my guests to arrive vs I am vigilant when my children are playing by water.

Vigilance makes such a difference when having a dialogue with people, even friends you know, as if you are out of phase with them due to your own preoccupation and indeed their preoccupation as well the contact will only be ordinary, so we need to make sure that for any significant topic the environment is suitable or commodious to what you’re going to talk about. </p>

Further thoughts on ‘Lukewarm’

To an observer, their attributes will consist of

# inconsistency in other words reading the Bible or other books one day and not the next day
#  lack of passion where they beliefs are not translated into their daily actions and this will reflect on their
# indifference to the growth both of themselves and to others
#  they would certainly not get involved with other people’s lives.

Before deciding if someone is lukewarm I think we need to be a little bit kind and think that life may have dealt a bad set of cards to them. For example if someone is lukewarm towards religion it may have been that their father was a Catholic and insisted they go to church twice every Sunday or may have beaten them for not obeying a rule.

Who can blame them for being lukewarm? It took me long enough, 20 years, to adjust to the difference between things that my parents claim to have believed in compared with their actual behavior.

How to awake the lukewarm?

As I have implied above, the term lukewarm can be subjective and may carry a negative connotation and refers to individuals who may be perceived as indifferent or not fully committed to their spiritual beliefs.

I like to regard lukewarm people as sleeping people and if I can wake them up even a little bit with some provocative remark or even a joke then my time is not wasted. I have to remember that an earlier version of myself was also lukewarm and that’s putting it mildly. Lost, angry, confused, ambivalent, self-destructive are some of the words i could have described to myself so really who am I to speak?

The importance of companionship

I noticed that on the clip board the good old fashioned word lonely had not been mentioned. I mentioned it and another member of the group took me up on my statement and added to it.  I think it was Jesus who said that we are members one of another and this is the most profound statement and can be applied throughout nature not just with human beings.

The root of the word companionship comes from com, with, and pannis, bread.

It is very difficult to grow and to thrive without the encouragement and close contact with others which could take the form of words, hugs, an encouraging e-mail, an invitation to a meal, just generally showing people that you care for them.

If we are our companions with God then the habits that cause us problems no longer have the effect because we are refocused to another level so in a way I’m reminded of the Bible ‘seek ye first the Kingdom of God and all will be added to you’. It doesn’t say, seek you first the Kingdom of God and then run around like a headless chicken.

I was reminded of the Screwtape Letters, the seminal volume by C S Lewis where the subtleties of temptation are laid bare.

I joked a bit and said that if you were new to an area I could run a renter dog service then all you have to do is to go out and about and everyone would talk to you. Talking about the dog seems a safe way to open a conversation.

What finally worked for Chris?

Chris said again that what worked for him was desperation, being confronted with the situation that he cannot ignore and in a way calling on God, on Grace, to take him from position A to position B.

You cannot work your way back to being saved or to salvation. Was it one of the apostles that said you’re not saved by good works but by orientation towards the light and the acceptance of the example of Jesus and his profound understanding of the human soul. Well, he should know.

The line in scripture is from Ephesians 2:8-9 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast“. so you cant pull yourself up by your own bootstraps. Its a question of will and knowledge I guess.

What does it mean, to ‘die’?

I jumped in after the talk to say that we are all part of nature, and I don’t get downcast when I see a dead leaf because it is in the process of being taken in by the ground and recycling it in order to form new life.
I think we need to take the same attitude to all our so-called negative attributes, commit them and recycle them by taking the material from within those attributes that is valuable.

Dying is not only about ‘kicking the bucket’ or ‘popping your clogs’  but it’s about stopping to live in a certain way. It is a decision to change your priorities to something that you on reflection consider to be more worthwhile.

We speak of the living dead, the unfortunates who are forced to do functions that they are not suited for. When we say that a particular meal or indeed a holiday is to die for we are talking about changing our priorities to spend more time engaged in those particular activities.

It reminds me of clearing out my attic which I’ve been putting off for a long time.  I know I have lots of redundant possessions that I no longer have need for, and it’s a matter of self-discipline and spare energy to have a clear out. I’d say the same thing is to be said about a clear out of the mind.

Best done in company if you ask me.

So the word ‘die’, is not a black and white thing, it’s a process or can be if you let it.