Lukewarm

I have struggled over the years with being a Christian that lives my faith like it were real. If I really believed that when I prayed, I was entering the throne room of God and He was beckoning to me to come chat, I would not have trouble praying. I would have trouble getting up. If I really believed that the Bible was the perfect word of God, would I live the way I do. Most of my life I have been a Lazy Lukewarm Christian at the best of times. John writes in the book of Revelation 3:14-21 about the Lukewarm Church of Laodicea.

Revelation 3:14-21
¹⁴ “And to the angel of the church of the Laodiceans^a]">[a] write,
‘These things says the Amen, the Faithful and True Witness, the Beginning of the creation of God: ¹⁵ “I know your works, that you are neither cold nor hot. I could wish you were cold or hot. ¹⁶ So then, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot,^b]">[b] I will vomit you out of My mouth. ¹⁷ Because you say, ‘I am rich, have become wealthy, and have need of nothing’—and do not know that you are wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked— ¹⁸ I counsel you to buy from Me gold refined in the fire, that you may be rich; and white garments, that you may be clothed, that the shame of your nakedness may not be revealed; and anoint your eyes with eye salve, that you may see. ¹⁹ As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten. Therefore be zealous and repent. ²⁰ Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and dine with him, and he with Me. ²¹ To him who overcomes I will grant to sit with Me on My throne, as I also overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne.

I am drawn to the plea in verse 19 where God asks us to be Zealous and Repent. To be Zealous is to be a fan or on fire for God, and to Repent is to turn away from our selfish sinful ways. How many of professing Christians today show up at church on Sunday morning as their duty to God and do nothing the rest of the week? How many of us read our Bible faithfully every day? How many of us seek God? How many of us want our relationship with the Lord to be real? How many of us believe what the word of God says? The Barna group at www.barna.org has done survey's over the past decade to see how many adults nationwide and christian adults have a biblical world view. The results are startling.

A biblical world view is defined by the acceptance of all the statements listed below for the Barna groups survey purposes.

1. Absolute moral truth exists.
2. Bible is totally accurate in all of the principles it teaches.
3. Satan is considered to be a real being or force, not merely symbolic.
4. A person cannot earn their way into Heaven by trying to be good or do good works.
5. Jesus Christ lived a sinless life on earth.
6. God is the all-knowing, all-powerful creator of the world who still rules the universe today.

The Survey revealed that 9% of American Adults have a biblical world view. This was shocking to me. I accept the 6 statements above as true though I feel they fall a little short in their content. For example, in statement 6 I would not only believe that God is all-knowing and all-powerful, but also, ever-present as well. I also would have said in statement 2 that the bible accurate in all of the principles it teaches and it is a prefect divinely inspired text from cover to cover. All that being said, it is possible that if the statements were more defined as I have given examples of the results would have been worse.

The survey reveals even more startling results among Christians. Barna defined Christian as "...those who said they have made a personal to commitment to Jesus Christ that is important in their life today and that they are certain that they will go to Heaven after they die only because they confessed their sins and accepted Christ as their savior...". The Barna survey revealed that only 19% of Christians had a biblical world view. Seeing this has made me realize how far our country has fallen from its foundation.

The last point I have to make on this is the worst of all. We are failing to teach our younger generation a biblical world view. "The current study found that less than one-half of one percent of adults in the Mosaic generation – i.e., those aged 18 to 23 – have a biblical worldview, compared to about one out of every nine older adults". That is less than 5 out of every 1000 youth ages 18-23 have a biblical world view. We as a nation must repent and turn to God before its too late. I pray we do not follow in the footsteps of Israel as they were in the book of judges. God punished Israel when they turned away from him and went to their idols. May God have mercy on us all for we have been lukewarm. Its time to wake up and repent. Its time to turn back to God and live our faith like we believe it.

The above statistics were obtained from the Barna group at http://www.barna.org/barna-update/article/21-transformation/252-barna-survey-examines-changes-in-worldview-among-christians-over-the-past-13-years feel free to visit the site to get an even bigger picture of what troubles our country today.