Thermostats and Thermometers

In the Airheart home, there is always a minor war raging...when it comes to the temperature. Can anyone else identify with this mini civil war?

I really should have seen it coming 21 years ago when Kelli and I started dating. We would be driving down the road and she would say, (in her sweetest, most innocent voice) "Is the car a little warm to you?" Honestly, I didn't think so, but I politely obliged by turning the temperature down to something more agreeable to her. After all, I was in love, and what's a little frostbite when you are in love?!

I soon came to understand that the question really never was a question...it was a suggestive command, and one I would hear MANY times over the years.

You see, I am very cold-natured. I have made jokes about it over the years, but I just stay cold most of the year..."kiss-of-death hands", I call it. Even in the summertime, I have to have blankets on me. I don't remember a time when I wasn't like that. Kelli on the other hand (as well as Hunter), is very hot-natured. She enjoys the cold, in an almost giddy way. According to her, the central heat "is suffocating". "It's just too hot in here and it's hard to breathe!"

And so, even after 17 years of marriage, we have a constant dilemma which usually causes us to rendezvous at the thermostat, located in the downstairs center hallway. This is the recurring scenario: I find her reading the thermometer and reaching for the thermostat, and she finds me armed and defending the control settings on said thermostat. I suggest she step away from the thermostat...and she suggests that I put on more layers of clothing. There was actually one time recently when I felt as if I had actually won the battle: the thermostat was on 72...only to discover (when I woke up shivering uncontrollably in the middle of the night) the ceiling fan on and set to its highest setting. As a matter of fact, it was turning so fast that, if I had turned the ceiling fan upside down, our house would have flown away like a helicopter. Had it not been for the mattress warmer on my side of the bed, I am convinced I would have died from hypothermia.

Thermostats and thermometers are more than just household instruments...they are also personality types. You know exactly what I am talking about here. 'Thermometers' go into situations and do nothing more than reflect the temperature of the situation or the culture. They are a translation of the surroundings. 'Thermostats' go into the same situations and do more...they change or set the temperature of the culture around them. They transform.

Paul talks to the Romans about this very situation: Romans 12:2: "Don't be conformed any longer to the pattern of this world..." In other words, don't be a thermometer and ride the temperature waves of the culture around you, where who you are and how you feel is determined by the people and situations around you.

It takes no energy to be a thermometer. Matter of fact, it is one of the easiest things to be.

What's harder is to be the thermostat, especially in a world that seems way too often cold and increasingly growing indifferent to the things of God. Where you work, where you live, where you spend your leisure time...with your coworkers, with your family, with your friends, the temperature is constantly fluctuating.

Oh, how we need more thermostats in our world! How we need brothers and sisters who know and love the truth to step in, step up and set the temperature by living lives that are different. How we need brothers and sisters who Know the Difference AND Live the Difference in such a way that, wherever they go, the cultural temperature actually changes. Conversations are sweetly tempered with love and truth. Relationships are transparent and accountable. Workplaces are transformed and joyfully productive.

Yes, it takes energy...and yes, it is hard. But if we truly want to see Godly transformation happen in and around us, you and I have to position ourselves in such a way that God can use us to be the "thermostat in the hallway".

Thermostat or thermometer...temperature setter or temperature reflector...transformer or translator...

Which one are you?