Revelation is great. It’s not like hindsight or anything like that. It does work in a similar way though. I had been reading the book of Revelation, and there’s a great quote about that on the Simpsons - where the newscaster says ‘It’s in Revelations people!’. Anyway, I had read about Jesus wishing that people were either hot or cold.
To some people this may not make sense. Try this: take a glass of cold water, a glass of hot water and a glass of warm water. Try each one, and you will probably be disgusted at the warm glass of water. I am anyway.
So, there I was, making some teas and coffees for work, waiting for the kettle to boil. We have one of these funky kettles you can see into. Now, when the water heats up, it will go cloudy. Then it will start to boil and become clear at the point of boiling. To me, this was a reflection of what Christ was saying where he wished we were either hot or cold, not lukewarm (Revelations 3:16).
The other side of this is that when the water is cold, it is very static. There is no dynamic to a cold glass of water. It will only move when you move the glass. Warm water does little too. Hot and boiling water takes on a life that is completely unexpected. I watched the kettle boil and realised that the life of the water, had it not been for the lid, would have splashed out everywhere. Even when you look at hot water in a glass, on a sunny day, you can see a shadow cast by the thermal dynamics being played out in the water. Cold water does nothing. Hot water moves.
And so this should be in our lives. We should be hot for Christ, for God, for the Holy Spirit, and only then will we move with a dynamic provided by heat from God himself.