How to be Hot for God

Being Christian is not for sissies, I have heard some say. We must be bold, courageous and purposely enter into experiences of encounter that might make the average person squirm.

For starters, this is a life of serious love. And for us Christians, love is a verb, not a feeling. We have to love our enemies, not just our friends, even when it might not feel good or make sense. This love is done through countercultural actions: we have to forgive, stand up for justice, help the poor and marginalized.

All this love-in-action activity totally changes us for the better. Conversion gets the best of us. Our minds, hearts and behaviors change. For doing this love-work means we must hang out with prisoners, the people who scare us, the smelly— and we might become poor, scary, imprisoned and smelly ourselves in the process.

This being a Christian-thing: it’s messy, it’s complicated and totally challenging.

God really is demanding; God does ask a lot. We must give over our whole life and become totally transformed, and unite with God in our hearts, minds and spirits. For sure, this discipleship is an all-or-nothing thing. No pretending, going through motions, or half-assing any sort of faith-life; at least not if we want to really please God and build God’s reign of peace and justice.

Yes, like the verse in Revelation says, we must not be lukewarm with our faith.

I know your works; I know that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either cold or hot.

So, because you are lukewarm, neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth. 

–Rev 3: 15 & 16

When we’re real with ourselves, though, we might be able to admit that we don’t always feel on fire for the Gospel and the love of Jesus. Sometimes we are just not in the mood to go to great lengths to care for others. And, other times we are full of doubts, confusion. We are hurting, exhausted and just plain weary.

So, if we’re feeling lukewarm and we don’t want God to spit us out, then what are we to do?

It’s important to understand the original context of the passage; it was written to encourage persecuted Christians to remain faithful and hopeful during the Roman Empire. Many Christians were hiding their faith or trying to participate in both the state religion as well as their Christian communities, in the same way that today some of us still participate in the sins of the common culture while still going to Church saying we’re a Christian. This is the type of lukewarm faith that doesn’t care, that is comfortable and not interested in growth or feeling passion for God and others.

But, what if we are lukewarm because we’re struggling? What can we do if we don’t feel hot for God like we want?

Here’s how to be hot for God:

• Surround yourself with strong, faithful Christians who you can lean on for support. Recently one of my young nun friends posted a meme that totally summed this up for me. There was a picture of a bunch of ladies in wacky clothes and a statement: “surround yourself with people on the same mission as you.”
• Study scripture and pray a lot. Ask God for a strong faith, for strength and keep in mind that faith is a gift, but faithfulness is required in all relationships. And, a life of faith is a life in relationship.
• Do frequent acts of service because a great way to get to know God is by getting close to poverty.
• Receive the sacraments and allow the graces of God to transform you from the inside out.
• Listen and stay open to God’s beauty and love surrounding you all the time, whether it is nature, in art, your own acts of creativity or in the people you love.
• Ask others to pray for you such as my community. By the way, we have a perpetual adoration chapel and are praying 24/7 and we love praying for all of you and all your requests! You can submit your prayer requests here.

Indeed, let us pray for each other, that all of us can burn brightly with our love for God! Amen!

(If you are wondering what inspired this very impassioned post, I gave a very similar sermon to my 9th grade Scripture students while we were studying Revelation this week. But, it also seems incredibly relevant for us all to reflect on how we can be more vibrant with our faith in light of Pope Francis’ prayer intentions for secularization nations during the month of May and the recently released data on “America’s changing religious landscape.”)