Are you a thermostat or a thermometer?

Are you a thermostat or a thermometer? - Greg Laurie - http://www.wnd.com/2016/09/are-you-a-thermostat-or-a-thermometer/?cat_orig=faith

 

Pastor Greg Laurie declares, 'Faith is getting out there and running the race'

 

Are you a thermostat or a thermometer? A thermometer is affected by its surroundings. Depending upon the temperature, the thermometer goes up or down. In contrast, a thermostat influences its surroundings.

 

Let me put it another way. Are you changing the world, or is the world changing you?

 

Maybe it's a tall order to change the whole world. But what about your world? What about your sphere of influence? What about your friends, family and neighborhood? You can have an effect there. You can be the change agent. You can be the thermostat. You can be the world changer. But how do you do it? You do it through faith.

 

In the New Testament book of Hebrews, chapter 11, we find a list of people who changed their world through faith - people like Abraham, Enoch, Noah, Sarah, Joseph and Moses.

 

These people were not perfect. In fact, they were far from it. They failed often.

 

Gideon was a frightened farmer when the angel of the Lord came to him. He was hiding out from his enemies, the Midianites, who were oppressing the people of Israel. An angel appeared and said, "The Lord is with you, you mighty man of valor!" (Judges 6:12 NKJV). Gideon was probably looking around, thinking, "Are you talking to me?" He was anything but a mighty man of valor. At that moment he was afraid and timid. But God saw him for what he could become.

 

Moses was a fugitive from justice when the Lord spoke to him. Jephthah was an illegitimate son, unwanted by his family. These are very ordinary people whom God touched. Some ran their race better than others. Some ran well from beginning to end, while others ran well, fell, got up again, and finished the race.

 

But interestingly, not one word of their failure is mentioned in Hebrews 11. If you go back and read the biblical accounts of these folks, there were sins. In some cases, there were significant ones. Abraham lied twice about Sarah being his wife. His son, Isaac, did the same thing. Sarah laughed at God's promise and then denied that she laughed. Moses lost his temper and killed someone. David committed adultery and tried to hide his sin. Samson was very immoral. Yet they all made it into the Hall of Faith.

 

They are not heroes in the Bible's Hall of Faith because they were great people. They are heroes in the Hall of Faith because they had faith in a great God.

 

Maybe you are feeling like you've messed your life up. Know this: your story is not over yet. There can still be redemption. You can still get up again and finish this race. Just because you started well and have failed doesn't mean you can't get up and finish well. The way you do that is through faith. The Bible says, "This is the victory that has overcome the world - our faith" (1 John 5:4 ).

 

Faith is a lot like a muscle. The more you use a muscle - or another way to say it, the more you break down a muscle - the stronger the muscle becomes. If you neglect your muscles, they will not develop. If you neglect them for too long, they can even atrophy.

 

When you use your muscles, you get stronger. Faith is the same way. Use it or lose it. In fact, the Bible says, "But you, dear friends, must build each other up in your most holy faith, pray in the power of the Holy Spirit" (Jude 1:20 NLT). This is telling us that faith does things. Faith is active.

 

It seems that for a lot of people, faith is like a four-wheel-drive vehicle. They will go out and buy one of these and then add a lot of after-market equipment. They will raise them and get giant wheels. When one of these vehicles pulls up behind you, you're looking at the chassis in your rearview mirror. But ask someone who owns one of these if they do a lot of four-wheeling, and they might say, "Are you kidding me? Do you know how much I spent on this thing? There is no way I want to take it out in the dirt." It is all show and no go. That is what faith is like for some people.

 

We like to discuss faith, but we don't use our faith. We can't run and stand still at the same time. How we all wish we could find some La-Z-Boy we could sit in while we still get the benefits of exercise. But no such thing exists. In the same way, if we are running in the race of life, we can't be sitting. Faith is getting out there and running the race. It comes down to this: A faith with no works is a faith that doesn't work.

 

We tell people in the midst of a crisis to have faith. We tell them to trust God, believe in the Lord, and He will get them through. Then it happens to us. And all of a sudden we are not so big on faith because we are struggling with it ourselves. It's easy to tell others to have faith until our faith is tested.

 

Faith takes action. Faith doesn't just talk about it. Faith doesn't live in the realm of theory. Faith lives in the world of activity. It does things. Faith takes risks. Faith will say, "Let's just see what the Lord will do." Faith can make the difference between something happening and not happening. Faith can make the difference between receiving or not receiving what God has for us.

 

We can change our world through faith. We don't have faith in faith, however. Our faith must be in God. The object of our faith is God Almighty. Jesus said, "Have faith in God" (Mark 11:22 NKJV).

 

So coming back to my initial question, are you a world changer? Or, is the world changing you? Sometimes your life speaks volumes. Sometimes what you do is your sermon. Live your life well and be a world changer.