A Little Understanding – The Insulation

If you are like me, just reading the word insulation makes you want to start scratching. This [post] is not meant to be a “how-to” [post] on construction or even an attempt to pass on savvy tips to help you with your DIY projects. I will however give you a proven piece of advice; don’t roll around naked in insulation.

Other than the potential mental scars you may inflict on anyone who happens to see you, there is one other side effect that can’t be ignored. Insulation makes you itchy. Little fibers get into your pores and irritate you for hours if not days…

…These fibres may cause irritation but when combined to make a piece of insulation, they can also bring you comfort. Warm on the cold days, cool on the hot days, insulation traps the air so that the outside temperature can’t influence the inside temperature of your house…

Insulation does not change the temperature inside, it stops it from becoming the temperature outside.

…Warm air always travels toward cold air. Whether it’s the summer heat trying to get in, or the winter heat trying to get out, something has to trap the desired temperature in the house. It is the same for us as Christ followers and the collective of Christ followers, there is always something trying to get in and something trying to escape.

This isn’t the same as the rain and wind of worldly morals that try to wear us down and conform us to an ungodly pattern of thought and belief. This is more the temperature of your faith. Without the insulation between the Christ follower/the collective of Christ followers and the constant change of everything outside, we are at the mercy of every temperature fluctuation around us…

The temperature of the house of most Christ followers..

…and the collective of Christ followers is more influenced by what’s outside of them than by God inside of them. If those around us are hot about something, all fired up about an idea, this includes those who are Christ followers, the heat finds its way into our “houses”, our lives.

If the world or a segment of the church wants to be logical and scientific about something then the heat in our “house” rushes out being replaced by cold, hard, provable facts. When the revival starts we run out to attend the meetings. When the new “how-to” book about “marketing” Christianity comes out or the latest video on the scientific explanations behind the stories of the Bible is posted, we make sure we lap it all up.

Two outcomes are common to this uninsulated version of the protective covering.

The first outcome leads to no established temperature norm. We have an accepted room temperature that is somewhere between 68-72°F in the winter and slightly higher in the summer. We don’t like constant temperature changes and yet in our faith many are just fine with massive swings. This makes it difficult to figure out what is of God and what is just a trend. For many Christ followers and collectives of Christ followers, there is no norm, no room temperate, just constant change.

The second outcome happens because different people like different temperatures and want the temperature that suits them best. For some, cold calculated facts, provable in a lab or at least logically presented by great scientific or theological minds, replace signs and wonders, the mystery of God and His power in their lives. For others hot exciting, anything that is out of the normal and unexplainable, becomes the desired way of seeing God, even if it isn’t God that they are seeing. Both extremes are more reliant on human comfort zones than on God’s perfectly designed spiritual temperature for your life and the collective lives of the Christ followers who make up the church.

                “…but be transformed…” Romans 12:2

Created in the image of God, destroyed by the ravages of sin, transformed to become what God created us to be. I wish that this simple sentence was true of the journey of each Christ follower and the collective of Christ followers.

All who are humans are created in the image of God.

All who have been born after Adam, except Jesus the Christ, are under the curse of sin and therefore are destroyed by the ravages of sin. Unfortunately that is where I must stop using the word “all”. Not all people in the world are Christ followers therefore all people are not transformed. I wish I could say the remainder, those who follow Christ, are transformed. The person’s eternal destination changes once they become a follower of Christ, but that doesn’t mean they are automatically transformed…

Some would say that being transformed means God wants to make you different than you are right now, but is this accurate? The first thing that comes to mind when we think of being different is moving from being one way to being another. Using the fad diet metaphor, going from fat to skinny, is moving from being one way to being another. If you diet to lose a few pounds, change isn’t the problem, staying changed is the problem.

It isn’t that in your rounder appearing days you didn’t want change or didn’t understand that for your health and, however misguided, your sense of self-worth, you needed to become a little less round, it’s that your desires compete. To be successful your desires must be balanced so that food intake is both enjoyed and under control…

Stay tuned A Little Understanding – Climate Protection (Part 5) will be posted next week

From time to time my blog will include abridged excerpts from my book “Blueprint.” Like any author/blogger, I find it difficult to leave the words I have written in my computer until a publisher can be found. Maybe it’s because someone somewhere needs to read these words now.

For more excerpts and quotes from my book Blueprint find the heading “Categories” on the right side of this page and click on “Blueprint (my book)”