Growing up, I had a lava lamp in my room: a silver rocket with lime green wax in bright blue liquid. I loved sitting and watching the wax move making beautiful shapes and impacting the environment it found itself in. For lava lamps to work, the wax needs to keep returning to the light. It needs to get hot. A lava lamp doesn’t work if the wax isn’t heated up.

The church doesn’t work if it’s not heated up either:

“‘I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were either cold or hot!” Revelation 3:15-19 ESV

Revelation 3 goes on to say that we think we’re rich, prospering and that we don’t need anything, all the while not realising that we’re “wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked” (v17).

It would be foolish for the wax to think that it can climb to the height of the lava lamp in its own strength. It’s only because of its proximity to the light that it can be transformed and make beautiful shapes in its environment. The further away from the light it gets, the colder it becomes, the less effective, and the quicker it sinks.

When the wax is close to the light, it can absorb the lights energy and fulfil its purpose in its environment. It needs to continually return to the light to remain effective and have impact.

Let’s not make the mistake thinking that we can start off with the light of life and then climb through life in our own strength. We need to continually return to Jesus, continually allow Him to heat us up where we have grown cold so that we can continue to make beautiful shapes in the environment He’s placed us in.

Want to let the light shine in your home, workplace, relationships? Then you need to return to the light and let Him make you hot. Sometimes the process of heating up can be intense: “Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline” (v19) but I promise you it’s worth it. No one wants to be a cold, hard lump of wax in the world.

Come to the light: get hot, and get moving.