Are You Able To Circulate The Love Of God To Those Around You?
Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. (1 John 4:7-8)
We recently installed a wood stove to help heat our home and to utilize it as a back up heating source if our power goes out. We currently live in an old farmhouse built in the late 1800’s and have found that it is not insulated well…at all. It is heated by fuel oil and as we all know, it can be costly to heat a home. So the decision came to purchase a wood stove to help offset the cost and provide some extra heat. When the temperature started to get down to the 40’s and 50’s the heat was great…almost too warm! As our wood stove is in the kitchen I would tell my husband that I could eat my breakfast and lose weight at the same time it was so warm! But I wasn’t going to complain after years of living with the thermostat down to help stretch the fuel, I would just eat my breakfast in the living room. As the temperature got down to the 20’s and teens, we found that some days the house would heat up to 68 degrees when other days we couldn‘t get it up past 59 degrees. We understood much depends on the wind outside but I began to notice it could be 20 degrees out two days in a row, very little to no wind and one day we could get the house warm and another day we couldn’t. There were days the kitchen would be warm but the living room would be cold. Research showed that we needed to help the air circulate throughout the downstairs with the help of fans. When we still had problems raising the temperature outside of the kitchen, further research showed we needed to experiment with the fans, placing them in different positions to be able to find the right air circulation pattern. I must have moved the floor fan to at least 10 different positions but to no avail. So we purchased a wood stove fan you place on top of the stove to help circulate the air and one you mount in the corner of a doorway. We still weren’t seeing a difference. Needless to say we were very frustrated. We knew there were other factors that made a difference as well which I will discuss later on. Yesterday as I prayed in my frustration I told God that I didn’t understand it. We were doing everything right but it still wasn’t working. Some days the heat would reach further and other days I couldn’t even get it outside of the kitchen. Needless to say I had a small frustrating breakdown for a few minutes but I heard the Lord say not to worry and to trust Him. After trying to nap, I happened to take one more look online and discovered a possible answer.
The answer came with the flip of a switch…the fan switch. We had our ceiling fan going in the wrong direction. We had it pulling the air up instead of pushing the air down. As we found, some sites say to have the fan going one way and other sites say to have it going another. I told my husband to flip the switch and see what happens. Within 20 minutes he said the temp went up 2 degrees. I silently said a thank you to God but wanted to see if it continued to work. I know…lack of trust…still working on that in some areas of my life. Tonight after we got home from church and started a fire, it went up 3 degrees in a couple hours. Not much I know, but there are factors we have to look at when using a wood stove for heat:
1. Stove placement
2. Feeding the fire
3. Air circulation
4. Insulation
No, this isn’t about purchasing a wood stove but while in church yesterday the Lord began ministering to me on a spiritual level how this can play into our lives. It’s important that God be centralized in our lives as we will not only feel His heat more but it will be easier to spread His love out to others through us. We can put him in another area within us but we may have to work harder at spreading his love further. Still in this case, the heart is a good centralize location for God to be as the kitchen can represent the heart. When we feed the heart (or our spirit) with the Word of God several times a day on a daily basis, this keeps the fire for God in our hearts burning hot. If we feed it to a roaring fire and then let it cool down, never remaining consistent, this is when our emotions will go up and down and the cold from outside situations and other people will affect us. With proper circulation our heat can reach other areas within us or reach outside to others. Sometimes, however, we have to be placed in the right position and faced in the right direction to circulate His love to others just as the fans in my house must be placed in the correct position. The living room can represent our day to day lives. Sometimes our hearts are burning for the Lord but we can find it hard to get it out in our day to day lives. Maybe our flesh takes over and we don’t feel like going anywhere or doing anything yet we yearn to do something for the Lord. Yes, that can happen. Maybe we just have good intentions or we are allowing fear or other peoples coldness to hinder us from spreading God’s love to others. Whatever the case, we must push forward in sharing the gospel and God’s love to others. Insulation is very important. We must be insulated from the coldness of the world and peoples hurtful words and actions which means we must be prayed up daily. Praying and reading the Word of God will insulate us from the coldness we encounter on a daily bases.
When you combine all these things, not only will your physical home be kept warm inside but your spiritual home will too. Also, the love God passes to you to pass to others will reach farther.
Lord, be the central part of my life. Draw me to you on a daily basis so I can be nourished and your love within my heart can grow and reach others. Place me where I need to be so I can reach others with Your Word. Insulate me with your Word so coldness cannot come in but the heat of your love can go out. I ask this in the name of Jesus…Amen.