Writer's note: This is an in-the-moment thought that I wanted to share with you. It hasn't been fully meditated upon or any discernment applied. It's just a short post on something that just occurred a short while ago.
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How many of you like hot showers? There is nothing like a good hot shower to help the body feel good, especially as we get older. Some of those aches and pains seem to melt away under the stream of water that washes over us.
Am I right?
Today was one of those shower days. It’s definitely not the middle of winter when a hot shower warms up a cold body that just came in from the snow. It’s sunny (no pun intended) and in the 70s outside.
It’s a nice September summer day.
It’s not that I had a lot of aches and pains today. Some minor ones, but nothing that “needed” the heat of the water. I just wanted hot water for my shower. The kind of shower that makes you go, “Ahhh”.
Naturally, my mind wasn’t relaxing. As I’ve said many times before, my brain goes 100 mph – constantly thinking, analyzing. There’s always something to meditate on in my world. But something odd happened.
I began to think of the hot water —> heat —> fire —> cold —> water —> blue —> cold water —> peace. I went from hot water to peace in a hot (sorry, pun intended) minute.
Immediately, I was thinking of hot water as God’s fire, His purifying fire (1 Peter 1:7), which I am all about right now. Less of me and more of Him. Shed “my clothes” and let Him clothe me (“I trust you, Lord” – September 2023). Burn me up, Lord, so that you see a reflection of You in me.
And then I heard a voice inside say, “Turn it to cold water.”
“Umm, the hot water feels really good right now, Lord. Are you serious right now?”
I don’t know how you talk with the Lord, but that’s what I was thinking…in the shower. Sigh. I turned it to cold. Well, cool, at first, then cold. At least, it felt cold after the hot water I had been feeling.
Cold water. Peace.
From the moment I turned it to the right temperature – that’s a sermon in itself right there – I felt peace. I wanted the heat of the fire, spiritually speaking, but God wanted to give me His peace. How many times do we want God to do things one way, even if it’s a good thing for us spiritually, but He shows us another way?
I wanted heat. He wanted peace.
The water of His word. Ephesians 5:25-27 (AMPC):
25 Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her, 26 So that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the Word, 27 That He might present the church to Himself in glorious splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such things [that she might be holy and faultless].
Selah.
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Sunny Cadwallader 
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