Guest Blogger: Gabrielle Pepin
“Scarlet, are you really that cold?” I would hear my Minnesota-born-and-raised father dressed in a shirt and shorts ask his Floridian bride. Growing up, there would be several occasions where I would find my mother curled up on the couch by the fire, wearing two layers of fuzzy socks, thick sweat pants that would drag as she walked, a sweatshirt, and to top it all off, she would be decked out in a full winter coat. While my mom felt like the temperature was below freezing, my dad felt like it was sunny and 75 degrees in our house. Two conflicting temperatures in the same house. Funny concept, right?
As I was praying the other day, I was asking the Lord to reveal to me the condition of my heart, to correct me of anything that had been grieving His Holy Sprit and to show me if there was anything I needed to work on. (Which by the way, the fact that we have the Creator of the Universe’s full attention concerning the condition of our hearts is simply amazing).
Jesus began to walk through my heart with me, as if we were walking through a house together.
Think of a house. Traveling up and down the staircase, seeping through the cracks of the doors, and engulfing every bit of air is the temperature of a house. How does this constant flow of temperature become the way it is? By setting a desired degree on the thermostat. A thermostat runs and maintains that specific temperature as it sends signals throughout the house until every room feels like 72 degrees. Once the entirety of the house is 72 degrees, it becomes set and remains set.
The Lord revealed this same concept to me about the temperature within my heart. In today’s world, we are constantly exposed to and bombarded by thousands of different opinions, statements, news, facts, and theories, all at the reach of our fingertips (thank you, social media). Without being intentional and placing distinct “guard rails” within our heart, this is a major danger zone just begging for the enemy to creep into our hearts. As we allow our hearts to become vulnerable to the world around us and let several voices into our hearts, our thermostat begins to go crazy, rooms within our hearts begin have conflicting temperatures, and our hearts simply become confused. One room is set to 72 degrees, but the other is a frigid 23 degrees because of the comparison or jealousy that I allowed to creep in from my daily Instagram scroll.
Think of how body temperature works. If your hands are cold, you may consider having someone warm them up with their warm, toasty hands. Soon, your hands become their same temperature. This is how it works with our Heavenly Daddy. Getting so close to His heart, the temperature of our hearts becomes His temperature. When the temperature of each room within our hearts is the same as His, that is when we can be steady, strong, powerful children of God who are not affected by the different temperatures the world offers. In addition, we are quickly able to recognize and identify when an unfamiliar temperature is attempting to enter our hearts.
My challenge for you today is to check the temperature of your heart. Is it that steady 72 degrees where you are listening to His voice and His voice alone? Or are you allowing conflicting temperatures to lead by emotions, thoughts, and attitudes? Let’s have the entirety of our house be set at the Lord’s constant temperature and keep it set!
Today’s blog is from guest blogger Gabrielle Pepin, third daughter of Brad and Scarlet Pepin, a 20-year-old sophomore at Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, OK. She is majoring in Business Management. She enjoys writing and loves to take on new adventures. Her heart and her passion are to raise up leaders among her generation. She wants to encourage them to be the sons and daughters that they were created to be.