The Gospel is like Warm Water

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These frigid days being experienced by nearly the entire Midwest
region of the country brings to mind an analogy of what the Gospel
is really like:

When you spend a lot of time outdoors in weather like this, you
of course get a sense that your hands are cold, but it's often a rather
vague sense, because your whole body -- including your hands -- has
acclimated to the cold and you're focused on whatever it is you're
doing (like putting out the trash or picking up those branches that
have fallen, or enjoying sledding with your kids)... You KNOW your hands
are cold, but you just kind of "accept" it as part of your condition...

But then you go inside and put your hands under the water faucet, with
the handle turned all the way to HOT... As the stream of water begins
to heat up, running over your hands, it actually HURTS at first; and actual
sharp PAINS shoot through your hands and you are tempted to pull away...

But you keep your hands under the water, and pain turns to tingling,
and tingling subsides into tepid, and tepid warms you up until your hands
begin to feel NORMAL again...

They turn back into a healthy shade of "pink", and you can even feel
that warmth spreading through your arms and even your whole body...

The Gospel is just like that: We don't perceive at first JUST HOW BADLY
we've frozen our souls; and the initial Treatment from a true understanding of
the Gospel brings PAIN at first; but the more we remain under its influence,
we sense our hearts warming, our minds opening up, our fears and frustrations
and prejudices and deep-seated Hate and Lust and Greed and Laziness being
exposed and soothed away... And we smile a grateful smile as we begin to enjoy
the warmth...

... and that thawed Heart begins to acknowledge God and the act of RESCUE
He is performing in us, a Rescue we didn't even know, really, that we needed
when we were galloping through the frozen Winter of the World and its paltry
and self-destructive amusements...

Letting that warmth change us forever, and sharing that warmth with others...
And someday experiencing COMPLETE warmth and eternal Enjoyments...
That's "The Rest of The Story", from the Christian's perspective.
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