John 18:18 “Now the servants and officers had made a charcoal fire, because it was cold, and they were standing and warming themselves. Peter also was with them, standing and warming himself.”

If you did not suffer a loss of your source of heat and warmth this past week, you should consider yourself blessed. During the ice and snow of Sunday night and early Monday morning, I woke up to find that my electricity was out. Having an all-electric home and heat pump, I knew that something had to be done to protect our home and family. At 2:00 a.m. Monday, I got out of bed and built a fire in the fireplace and slept on the sofa to stay warm and keep the fire going. My wife and I had three straight days and nights of long episodes without any power. At night, we quietly sat on the sofa in the family room with only the fireplace and felt the cold with no light except flashlights and candles. There was no cooking, television, computer, or anything that ran on electricity. We did keep the water running to avoid our pipes freezing. On Tuesday, we were running out of wood for the fireplace and a generous neighbor brought us some wood. The wood from trees that God made served as our main source of warmth until Thursday night when the power came on to stay.

What happens to us when we suffer the loss of our spiritual warmth and begin to grow cold? God is our source of warmth and provision, just like the wood was for my fireplace. The only way to stay warm and survive in this world is to stay close to the source of heat which is our Father God. The fire of God provides warmth and makes living enjoyable and meaningful. Staying near the fire is achieved through personal time with God the source in prayer and His Word. We also do not want to open the doors of our warm home to allow the cold world waiting outside to come in. Peter was trying to stay warm from the charcoal fire built by the world, not God. We know that it didn’t work and he was exposed and left out in the cold until Jesus restored him. His warmth was restored when he returned to the one true source of Jesus Christ and he never became cold again. When we start getting cold, we must return to the source of our heat and warmth.