The gist of the analogy centers on surroundings.  You see, a thermostat changes the temperature around it.  A thermometer changes with the temperature. The application is clear.  Some people change the world around them, and others are changed by the world.  Some think we are placed in those roles by chance.  Maybe sometimes.  I find more often than not; it happens by choice.   It comes down to how we choose to live out our lives.

All too often these days, I hear people talking about how terrible their lives have become.  The words they use and the expressions they speak are thermometer phrases.  And they talk themselves into a thermometer life.  I remember towards the end of the Kevin Costner movie, Field of Dreams.  Costner’s character is speaking about his movie dad. He says, startled by the vitality of his dad in his prime, “I only saw him years later when he was worn down by life.”  Hear it?  The world has changed him.

The Apostle Paul got it. Paul was definitely a thermostat. He didn’t let the world around him dictate his attitude or his altitude.  In situations where others saw opposition, time and again, he saw an opportunity.  In Acts 26, for instance, instead of looking at his imprisonment as persecution, Paul found an opening – to speak to Caesar!  Why can some find opportunity in life while others faced with the same circumstances are overwhelmed?

I think we have a choice in life.  We can have attitudes of victors or victims.  We can be overcomers or overcome.  We can be thermostats or thermometers.  And believe me, it has a lot more to do with what is going on between our two ears than what is going on around us.

So let me ask you, what do you want to be; a thermostat or a thermometer?