Staying awake

These days of packing and hauling boxes are making me more tired than usual, sore too. If I didn’t set my alarm, it would be easy to stay in bed or at least lounge drowsily in a hot Epsom salts bath. Yet I know that too much sleep makes me even sleepier. 
 

If I didn’t meet with the Lord every morning, and if I didn’t spend time with other Christians, my spiritual life would ebb too. It would not disappear completely, but I would display less evidence of the Lord in my life and slide into a state of thinking and talking much as those who do not know Christ.

So then let us not sleep, as others do, but let us keep awake and be sober. (1 Thessalonians 5:6)

The New Testament warns Christians to stay alert. The admonition to “be sober” means be discreet, watch, pay attention, and in this verse is not about sobriety from avoiding too much alcohol. A similar Greek word is used for “fasting” —abstinence from food or drink, but like “sober”, it can also mean the mental attitudes that come with fasting for spiritual reasons. Being circumspect and vigilant come to mind.

Today’s devotional reminds me to guard against that sleepy, undisciplined life that dozes off instead of remaining engaged with God and the pursuit of godliness. I need to be vigilant. It is one thing to lose my battle against the world, the flesh, and the devil, but quite another to be unaware that there even is a battle. 

Spurgeon comments on how to stay awake. He focuses on the need for fellowship where Christians communicate together the ways of the Lord. He quotes a line from Pilgrim’s Progress where “Christian” and “Hopeful” journey toward the Celestial City and agree, “To prevent drowsiness in this place, let us fall into good discourse.”

In Christian circles, getting together for a coffee and chatting about life in general is often confused with fellowship. Biblically, and in my experience, fellowship is less like that and more like Spirit-filled people sharing the life of Christ with one another. This can be verbal where we speak of how God is working in our lives, or we pray together. However, fellowship may not be about words. Spirit-filled believers can express the attributes of Christ in other ways. Some examples are being patient, taking care of needs, teaching truth, comforting, and so on. All of these things encourage that spiritual wakefulness that God wants us to have. 

Spurgeon also says that if I isolate myself too much, I am liable to grow drowsy. Good Christian company can keep me awake. Yet on the other hand, if I spend too much time with sleepy believers, I’m often affected with the same affliction. We are united in Christ and need to be careful that we do not slide from that into being united in drowsy apathy.

This reality admonishes me. My wakefulness is as vital to them as theirs is to me. Each believer needs to be refreshed and encouraged to make effective progress in spiritual growth. While all of us are on the road to Heaven, genuine fellowship can ease and stimulate the journey and keep the love of Christ flowing outward from our hearts and into the lives of those around us.  

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Lord, sometimes I get spiritually sleepy and tend to blame others for my decreased vitality. Instead of doing that, I need to be a source of vitality for others. Keep me awake, alert and obedient. Help me know when someone needs to hear words about Your goodness and love, or needs to experience actions that demonstrate Your grace. Grant me creative ideas to stay awake and help others do the same.

Awake and alive

Sandy* writes her prayers on paper and puts them in a jar. Then she places the jar at the highest point she can find in her house. She didn’t fully explain her reasoning to me, yet what she did say made it obvious that she is hoping a lofty physical position for those prayers will somehow put them closer to God and more likely to be answered. (*not her real name)

I don’t know how to respond to Sandy. She is naively religious, knowing very little about what the Bible says, either about prayer or salvation. She thinks she is okay with God because she was taught by a mainline, liberal denomination that everyone is okay with God. She is a gentle person in some ways, but not innocent.

This morning I am reading from Ephesians and amazed at Paul’s long sentences. I’m also amazed that God gives me insight from verses 18-20 about how to pray for Sandy. They say,

I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the working of his mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms. . . .

Sandy has no idea that God has called her, at least not yet, but I can pray that He will open the eyes of her heart so that she knows about eternal life and about the inheritance secured for her by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. I can also pray that He gives her new life and the recognition of how wonderful it is that Jesus came here in human flesh and is now exalted to rule at the Father’s right hand.

My devotional reading expresses these thoughts about the wonder of Jesus’ rule, not so much that He is Lord and God, but that He is fully human even now as He reigns from heaven. With slight editing, this is what the reading says:

It is no great mystery that the Son of God should be exalted to the throne of power for it is only a step from the bosom of the Father to His right hand. However, that anyone with our (human) nature should be exalted to that seat of preeminence and power; that the Mediator between God and man should be the man Christ Jesus; that the hands which once were nailed to the cross should now hold the scepter, and that the feet which once walked on Lake Gennesaret and were weary and dust-soiled at Jacob’s well, and were washed with a sinful woman’s tears and kissed in penitential grief and love with polluted lips—that these very feet should now have all things put under them both in heaven and earth, there is the mystery. What food for faith!
The living family of God wants a living Savior, one who can hear and answer prayer, deliver out of soul-trouble, speak a word with power to the heart when bowed down with grief and sorrow, sympathize with us under powerful temptations, support us under the trials and afflictions of life, and maintain under a thousand discouragements His own life in our soul. We want One who can sustain under bereavements the mourning widow, and be a father to her fatherless children, appear again and again in providence as a friend that loves us at all times, be our brother ‘born for adversity’, smile upon us in death, and comforts us with His rod and staff as we walk through the valley of its dark shadow, and land us at last safely in a happy eternity.

Paul wrote about how God has put all things under the feet of Jesus, and made Him head over all things, yet some are still “dead in trespasses and sins” and need the power of His deliverance. They have no idea about a happy eternity nor how to get there. Sandy things she is okay, but instead of life and power, her prayers and words about her faith reveal empty ritual and superstition.

I’m told that a sleepwalker who thinks they are awake needs to be awakened very carefully. God is showing me how to pray for Sandy, and I’m certain that if He wants me to do more than that, He will also show me. I’m hoping to see her wake up and realize the wonder of Jesus and the life that He alone can offer her.