Dear People Who Keep Company With God,
One of the trends emerging in the Body of Christ is an increasing sense for the need of awakening in our nation. Not long ago the focus was more on revival in the church, but now things are taking on more of a serious tone. This is in part due to the direction our nation is headed politically and socially. It seems the alarm clocks of heaven are going off all across the nation and it is not a time to hit the snooze button.
Awakening is a common theme in the Bible because during trying times we tend to doze off and go to sleep due to the sorrow (Luke 22:45). This is clearly illustrated in Jesus’ final hours on this earth in the Garden of Gethsemane.
Then He came to the disciples and found them sleeping, and said to Peter, “What! Could you not watch with Me one hour? 41 Watch and pray, lest you enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.” Matthew 26:40-41
Watching means to be awake and aware of surrounding realities. In the scriptures it means to be spiritually alert, having a mind that is renewed by divine realities and is a blessed state to be found in (Luke 12:37).
The Body of Christ is the true sleeping beauty in the earth and when we wake up to who we really are it will be the greatest awakening of all time. Sometime back I read an article by R.T. Kendall in which he made some observations about natural sleep and the parallel to spiritual sleep that has encouraged me to continually seek to wake up.
First, you do not know you are asleep until you wake up. I have personally experienced falling asleep while I was driving and did not know it until a tractor-trailer blasted its horn at me as I was drifting into his lane. That awakening saved me from serious injury or death. The Bible tells us even the wise virgins fell asleep waiting on the Bridegroom, so we all have areas of our lives in which we are dozing off (Matt. 25:5).
Second, when we are asleep we do things in our dreams that we would not or could not do if we were wide awake. We all have awakened from dreams and felt relief that it was only a dream. Right now I see almost a pandemic of marriages failing in the Body of Christ. It is no wonder as the family is the basic fabric that holds our society together. This is a sign that many sincere believers have fallen asleep and are living in a dream world, a very demonic dream world. It is a terrible deception when that dream world becomes our reality.
Lastly, when we are asleep we hate the sound of an alarm. We want to hit the snooze button and roll over and sleep more and not be disturbed. As things become more critical the alarms of heaven will become louder; that is mercy, not an annoyance. That tractor-trailer horn rudely and instantly jolted me out of my slumbering state, but it did save me. The Lord is committed to waking us up (John 11:11).
But make sure that you don’t get so absorbed and exhausted in taking care of all your day-by-day obligations that you lose track of the time and doze off, oblivious to God. Romans 13:11 from the Message Bible
It is interesting that on the one hand we can be so busy and absorbed doing our daily stuff that we completely doze off and miss the very presence and work of God happening all around us. However, we can be like Jacob who, waking from his sleep said,“Surely the Lord is in this place and I did not know it.” (Gen.28:16)
Many Blessings, BW