Bible Reading: Ephesians 5:14
1. Wake up- God wants your attention
Sleep in the Bible is often used to indicate spiritual indifference and avoidance of God. The Bible gives us many examples of how God awakens the indifferent or the rebellious to his presence, plans and purposes. Jonah, asleep on a boat as he travelled in a different direction to the one God wanted him to go in was sharply woken up by a storm. Shepherds sleeping on the hills surrounding Bethlehem were startled into alertness by heavenly choirs and strange instructions. It is not always obvious to other people who is spiritually awake and who is actually asleep. John Wesley warned that the “quiet, rational, inoffensive, good-natured professor of the religion of his fathers and the zealous and orthodox Pharisee were just as likely to be spiritually asleep as each other, despite the difference in their outwards behaviour.”
How do we know when God, through his Holy Spirit wants our attention?
a) Inner restlessness
What is it that wakes a baby up apart from a wet nappy? It is hunger. When we begin to feel a longing for answers, when we start asking ourselves, “Where is my life going?” When we cease to be satisfied with material things, it really could be that the Holy Spirit wants your attention.
b) Pain
Do you know that in a reversal of what I am saying our pain gets God’s attention? Long ago when the Hebrew people were in slavery in Egypt, God appeared to Moses in the burning bush and he said, “I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers and I am concerned about their suffering. So I have come down to rescue them.”
When we are suffering, for whatever reason, know this; you already have God’s attention. God had to use a burning bush to let Moses know that he was on hand to help. It is not a method he uses often. But maybe he is saying the same thing to you. I am here and I want to help. Turn to me.
CS Lewis: God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pain: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”
c) Guilt
Our modern world of course doesn’t like guilt. It almost always portrays it as a negative thing, unless we feel we are the ones sinned against and then we want someone to feel really bad about what they’ve done.
The Bible sees guilt as God’s way of drawing attention to the fact that we have crossed a line we should not have. It is an in-built alarm system. Sometimes culture and our own attempts to override the system mess it up a bit but it is there for our benefit. Jeremiah lived at a time when the people of Israel were living in a state of low morality. Jeremiah said that it was lack of conscience/ guilt that would be their downfall. “Are they ashamed of their loathsome conduct? No, they have no shame at all; they do not even know how to blush. So they will fall among the fallen; “(Jer 6:15)
We know when it is the Holy Spirit who is activating our conscience because he will always be specific. The devil will try to make us feel bad full stop, the Holy Spirit only to help to the place where we seek forgiveness and cleansing from God.
d) Repetition
God is actually very patient and he will often send us the same message through various means. We might read something that impacts us in the Bible, then go to a meeting and someone will quote the same reading, someone raises the same issue. Eventually it dawns- God must be trying to say something.
If God is trying to get your attention in any of these ways please don’t turn off the alarm or fail to pick up the receiver. Wake up O sleeper and rise from the dead!
2. Wake up- God has something to say
One of the things that I have felt a burden to speak about to God’s people is about how we respond to the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. I believe the simple message is, “Stay awake!”
I believe our annual focus on the cross and resurrection of Jesus is much more than sentimentality. As we remember the sacrifice and the victory of Christ I believe we genuinely lift our hearts in adoration at the grace of Christ. That’s really good but if that is all we take away from Easter, we need to wake up. Easter for us is not a commemoration of Christ but complete identification with him. The truth is that it is not only Jesus who had to die and rise again but each one of us. We are called to Resurrection life. There is huge value in following an annual Christian calendar so that we think about different aspects of our faith at some point during the year. Holy days and special focus Sundays are important but there can be a tendency for us to fall into the trap of celebrating Christmas and we have “done” the incarnation, we celebrate Easter and we have done the cross and resurrection, we celebrate Pentecost and we have “done” the Holy Spirit. The truth is we have to live in the light of these momentous things every single day.
Paul wrote in Ph 3:10 that his ambition was this. “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings. “ And in Ephesians he prayed that the Church would know God’s “incomparably great power for us who believe. The power is like the working of his might strength, which he exerted in Christ, when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms.”
Will the enthusiasm of Easter week-end be translated into committed prayer, consistent holy living and radical obedience? There is no reason it cannot be because resurrection power is ours. The thing that will stop us is, is falling asleep again, when a week or two has gone by.
The interviewer asked, “What’s it like to wake up one day and realize you are a great success?” The reply was, “That doesn’t happen; if you are a success you haven’t been asleep.” (source unknown)
3. Wake up and get up.
God may have got your attention. You have woken up and it’s necessary to stay awake. What keeps us awake? - Arising
Remember the story of Prodigal Son. He goes off to spend his father’s money on wine, women and goodliving. Then there is a credit crunch and he ends up, destitute. But the sinking down into further degradation is halted when Jesus uses a significant little phrase in his story. V 17 “Then he came to his senses…” In other words he woke up and realised that he didn’t need to be in this mess. He could go home. But the real turning point comes when the prodigal says, “I will set out and go to my Father.” And v 20 says “he got up and went.”
There is a difference between awareness of need and action. Paul does not just say, “Wake up O sleeper” he also says, “And rise from the dead.”
Following awakening to any word from God there must be an arising.
It is so easy to wake up, smell the coffee, even drink a drop or two but remained entrenched in the old ways. We must trust and obey or we will go back to sleep.
Is that a bad thing? Absolutely. Spiritually speaking, sleeping is as neglectful as a sentry closing his eyes on duty. He fails to protect himself or others. It is as dangerous as allowing someone who has taken an overdose to doze off. They may go into a coma. It is as deadly as a lorry driver having forty winks at the wheel. There will be a crash.
The phrase “Wake up” in the Greek comes from the word “Ginomai” Its direct meaning is “to become.” When we wake up spiritually it is to enter into something and become the person God plans for us to be. It is not about losing who we are but fulfilling the potential God has put within us.
Whilst in Kenya, the mission team were deeply moved by the singing of the choir at Thika School for the Blind. Their leader is himself blind and writes all the songs for the choir. One of their songs had a particular impact upon us because it was so full of desire and hope, that they would become all that God wanted them to be.
I want to be a message for others
Faithful among ourselves
Ready to carry a message of love
That we all may glorify you
So revive my heart
Renew my vision
Prepare my heart for your purposes alone
Take me deep into your presence and your power
That we all may glorify you
May that be the prayer of every one of us.
God bless
Carol
No comments:
Post a Comment