"Everything that is revealed by the light is light. Therefore, it says, Wake up, sleeper! Get up from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.” Ephesians 5:14 CEB
The banging on the door didn’t always work. Sometimes there was loud, blaring classical music from the room next door. There was almost always yelling at a very high decibel level. Over the years they tried almost every trick in the book. It just rarely seemed to work. It must have been frustrating to have someone remain unresponsive no matter what you tried. The last resort usually came into play after several other attempts. Barging into the room holding something with which to make noise, a lot of noise, the person would shake the bed, rip off the covers, and bang on the noise maker. Simultaneous to all this commotion was the loud singing of a song which may have gone something like this—It’s time to get up, it’s time to get up, it’s time to get up in the morning! All of this was simply an attempt to get a teenager to awaken.
Have any of you been there? Maybe you were the teenager. Perhaps you were, or are, the parent who was trying to awaken your teenager from a long winter’s nap. The sleeping person I was referring to above may or may not have been me. I have always been a very heavy sleeper and I have never been a morning person. This combination made for many very frustrating experiences for my parents. Don’t worry though, I have been paid back a little bit by my daughters. Some of us are a little bit more difficult to awaken than others.
I believe it is the same way in our spiritual life. It is possible for some of us to walk through life a little sleepy in our faith. It takes more to awaken some people than others. The goal for all of us should be to be wide awake—spiritually. We must be ready to hear, sense, and follow the leading of the Holy Spirit in our life. To make a real difference in the world we must be awake to what God is calling us to do and to be. The most difficult factor in being awake to the movement of God in our life is familiarity. When we experience the same routine, the same people, the same everything in our life we can be lulled to sleep. We can cease to see the new things God is doing around us and miss the opportunity to act. In a way, it is like sleeping through the alarm. We don’t see or hear the leadings that God is giving us.
The question becomes—do we want to be lulled to sleep or do we want to be awakened?
For me the answer is—I want to be awakened! I want to experience the fullness of what God has in store for me. I want to be fully aware of where and when the Holy Spirit is leading me. I want to be fully awake! Don’t you? When you are fully awake you see all of what is happening. When you are fully awake you experience more of the work of the Holy Spirit in your life. When you are fully awake you are fully engaged with Jesus. How can I say this gently...WAKE UP! This is what Paul wrote to the believers in Ephesus…"Everything that is revealed by the light is light. Therefore, it says, Wake Up, sleeper! Get up from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.”
Wake up—today! Be fully awake and fully engaged in the work of Christ through your life today. Every moment, every interaction, every conversation, every project is an opportunity to be fully awake. May the Holy Spirit awaken in you the passion to make a difference for Christ today.
This weekend at all four worship services we begin a new 6-week message series Make A Difference. This is also the theme of our stewardship campaign as we prepare for our 2019 ministry needs. This weekend we will discuss how easy it is to be lulled to sleep and how crucial it is to be awake. I hope you will join us this weekend and every weekend. The best is yet to come for St. Andrew’s. I can’t wait to see you in church!
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