Up and At’em!

Series: Jesus, You Make Me Nervous

I had the privilege (can you call it that?) of going shopping a few days ago. As the checker completed scanning my items she stretched, rubbed her eyes and remarked, "This day will never end." I said, "Tough day...huh?" She said, "No. I'm just so sleepy. I had a really short night!" Have you had one of those days lately that felt like it lasted for an eternity because you were sleepy? I can remember a few times when staying awake proved to be a minute-by-minute battle all day long. Short nights will do that to you!

A few times in the gospels Jesus says simply Be on the alert or stay awake. Two of the more memorable parables are about “staying awake”, the parable of the ten bridesmaids and the parable of the stewards (Matthew 25).

The night of his betrayal and arrest, Jesus entered the Garden of Gethsemane to prepare his heart for what lay ahead of him. While he was prayerfully fitting his hands around the cup of suffering, he returned to his three closest friends and asked them to “stay awake” and watch for him. He came back after the last period of prayer and found them sleeping. He asked them, “Could you not stay awake for one hour?” Talk about words that pinch your heart!

Each time I read those two parables or watch the three disciples rub their eyes as Jesus drops that anvil of a question into their laps, I’m again reminded that I'm not in a biblical history gallery. Not hardly. Jesus' words come to me as both exhortation and question: Stay awake…Are you awake?

This raises an important question: Is it possible to be asleep spiritually and not know it? I remember driving one night and “drifting off” only to suddenly wake up in the bar ditch with grass and weeds flying every direction. Not fun at all. There is this little threshold between awake and the early stage of sleep that you cross ever so quietly. No fanfare. No sirens. No flashing lights. You just drift off. For a moment you are completely unaware of what has happened to you. Then, your head falls forward and you come very much AWAKE! The same thing can happen to us spiritually. Fact of the matter is we are prone to taking spiritual siestas.

Every time I read about the church at Sardis in Revelation chapter three I feel a bump on my shoulder and a whisper in my ear: “You awake?” Jesus makes this alarming declaration, You have a name that you are alive, but you are dead (Revelation 3:1-2). Then he tells them, Wake up and do the things you did at the beginning. What things? They knew. We probably do, too.

So many things in this life can work on our hearts and minds much like a slow acting sedative. Days become weeks, become months, become years and….one day we can’t hear the alarm anymore. We are spiritually asleep. Perhaps that’s why Paul said, With all prayer and petition pray at all times in the Spirit, and with this in view, be on the alert with all perseverance and petition for all the saints (Ephesians 6:18). To the Thessalonians he said, …so then let us not sleep as other do, but let us be alert and sober” (1 Thessalonians 5:6).

Have you felt weight on your eyelids lately? Not one of us is immune to it. But, time in the word, prayer and conversation with other “wide-eyed” disciples is what keeps us awake in the Spirit and able to resist the various ways life can anesthetize us spiritually.

Holy Father, help us to keep our spiritual senses sharp and alert to your calling. We don’t want to fall asleep spiritually. Give us the perspective that only your word can give so that we can know the difference between being awake and being asleep. And, thank you for putting people in our lives who nudge and awaken us to the way of blessing. Through Jesus…Amen

Randy Daugherty
Stephenville, Texas