Therefore, stay awake, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. – Matthew 24:42
No doubt you have had the experience of trying to force yourself to stay awake. Overcoming your brain’s automatic shut-off mechanism is ultimately impossible and regardless of the circumstances you will shut down, your body requires it. Unlike your physical requirement for sleep, your spiritual health depends on just the opposite… staying awake!
In the Book of Revelation, the church of Sardis is admonished for spiritual sleepiness. They claimed to walk in faith but, to the outside world, they looked like everyone else, living in respectable debauchery and filling their lives with dead works, which is another way to say self-righteousness. The end coming for those not interested in shaking off their drowsy sinful life to pursue a healthy relationship with God is that they will eventually be allowed to remain asleep spiritually – forever.
Followers of Christ are awake and about God’s business. “So then let us not sleep as others do but let us keep awake and be sober. For those who sleep, sleep at night, and those who get drunk, are drunk at night. But since we belong to the day, let us be sober, having put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation. For God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Thessalonians 5:6-9).
Pray for God’s blessing on America’s leaders. Ask that believers in positions of authority will be alert and alive to the leading of the Spirit of God, preparing the nation for a new day to come.
Today’s Verse: Matthew 24:42
Therefore, stay awake, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming.
All Scripture quotations and audio are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Recommended for further reading: Daniel 12:1-7
“At that time shall arise Michael, the great prince who has charge of your people. And there shall be a time of trouble, such as never has been since there was a nation till that time. But at that time your people shall be delivered, everyone whose name shall be found written in the book. 2 And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt. 3 And those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the sky above; and those who turn many to righteousness, like the stars forever and ever. 4 But you, Daniel, shut up the words and seal the book, until the time of the end. Many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall increase.”
5 Then I, Daniel, looked, and behold, two others stood, one on this bank of the stream and one on that bank of the stream. 6 And someone said to the man clothed in linen, who was above the waters of the stream, “How long shall it be till the end of these wonders?” 7 And I heard the man clothed in linen, who was above the waters of the stream; he raised his right hand and his left hand toward heaven and swore by him who lives forever that it would be for a time, times, and half a time, and that when the shattering of the power of the holy people comes to an end all these things would be finished.
All Scripture quotations and audio are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
