My Pillow

 Spiritual slumber is the gateway to spiritual death. Stay asleep long enough, refuse to awaken, and do everything you can to ignore the blaring alarms, and eventually, your breathing slows, your organs begin to shut down, your conscience is seared, and death is breathing down your neck and whispering in your ear. As Newton so aptly surmised, an object at rest remains at rest, and an object in motion remains in motion. The more you sleep, the more you’ll want to sleep. It’s the way it’s always been, and it won’t change even if you have the nifty Apple watch that tells you how much REM you got or how many times a minute you breathe while you’re counting sheep.

Most people who are spiritually asleep don’t know that they are. Even those who are grudgingly starting to admit to themselves that what they believe is contrary to the Bible don’t like to be called on it. If you try to point it out, they get angry and lash out as though you were trying to steal their pillow. Who are you to judge? Have you checked the beam in your eye? What’s the harm in believing this or that aberrant doctrine not in harmony with the Word?

First off, judging and warning are two different things. To judge another is to conclude that they are guilty and pass a sentence. To warn another is to love them enough to point out the precipice they’re heading toward while whistling all the live long day. It’s easier to deflect than to own up to certain things. It’s why so many of us think the dryer is purposefully shrinking our shirts and not that we’ve put on a few pounds.

Granted, you kind of are trying to take away their pillow or make them very uncomfortable while laying on it, but it’s not out of a sense of acrimony or because you’re trying to be needlessly insensitive. You admonish people to wake up because now’s not the time for sleep. It’s one thing not to want to wake up; it’s another seeing the person trying to wake you up as your sworn enemy.

Perhaps it’s due to ignorance of how dangerous spiritual slumber is that they see you as a foe whenever you attempt to awaken them. Even when you’re just quoting scripture, someone inevitably takes offense because we’d rather not be stirred awake, we’d rather not rub the sleep from our eyes, and we’d rather not have to contend with the reality staring us in the face.

We’ve taken to believing God’s warnings have a snooze feature, and they don’t. When God commands us to awaken from our sleep, we can’t just roll over and think that we will do it eventually, perhaps when we hear the birds chirping outside or when the sun begins to shine through our window. There must be an urgency to our reaction to the Word of God. When God says today, He doesn’t mean tomorrow. When God says now, He doesn’t mean later.

Romans 13:11, “And do this, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep; for now our salvation is nearer than when we first believed.”

You never take advice from your enemy. That’s a hard and fast rule that’s never let anyone down. If the devil wants you asleep, you should do your utmost to remain awake because he’s not trying to do you any favors. He’ll even seem empathetic and conciliatory. He knows you’re tired, and it’s taking longer than you thought, and you deserve some rest. And look at all the other people that are asleep, and they seem to be doing just fine. Lay down, close your eyes, tune out the alarm bells, and rest awhile.

Not only does the Word of God tell us that we should wake out of our sleep, but it also tells us what we should awaken to. Being awake just for the sake of being awake won’t do much for your spiritual man. It’s better than not being asleep, but we’ve all had those mornings where, even though we’re fully awake, we’re unmotivated and end up lying in bed staring at the ceiling for far longer than we should.

1 Corinthians 15:34, “Awake to righteousness, and do not sin; for some do not have the knowledge of God. I speak this to your shame.”

If you are awake, be awake with a purpose. Awake to righteousness, and do not sin. But that’s legalism! That’s works salvation! Who would dare pen such constraining exhortation? It must have been that Peter fellow; he was always on some holiness kick or another. Actually, it was Paul, the same Paul whose writings some use as an excuse for a libertine and sin-laden life because, you know, grace.

Just because, even at your best, you’re not good enough to enter heaven, it doesn’t mean you have a license to live at your worst. We all need the grace of God because, on our own, without grace, we are incapable of achieving perfection. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t strive, or as Paul puts it, awake to righteousness and not sin.

Those who slumber will continue to do so unperturbed. They neither strive nor fight the good fight nor run the race that they might obtain the prize. They are unconcerned with anything other than their comfort because it directly affects their ability to sleep.

Those who have awakened must then pursue righteousness because it is when we knock that He opens, and when we seek that we find Him.

Ephesians 5:14, “Therefore He says: awake, you who sleep, arise from the dead, and Christ will give you light.”

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.