Awake O' My Soul

Avis Sparks
3 days ago
3 min read

There seems to come a time in most Christians’ journey when the fire that once burned so brightly and fervently begins to lose its hunger and smolders down to embers. No wood or other substance has been added to keep the fires raging, and the thirst for oxygen around them dissipates. Oxygen is what makes it possible for substances to catch on fire. Our thirst for the breath and presence of God wanes, and we become apathetic to the things of God, and we sleep.

God called the church of Laodicea to the carpet about their apathy in Revelation 3. He called them lukewarm (Rev 3:10). He describes how they got so caught up with the gaining of material things that they lost sight of how poor, pitiful, wretched, and naked they had become in the Spirit (Rev 17). And He follows this with His message of love. He shares that He rebukes and disciplines those He loves. He is now calling us to wake up and hear His voice, and to open the doors of our hearts so that He can again have an intimate relationship with us, eating and talking and living life with Him.

God Wants Us to Hear

However, as it is written: “What no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, and what no human mind has conceived”— the things God has prepared for those who love him— these are the things God has revealed to us by his Spirit. The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God.

-1 Corinthians 2:9-10

God has so much He wants to reveal to us and talk to us about through His Spirit. However, we cannot hear, see, or experience what God saying and preparing if we are asleep to the Spirit. We can only see and understand the things of God when we are awake to His Spirit. There is hope that He is speaking. Deliverances, He is proclaiming. Blessings, He is pouring out. And divine Purposes that He is His is assigning. Yet we do not see, hear, or experience them because we are asleep. Yearn again to abide in the presence of God and be aligned with His will. Hunger and thirst after His presence and righteousness again.

Don’t Fall Asleep on God

Then he returned to his disciples and found them sleeping. “Couldn’t you men keep watch with me for one hour?” he asked Peter. “Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.”

-Matthew 26:40-41

Being asleep when you should be awake is a problem. Jesus warns us that walking in the flesh will not cut it as a Christian, for it is weak. We must be awake and functioning in the Spirit so that we can walk and live with the strength, power, and insight the Spirit provides (Galatians 5:16-25). Only when we are walking in the Spirit can we overcome and defeat the influences, temptations, and oppressions of this world.

Hunger and Thirst

But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.

-Matthew 6:33

Keeping our hunger and thirst for the things of God guards us against apathy and dullness to His voice and coldness to His presence. When you are physically hungry, it is hard to lie down peacefully. Instead, that hunger for nourishment has you up and searching, trying to satisfy the desire to be full. Our blessing comes from never being satisfied but continuing to hunger and thirst and seek His Kingdom (abiding in His presence and will) and His righteousness.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.

-Matthew 5:6