It Is High Time to Awake!

I have not slept well lately. OK, truth is I seldom sleep well, but lately, it had been far worse. Last night, I was so exhausted, and I actually slept a little over 7 hours which is really good for me, but when I awakened, I felt more tired than ever. Ever notice that when you sleep more than normal, you actually wake up more tired than usual? Weird phenomena there. Anyway... I came down stairs, put on some coffee and I came into the office and noticed that I had a couple of missed phone calls and an unusually high number of messages left for me on Facebook. Turns out that while I slept, one of my members was taken to the ER and admitted to the hospital, and another man, the father of a one of my daughter's friends had died in the middle of the night, and still another person was going through a bit of a crisis and needed someone to talk with and pray. I realize there was nothing that I really could have done and I needed the sleep; still it still bothers me greatly that I was not available when I was needed.

All this got my mind to rolling, and I thought back to the blog entry I wrote last week about being asleep in the night. The more I thought about it, I was reminded of a verse that Paul wrote in Romans 13:11, "And that, knowing the time, tat now it is high time to awake out of the sleep: for now is our salvation nearer than  when we believed."  It's as if Paul was looking forward in time and writing the the church today.  If you know anything about your Bible and end time prophecy, you will easily notice that things are rapidly unfolding before our eyes that tells us, time is growing short before the Lord's return.  But do we? Do we see it? If we do, why are we not acting on this knowledge? I believe it is because we have been lulled to sleep, and in our comfortable slumber, we are not fully aware of what is happening around us. Just as when I awakened this morning, I found that there were people in need, and in my sleep, I missed it; the church is asleep in the light and we are missing opportunity after opportunity to exercise our faith in showing Christ to a dieing world. As Paul said, "It is high time to awake of of sleep!"


Let me ask you a question: "Do you realize what time it is?"
It is harvest time! Yet while it is time to be bringing in the harvest, many are asleep.
Sleeping during the harvest hours is a characteristic of the slothful servant. Solomon said, "He that gathers crops in summer is a wise son,  but he who sleeps in harvest is a son that causes shame."  Which are you? Are you bringing in the harvest? If not... well, read it. You bring shame to the Father!  Here we are in a season where the fields are white  and ready for for the laborers to bring in the harvest... but where are the laborers? The are snoring on, enjoying their rest. "Church," to them is all about, make me feel good, give me a word, tickle me some more...  and they fail to realize that if we are not bringing in the harvest, we are bringing shame to the Father.  When Jesus talked about the laborers being few, he was not implying that the Christians were few... only that the workers are few! That, my friends is the church today. The Christians are asleep in their comfort zone and not willing to arise and get out into the fields and do the work of the harvester. Bringing in the harvest is hard work! Ask yourself, "am I working? Am I actively bringing in the harvest? If the answer to that question is "no" and it is harvest time, then you MUST concede that you are the "son who causes shame."  

What can you do about that? Well, you can either get mad about it and roll over in search of more sleep... or you can look at your spiritual watch and tell yourself, "It is high time to awaken" and get to work!