Awake

When I was 20 I had an experience that at the very core of my being irrevocably changed my life.

My mentor was slowly coaxing me through my first major depression. It was one based a serious identity crisis. I am grateful for his input at that critical time in my life. I didn’t know what to do and how to handle it. In the midst of it I just let myself go and forgot about basic things like hygiene and appearance. I was living on automatic, but his intervention was pivotal and a Godsend.

In the slow journey away, there was a word that etched itself on my mind.

Awake.

I was aware that there many who lived their lives as though they were sleep-walking. Never recognising the real world and their real identity that was so much better than the fantasy they walked in. A fantasy I walked in.

This was not just an individual thing, either. Gatherings of Jesus-followers had been lulled into a daze and a doze of a holy huddle keeping together to defend themselves from the bad world outside. To entertain themselves they’d bicker over irrelevant minutiae, meanwhile generations, cultures and people as a whole were passing by without a care from us.

This spiritually comatose condition had to stop.

The Spirit of God did not make us alive to put us to sleep. Indeed until we would succumb to the final sleep, we had to be alert and available to seize on every opportunity to glorify God through expressing His rule in and through us.

Seeing so many capable, gifted and suited people caught up in a snoring position was deeply upsetting.

It is at those times that I cry out to God and remember His kindness to me in rescuing me from sin. Particularly the sin of apathy, present in those who are asleep to God’s mission.

With that being said, it remains my heart’s desire to see people wake from their slumber, get going for Jesus and together see Him do incredible things for the glory of the Father.

For His Name’s Sake
Shalom
C. L. J. Dryden