WAKE UP!

I don't know anyone that derives any enjoyment from hearing those two words.  

Whether it's your spouse at  midnight or your dad while your alarm is still ringing. WAKE UP! Quite simply is meant to shock us from unconsciousness to consciousness.

Jesus (as the owner/operator of His church) gives this very "WAKE UP" call to His followers in Sardis. Revelation 3:1-6

The church had been given a reputation for being "alive", while at the same time in the sight of it's owner just the opposite was true. This means that for the church, there are always no less than two perspectives to consider and weigh out.  The perspective of the world, and the perspective of God.  The only one that matters, is God's.

So far as what is meant by being asleep but really not sleeping, and being dead but not really being dead, we must press more firmly into the language used in the Bible.  See Romans 13:8-14 or Ephesians 2

Often times what God wants you and I to understand, is that our lives are meant to be lived a certain way, in concert with design and purpose, this is alive or awake in God’s sight.  When we choose to live any other way, God sees us asleep or dead to that way of life.  The primary way to determine what you are alive to or dead to, is by looking closely at what you live for and treasure, what it seems you cannot live without.  

I have found Paul Tripp's work on "A Quest For More" to be really helpful in understanding the kinds of things God wants us to be alive to and awake for.  Check out his video...

https://paultripp.sitewrench.com/a-quest-for-more

Tripp establishes an understanding that there are two ways of living, living for something we call more, or living for something less.  The reality is that at our center, we know at the end of the day, we were made for something more.  There is an unsettling ache within us, some deny it, but all of us have known it.  Ultimately and according to the Bible, the more we were made for is God.  Specifically to know and walk with Him.  The less are the created things of the world, cars, jobs, money, other people, politics, sex, etc..  One awful reality we face is that most of us have been tricked into thinking we are going to be satisfied with less when in reality only more will due.  This must be what Jesus’s desire for us when He cried out to His Church, "I made you for more, you are living for and treasuring what is less, WAKE UP."  "Stop looking to what is less and asking it to do what only I can do, satisfy your soul's existence".  

His bride, the church is passionately pursuing all that is less, the culture is blessing them for it, inwardly they are dying to God and life He desired for them.  These are heart issues and God has been calling His people out of a life of less to a life of more for thousands of years.  This is God beckoning His people in Isaiah 55

“Is anyone thirsty?
    Come and drink—
    even if you have no money!
Come, take your choice of wine or milk—
    it’s all free!
 Why spend your money on food that does not give you strength?
    Why pay for food that does you no good?
Listen to me, and you will eat what is good.
    You will enjoy the finest food.

 “Come to me with your ears wide open.
    Listen, and you will find life.
I will make an everlasting covenant with you.
    I will give you all the unfailing love I promised to David.

My hope and prayer is that everyone of us will not only wake up, to a life of more, a life lived for God, but we will rise up!  It is one thing to be awakened to these truths; it is another thing to walk on the high road of living our lives according to them. 

A very important and interesting fact is that the word used for wake up and the word used for being raised up from the dead have the same root, egeiro. (http://classic.net.bible.org/strong.php?id=1453)

The implication is that Jesus is inviting us, everyday, to be raised up with Him!  To have our minds set on Him and the life of more, but also to keep in step with Him.  His call to wake up is a call to rise up, and He has both the authority and power to do both!  What is already alive cannot be raised, a death must occur before a resurrection can take place.  You cannot experience being raised up with Christ unless you first accept that you must die.

Carry your cross daily, ie, die to what is less, in order that you may truly live, live for more.

See  Luke 9:23-27.

I see wake up and rise up as two sides of the same coin, in God’s sight they necessarily go together.

So this morning, I call on Jesus, that by His power and authority I die to all of what is less, and rise, leaving that tomb of an empty life in order to live for Him, the more I was made for.

Let’s journey together!

Bryan D