How many people fell asleep in the Church service yesterday?!
How many Churches were asleep before the service started?
Are we asleep? Are we irrelevant? Are we not connected to what are the important issues? I was talking with a Pastor who had recently commenced at his church and the challenge of the mission he faces. He told me the problem was that the neighbourhood didn’t even know the Church was there. It had fallen asleep. He was trying to waken it up.
“To the angelof the church in Sardis write: These are the words of him who holds the seven spiritsof God and the seven stars. I know your deeds; you have a reputation of being alive, but you are dead. Wake up! Strengthen what remains and is about to die, for I have found your deeds unfinished in the sight of my God.” (Revelation 3:1-2)
AW Tozer wrote that if the Holy Spirit were completely withdrawn from the Church, “95 percent of what we do would go on and no one would know the difference”.
Sigmund Freud said that we do things asleep we would not do if awake!
It can be disappointing being part of a group who are snoring.
Three times Jesus finds his closest 3 disciples sleeping whilst he is going through his trials. Though there was little chastising by him we can sense the disappointment.
Surviving your Gethsemane will mean that you need to keep on praying despite even the closest disappointing you. The key is ‘the spirit is willing but the body is weak.’
The prayer during disappointment is the prayer that brings the eternal part of you, the God-focused, Christ-centred, Spirit-dwelt part of you to the surface and to make this the loudest voice, the clearest vision and the most powerful thought over what your body is experiencing.
We need to wake-up. The problem could be that we have evidence that we are awake and people may think we are alive and active and thriving but it is what Jesus sees that counts.
Missions Paul 