PASTOR’S CORNER: Wake up church!

This week we celebrated homecoming and revival — A time for refreshing, renewing, restoration, confession, repentance, rededication and being spirit-filled for revival is for Christians.

We may enter the homecoming and revival beat down, estranged from God, but we leave on the other end rejuvenated. That’s the way it is supposed to be. It is indeed a wakeup call, a calling out of a slumber or dozing to an awakening to spiritual life for Christians because anytime you are dozing you are in the danger zone. The enemy of our souls always looks for the area of our lives unguarded and an individual that is sleep is unaware of what’s going on. They don’t see the enemy coming.

Secret service men whose job it is to protect the president of our United States cannot afford to sleep on their jobs. They cannot afford to let their guard down for a second They must constantly be on alert, and vigilant at all times. The assassination of President John F. Kennedy and the recent assassination attempt of former President Donald J. Trump are perfect examples of what can happen when the ball is dropped.

Many people, some Christians, have been caught off guard in sleep and the enemy ruined them and brought them down. All of us are aware of the fact that when we are physically asleep we are not aware of what’s going on around us. In fact, we are in the very image of death. Anything could happen to us at such a time. That’s why we ought to thank God each day that we wake up.

Now there are times when we don’t need to be asleep at all; times when we need to always keep our eyes open, alert, and watching. Spiritually, it could cost us eternal dividends if we are not on our game. The enemy of our souls is walking around 24/7 trying to find a way to trip us up, to pull us away from God (1 Peter 5:8). He knows our weaknesses, our vulnerabilities and those things that appeal to our flesh. He doesn’t always come the way we think. He could be in our camp and we don’t even know it. His primary mission is to lure us away from God and get us caught up in influences that can cause us to grow weak in our fellowship with God.

Community, hear me this morning when I say the world, this world and its systems have a strong pull to it. It appeals to the lust of our flesh. The lust of our eyes and that pride of life that is within all of us can lure us into a slumber and we don’t even know it (1 John 2:16). It’s happening today. Some Christians are sleepwalking with their eyes wide open.

It’s painful. It’s hurtful to see the church sleep, distracted and have lost their focus, and walk away from their first love. The church is the light of the world (Mattew 5:14). The church is different from the world. We see things differently; our motives are different. We see things through spiritual eyes and we have the love of Christ in us. We are called out of darkness into Christ’s marvelous light. We are to light and show the world the way and not the other way around and our number one calling is to win lost souls to Christ!

If we do not have an evangelistic outreach ministry within the church, then we have lost our focus and every Christian has an obligation to win lost souls for Christ! But that can’t happen if the church is distracted, loses its focus and is asleep. The church is sleeping when the pulpit has become a platform for politics and not the preaching of the gospel! It is asleep when it takes on the world’s personality and mannerisms when it comes to politics; when just because we may disagree on policy or candidates we stop speaking to one another and resort to name calling, arguing, fussing, cursing, slandering and hating somebody on the basis of politics. They are getting on social media and saying all kinds of crazy things, using profanity over an election; and some Christians going right along with them but that’s not Christian.

Neither Jesus nor Paul publicly called out King Herod or Emperor Nero. Herod tried to kill baby Jesus at birth (Matthew 2:13)Emperor Nero did have Paul’s head cut off, but neither Jesus nor Paul let the behavior of rulers deter them from their mission or cause them to act out of character, and we shouldn’t either! That’s why we need revival to wake up the church! As Christians we ought to be able to have dialogue. We ought to be able to agree to disagree without being disagreeable! We have a right to our opinion and to let our voices be heard, but not act unchristian. Wake up church!

As preacher prophet hear me when I say the gloves are coming off. The mudslinging is ramping up on both sides, and the devil knows where to scratch us atta. Stay away from it. Don’t be pulled into that behavior. You will lose your joy and your Christian testimony. Do your research, know what the candidates’ policies are, then measure their policies by the standard of the word of God the Bible. If their policies don’t line up with scripture, then we can’t line up with them! Do that and then vote! Paul said, “Knowing the time…it is time to awake out of sleep (Romans 13:11).

It’s time to wake up.