Community, we want to talk about the danger zone.
When there is danger, it is not the best time to sleep. To sleep then could mean disaster. It could mean your life. Spiritually, it could mean losing everything that you have or it could open the door for our adversary Satan to do some extreme damage and destroy our testimony.
Now we all know that sleeping is good and healthy. Most of my life I’ve been told that at least eight hours is the number that we need to give the body its proper rest. Sleep is essential to the body and when we don’t get enough of it, it can affect the body in a negative way; we feel refreshed when we have had a good night sleep; and even a nap in between can make a difference in how we feel.
The human body was made for sleep, that’s the way God made us, and the good thing about sleep is you can do it anytime — even though nighttime is the proper time to sleep for an extended period of time. Whenever you feel froggish, you can hop into the bed and go to sleep; when we have a cold or flu and we go to the doctor, one of the main things they tell us is to get plenty of rest, and sleep is one means to do so.
Now understand today that when you are asleep, you are unaware of what’s going on around you. That’s why we pray at night before we go to bed, to ask God to keep us during the morning hours, because we are vulnerable being in a comatose state. Dangers, thieves, and other elements of the night threaten our wellbeing and we need God to surround us with his angels to keep us.
My community family, when we receive a warning that a storm, tornado, hurricane is on the way, we do not go to bed and go to sleep. In fact, that is the worse time to go to sleep! With danger all around we need to be vigilant, watchful, alert and engaged; we need to be on our game, focused, so we can act if we need to. To sleep then is like playing Russian roulette; nobody sleeps in a dangerous time!
We watch and we pray, and all of us who are going through this storm together, we don’t argue, fuss and fight. We join our forces together and we do what we need to do to make it together. But one thing we do not do, is go to sleep! Who can sleep? Only Jesus could do that; and he could sleep in a storm because he was the storm calmer! He who can control the storm can also sleep in it (Mark 4:35-39)!
I’m not saying that when there is a storm in our personal lives that we should not go to sleep; that’s not what I’m saying, because we have the storm calmer inside of us and ministering spirits around us, we should pray, go to bed and sleep all night long. The psalmist says in Psalm 3:5, “I laid me down and slept; I awaked; for the Lord sustained me.”
But spiritually speaking, we are living in the worst time in human history; we are living in the very last days; our adversary Satan is waging an all-out war; he and his demonic forces are on assignment to kill, steal and destroy, literally (John 10:10); he’s on assignment to kill the morale of the country and Christian believers; to destroy our society, tear down our democracy and bring about complete chaos; to discourage the believer and drive them into a state of depression; he wants to damn every soul to hell; he wants to destroy marriages, communities, homes and churches; and those whom he can’t kill he wants them to kill themselves; suicide is on the rise; we are witnessing things we have never seen in our lifetime.
The virus has completely changed our way of life; disrupted our normal way of living; crime is at an all-time high; fear is gripping people’s hearts; anxiety is contributing to the early death of people through heart attacks, cancer, stroke and other diseases.
My friends, we are living in a dangerous time, and God’s people don’t need to be asleep. In Ezekiel chapter 3 verse 16, the word of the Lord came to Ezekiel saying, “Son of man, I have made you a watchman unto the house of Israel: therefore hear the word at your mouth, and give them warning from me.”
Today, I am the watchmen, and I have a warning from the Lord.: “we are sleeping in a dangerous time!” Sleep with our eyes wide open — but that’s not good, because when the church is asleep, when spiritual leaders who are supposed to be watching are asleep, the world is in trouble. The Apostle Paul said, “knowing what time it is, it is high time to wake up” … he says, “the night is far spent, the day of our redemption is at hand: let us cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armor of light (Rom. 13:11-13).”
Paul is saying wake up! Open your eyes! Then clean up! And then grow up! It’s time to tell somebody about our savior.
Community, let’s pray and seek God’s face; let’s don’t “sleep in this dangerous time.”
The Rev. George Ellis is the pastor at Union Grove Missionary Baptist Church.