“That, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep: for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed.”
Romans 13:11
There are those, again, who fall into a kind of somnambulistic state (sleepwalking). They are doing a good deal for their Lord and Master, but they are asleep. If judged by their outward actions, we should think they were wide awake and they do what they do very well. But have you ever seen a person who has a habit of walking in his sleep? It is a strange sight! Persons have been known to walk along giddy heights safely enough when they have been fast asleep where they would not have thought of venturing if they had been wide awake! And we have known, sometimes, professors going on very safely, carefully, exactly in positions where others have fallen—and we have admired their prudence and discretion and attributed it to the Grace of God—whereas in part it has been attributable to the fact that they were spiritually asleep all the time! It is very possible to walk long and far and yet remain asleep! It is very possible to appear very devout when, indeed, you are very sleepy! It is very possible to sing hymns when you are not awake to the sense! Yes, and it is very probable that you will betray your absence of mind by sitting down at the last verse, although there is going to be a chorus afterwards. You know it is coming, but your part of the worship is performed so mechanically that you dropped down in your pews as a mere matter of habit—and then were all in a flurry to be up again! I have detected many of you doing it. I have felt convinced that you were virtually asleep at the time—not really drinking in the spirit of the hymn, or else it would not have happened. It is very easy to hear sermons and to be asleep all the while—at least with one ear open and one eye—but the major part of the faculties of the soul still steeped in slumber. And you can keep on teaching in the Sunday school, pay your religious contributions punctually, maintain the habit of family prayer and even your private devotions may not be wholly neglected, and yet you may be walking in your sleep! All these duties may be done with a sort of sleep-walking life and action and not at all with the life of a thoroughly wakeful man. Oh, I would like to hear a man speak about Heaven who was altogether awake to it! I would like to hear a man preach about Hell who was awakened to the true pitch! It would make your very hair stand on end as you should hear how he told of the terrors of the wrath to come! It would make every drop of blood dance in your veins to hear a man speak of Christ who is all on fire with Divine love and all awake with Divine delight in Him! But that slumber is apt to come over the most lively minister. Who will not confess it? Oh, if you have ever read a chapter of the Bible when your soul has been all awake, how the promises have glowed and burned! How bright have they been like “the terrible crystal.” But too often we have nodded over the Bible; nodded over the promises; nodded over the precepts till there seemed neither life nor power in them. The life was there, but we were asleep! Well, dear Friends, I must add and then I shall have said enough about sleep, that a very large number of us are half asleep. Whether there is one man alive that is spiritually awake all over, I do not know. Such a man as Rutherford, who loved his Lord so that he scarcely ever thought of anything but Jesus—that was a man all awake! Such a man as Mr. Whitefield—preaching his very heart out morning, noon and night with a seraphic eloquence—that was a man wide awake! There have been many such; I trust there is a remnant of such now. But the most of us are painfully conscious that we are waking and need greatly to be more awake still. O God, make us feel the solemn weight of those eternal things in which we believe! You have saved us—make us awake to feel from what You have saved us and by Whom You have saved us! Awaken us to realize to what you have saved us and what the privileges are which belong to us now that we are saved! Oh, when I think how trivial are the things of time and how all-important are the unseen realities of eternity, I cannot but again conclude that most of us are nothing more than about half awake as to the things of God! And if it is so, it is high time that we awake out of sleep!
C.H. Spurgeon-"Wake Up Wake Up"
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