If church would be as careful not to offend God as not to offend attendees, there would be massive spiritual awakening. When church sends people home after a sermon without facilitating heart-to-heart connection and sharing among them, it encourages them to be Lone Ranger Christians. Unless you let Jesus capture your consciousness you’ll drift into distraction.

Here’s the deal:
Too many Christians
Are asleep
To the thrill
Of Jesus
Being real!

Be Spirit-led
Not a spiritual
Sleepy head
Wanting to be
Spoon fed
By a preacher.

To see love for Jesus
As merely sacramental
Makes it incidental,
Tied to holy places
Where we go to touch
Religious bases.
Sunday ceremony
Too often replaces
Passionate discipleship
In daily life.

We too often
Get caught up
In the pageantry
And religious gadgetry
Of formalized Christianity
And miss the reality
Of His daily presence.

Christians are called to walk in the Spirit, not to walk in our sleep. Those who settle in and comfortably set their life on mindless cruise control lose their passion for Jesus and snooze away. Hearing a weekly talk about alarm clocks won’t wake you up. You have to actually hear and respond to the alarm itself! The Holy Spirit and the Bible are God’s alarm clock.

When you get a wake-up call from God it’s best if you don’t get irritated and hit the snooze button. God doesn’t give wake-up calls so that you can deal with them and quickly move back into your comfort zone, but so that you can seriously reorient your life to His will. Wake up to consciousness of your conscience and to continual awareness of God’s presence.

Too often church is like the lullaby of a white noise machine making soft soothing sounds that facilitate sleep. When church shifted from Spirit-led doing to passive sermon-hearing it settled in for a looooooooong winter’s night. It’s wakeup time! Perhaps preaching needs to be an attention-grabbing, alarm-sounding wake-up call instead of a nice religious lullaby.

After decades of church attendance and careful observation, I’ve come to the conclusion that sermons are much more sleep inducing than disciple producing. Be a Spirit-led Christian not a snooze-controlled one. Wakeup to the reality of Jesus! Daily experience the thrill of His presence!

Lord, help me be
Spiritually awake,
Surrendered to Jesus
And not be a religious fake.

Have you taken
The time to awaken
Your heart to Jesus?
Have you shaken
Off spiritual slumber?

An effective wake-up call must be rousing and uncomfortable. Until we’re willing to disturb the comfortable, dry bones will sleep.

Jesus-encounter-meetings where Christ-followers gather to interact with and obey Jesus are indescribably amazing! Try one!