Lethargic

Revelation 3:17 ESV

For you say, I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing not realizing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked.

As the alarm goes off and I once again struggle to get out of bed the words of the proverb echo in my head, “as the door turns on its hinges, so does the sluggard on his bed.” (Prov. 26:14) Yet, this cry of scripture only convicts me as I turn the alarm off and roll back over, eventually the echo of scripture in my heart pushes the covers back. It is a sluggish beginning, and a poor start, but how we finish is the measure not how we begin. The story of a young man at Charles Spurgeon’s school preaching comes to mind. He was young and brash ready to show what he had learned. He bounded up the steps to the pulpit with his notes. He began to show what he had learned and then it happened he looked around and the enmity of it hit him, in the moment he knocked his notes on the ground, getting down to pickup his message got back up with a message mangled together. Realizing it he eventually ended disheartened, his last word coming out more a sheepish plea than anything else. Spurgeon then commented to the young man, “if you had gone up like you came down, you could have come down like you went up.”

As political cycle turns and another turn of the page of history comes to an end. Time marches on and more battles await. The constant beat of drums goes through our hearts and heads. When will the battle be over? When will peace and prosperity reign? These are not new questions, watching as the churches of John’s Revelation are put to it from every side, with Christ promising the spoils of war to those who “endure to the end”, “the one who conquers”, and those who are “faithful unto death”. (Rev. 2 & 3) Such battles do not end until we are called home or Christ brings home to us. Yet, how does that help me to jump out of bed to start the day with joy knowing that this is the day the Lord has made and not a simply another call to the grind of Life and War for the kingdom?

As I sit down to read the scripture next to a child that has finally settled down to sleep from a night of crying God enters in and warns in his letter to the Church in Laodicea. He highlights their lukewarm works as a sign of their lukewarm hearts. They are neither cold or hot, having no passion for the battle, as if they are a child asking what is “good enough”. What is the minimum I must do to make sure I am good, and not going to hell? The church is so lost it doesn’t even know that the Savior is on the outside knocking to get in! What was the cure for the lethargy of these believers, what was the prescription for the lukewarm?

Recognize your state, do night lie to yourself, you are not okay, come to God for clothing, salve, and discipline! The Cry of Christ for his church come to me and “be zealous and repent”.  Just as Christ was zealous for the house of God, so we are to be zealous for the temple of God. Yet, his house is now with men, where is our zeal to see the house built up and “shinning like an army with banners”! The command for his church has not changed, we are to be zealous and repentant. We come begging God to change our hearts and then stand knowing that this was in his will and nothing we ask in his will, will be denied! We are commanded to conquer the lethargy in our souls, to be fervent in well doing, to be zealous to repent. Turn from our wicked way and let the fire of God burn hot that we, like the Samson’s foxes, would spread the blaze and none could put it out. Will you be zealous for his name or will you “turn on your bed” and wait for another day? Rise and run the race God has given you to run.  Conquer and endure tell the end that you might sit with him on his throne! (Revelation 3:21)

CRUCE, DUM SPIRO, FIDO