How Are We Doing? Part 7

How Are We Doing? Part 7
Monday, January 13, 2025 by Dr. James W. Walraven

Categories: Contemporary issues / Encouraging words / Scripture discussion / Spiritual deception / The church / Thought for Today / Truth telling

As Christians, are we awake or asleep? Do we hold to the unchanging truth of Scripture, God’s revealed Word, or have we bought into the lies of the “woke” culture?

God gives us multiple warnings about waking up to biblical spiritual reality.

Deuteronomy 4:23 (NAU): “So watch yourselves, that you do not forget the covenant of the LORD your God which He made with you, and make for yourselves a graven image in the form of anything against which the LORD your God has commanded you.”

First, we are to watch ourselves, so that we don’t fall asleep, so that we don’t get taken in by what the secular culture espouses. As we saw with Samson in a previous post, he didn’t watch himself, and he let himself get taken in by the culture—seen in Delilah—to his own destruction.

Similarly, Proverbs 16:17 (NAU): “The highway of the upright is to depart from evil; He who watches his way preserves his life.”

Luke 21:34–36 (NAU): “Be on guard, so that your hearts will not be weighted down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of life, and that day will not come on you suddenly like a trap; for it will come upon all those who dwell on the face of all the earth. But keep on the alert at all times, praying that you may have strength to escape all these things that are about to take place, and to stand before the Son of Man.”

Are we alert, on guard, or are we weighed down, distracted, lulled to sleep?

1 Corinthians 15:13 (NAU): “Be on the alert, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong.”

Are we standing firm, or are we being swept along with the tide? Our culture is against strength, especially masculine firm and unmoving strength. They’d much rather we give in and “go with the flow” as it were. Rather, we need to stand against that flow, remaining faithful to Scripture.

On another level:

1 Peter 5:8 (NAU): “Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.”

One thinks of all the crazy talk of some women preferring to meet a bear alone in the woods rather than a man. Contrary to that, consider the reality. Is it a good idea to go hiking, say the Alaska wilderness, and not be attentive, but instead to be drowsy, or half asleep, to be unaware of one’s surroundings? Not hardly. Jesus also remarked that if the owner of the house knew when the thief was coming, he wouldn’t have allowed his house to be broken into. The point is, we need to stay alaert.

1 Thessalonians 5:5–8 (NAU): “For you are all sons of light and sons of day. We are not of night nor of darkness; so then let us not sleep as others do, but let us be alert and sober. For those who sleep do their sleeping at night, and those who get drunk get drunk at night. But since we are of the day, let us be sober, having put on the breastplate of faith and love, and as a helmet, the hope of salvation.”

We aren’t to be asleep as the world is asleep. We shouldn’t be surprised that the world takes the direct opposite of what God says to be their “truth”. What they call being awake, God calls being asleep.

Instead, we are to be sober, putting on faith, love, and the hope of salvation. As we saw earlier, we aren’t to call conspiracy what the world calls conspiracy. We aren’t to follow the beliefs and dictates of the world. We are to faithfully and steadfastly follow after Christ. We are to remain biblically awake.