Sleepwalking

I don't know why it took so long but hospitals and doctors finally discovered that the reason so many old people, bones easily broken by falls, become permanently disabled or die because they sleepwalk... get out of bed during the night and fall because of their lack of alertness.

My grandmother, one of twelve children, one sister never married. As was the case during my childhood, families took care of one another. Her father, my great grandfather had left her property but she lived a month of each year with a brother or sister. At my grandparent’s beautiful home on Main Street, Kenly, NC, she got out of bed during the night, left her room, long white night gown, scared people on the street. The police brought her back to the house, everyone very much embarrassed.

The world has become a bunch of sleepwalkers, politically and spiritually. I am so tired of churches who do not recognize their adversary. Neutral you cannot be, there is no middle ground. God or the devil is in control of your life. Most pew-warmers are just sleepwalking through their spiritual experience, have no idea about their true adversary. (Ephesians 6) Too long, just anyone signing a card and becoming a church member... knowing nothing of their commitment. The genius of Catholicism, RCA, introducing those, “supposedly” believers in Christ and His church, to the doctrines of the church. Many denominations have catechism classes for young people so that they have a fundamental knowledge of Christianity-their denomination, not just sleepwalking through their spiritual experience, down the middle of the road, holding on to the church with one hand, the world with the other. Too long, “supposed” pastors of the Gospel, not recognizing the real condition of the congregation. The great preacher Dr. R.G. Lee, pastor of Bellvue Baptist, Memphis, TN, preaching to a congregation of 3000 every Sunday, averaging baptizing 20 each Sunday night for nearly 50 years. Before he died, said, “I would like to think that 10% of my congregation would meet me in heaven.” Too long, the church has refused to trust in the Power of God. No better example than the perils of the apostle Paul, shipwrecked, prisons, beatings, some trying to kill him, the men holding the ropes of the basket by which he escaped, names we will never know but because of their belief in the Power of God, will share with Paul the rewards of his, the world's greatest ministry, the fact that two-thirds of the new testament attributed to this remarkable, God-chosen Saint. Think of the cities of the world, cathedrals, churches, named for this one man who knew the Power of God. We should be ashamed to even equate ourselves with such people. One preacher, me sitting with him in his unkempt rubble of a house, talked with me about his mansion in heaven, on a street of gold. The 21^st century Christian, lazy-spoiled-thinking himself a victim of the world, should be satisfied if only to get a “peep” into the arena of glory. Too long, we have not known that anytime you work for God, the world will be against you. We want the best of Christianity entangled with what the world has to offer.

Carl Sagan, in his TV production Cosmos, unabashed atheist said, “This is all there is to it, there is nothing else.” He has been dead for some years, found quickly how wrong he was.

Too long, Christ has depended on cowards to carry His cross. There is nothing more sure-certain-historical than God's Word, the certainty of Jesus Christ, the majesty of Creation, word, father, son. “I have glorified thee on the earth: I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do. And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was.” (John 17:4,5)

Many of us have stood on the Acropolis in Athens, Greece, Mars Hill, where the apostle Paul, as in many other places, declared the Power of God and His son, Jesus Christ. (Acts 17:23) The oldest biblical manuscripts in the world are exacting in their “oneness”. The monk Tischendorf, St. Catherine's monastery, Sinai, found nuns burning valuable parchments to stay warm. He rescued this bible, the codex Sinaticus and the other two oldest, the codex Alexandrinus, codex Vaticanus, all support one another. Secular historians such as Herodotus support the early church. I have here in my house a history of Herodotus. There is nothing in this life more certain than the Holy Word of God. Faith is fact, not fiction. Faith is action, based on belief, sustained by confidence. In the church house, as well as the state house, faithers-believers have allowed circumstances to control our faith. Faith should control our circumstances. We need worship, not actions, prayer, not performance. When you have buildings, programs, even preaching, you have what they can do. But, when you have prayer, you have what God can do. And, when you listen to today's newscast you realize WE ALL need what God can do.

When you reach my age, especially the way the world has changed in my lifetime, how rapidly the world is crumbling, by your very fingernails, your cling to all that is left... your faith. Only when you have seen how rapidly a fire spreads in a house, cancer spreads through a body, do you realize and cling to that which is certain. It is not sleepwalking or even walking by faith, not sight. (2 Corinthians 5:7)... a very special verse to a blind man. Sure, certain, unchanging, “Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, [and] to keep himself unspotted from the world.” (James 1:27)