It is possible to be physically awake and yet spiritually asleep. Spiritual slumber is to the soul what paraesthesia is to a limb. Paraesthesia is that experience of, say, your foot going to sleep. It occurs due to sustained pressure compressing the nerves in your foot. As a result, you lose feeling and functionality. When we adopt “the pattern of this world”, as Paul puts it in 12:2, we effectively compress our spiritual sensibilities into a kind of dead state as in paraesthesia. In 13:13 Paul lists various behaviours that further cause this: “carousing and drunkenness…sexual immorality and debauchery, dissension and jealousy.” Adopting these patterns causes us to become spiritual sleepwalkers. We might function well physically and intellectually, but spiritually we lose our awareness of ultimate reality. We live in a dream, a kind of fantasy realm created by our desires. What we need when this occurs is something to wake us up. We need someone from the real world to shake us awake. Fortunately, God does that regularly. It might be a sermon that awakens your soul, it might be a near death experience, it might be a tragedy, or it might be a moment in prayer and Bible reading. God regularly stands in our path as we sleepwalk through life and he lets us bump into him. This has happened regularly to me and I hope it is happening to you too. I thank God that he awakens me regularly. May he continue to do whatever it takes to shake us awake!
Reflect on your life priorities.
Read Romans 13:8-14
