Throughout his various Epistles, the Apostle Paul admonished us to stay awake – to “watch and be sober.”
People who are spiritually asleep generally have certain features about them. Some of them are as follows:
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secure, careless, and unconcerned about their souls
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negligent of their duties like prayer, Bible Study, fellowship with other believers, and witnessing regardless of their spiritual enemies or the warfare in which they are engaged
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given to a carnal security and sinful indulgences
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stupefied and blinded by besetting sins
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living as though there is no tomorrow or an eternity awaiting them when they leave this world
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willingly ignorant of God’s Word and His
Will for their lives -
unteachable and avoid any serious means of instruction
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generally intemperate and excessive
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corrupt in their morals
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insensible to spiritual things
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lukewarm in their love for the Lord and His kingdom work
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given over to the lusts of their own flesh such as “chambering,” “strife and envying,” “surfeiting”
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unresolved in their convictions and unstable and unsteady in their purposes
- constantly in a warfare in their souls as to whom they should serve – God or the world, their own Selves, and Sin.
- They have a divided heart between God and this world
- fear God – yet have hearts that are filled with the idols of this world
- Like Ephraim, they have mixed with the people of this world, learned their works, lost their spiritual identity by becoming conformed to this world and its ways, and adhered to the counsel of the ungodly rather than the Word of God
- have “itching ears” which are constantly looking for teaching and preaching that will gratify the lusts of their own flesh and satiate their endless curiosity or desire for variety
- avoid any kind of teaching or preaching that calls for holiness of living or the crucifixion of their flesh
- have turned
away their ears from the plain and solid Truth.
Apostle Paul loudly and clearly sounds the alarm to the Body of Christ today.
“Therefore let us not sleep, as do others; but let us watch and be sober. For they that sleep sleep in the night; and they that be drunken are drunken in the night,” (1 Thess. 5:6-7).
“And that, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep: for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed,” (Rom. 13:11).
“Wherefore He saith, Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead . . .
” (Eph. 5:14).
“And that, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep: for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed,”
(Rom. 13:11).