"Awake, O sleeper, rise up from the dead, and Christ will
give you light." Ephesians 5:14One wake up call can never be forgotten. As a child I had a habit of sleeping in late on the holidays. I don’t know if I was being summoned to get up repeatedly but if I was it hadn’t worked so my brother got his trumpet and blew a blast of racket into my ear. That worked!
When I was 13 years old I got a big wake up call alerting me
to the truth that I had a rebellious nature and it was taking me down a
dangerous path. I don’t know where I would be today if I had not had that wake
up call.
We get all kinds of wake up calls which get our attention
and jolt us into taking action. It might be about a relationship, our marriage,
our health, parenting, or financial in nature. I suppose every church has
experienced some kind of wake up call in its history which has brought needed
change or birthed a prayer meeting. Our nation received a jolting and shocking
wake up call on 9/11. Globally the world
has experienced wake up calls from the evil and destruction of terrorism.
I have experienced many wake up calls in ministry. One day I
was napping and the phone rang. What a shock to hear the voice of police telling
me to be careful of a certain young man. Thank God I got a wake up call to be
vigilant. Eventually he got arrested and was put in jail.
One reason I have to think long-term when engaging with
Muslims in this ministry is not so much because I encounter resistance to the
Truth but because many are sleeping under a blanket of deception. They often
keep sleeping under this blanket until they get a wake up call. Today there are Muslims who are coming out of
the spiritual fog of deception and waking up. I want to be ready to help them
when the wake up call comes. I met Layla about 23 years ago. It always seemed
futile trying to share the Good News of Jesus Christ with her. She couldn’t
hear what I said at all. But recently I visited her and in her own words she
said, “I’m waking up.” She likened the
past years to being in a stupor of sorts. She was waking up to a life of abuse
but that was also waking her up to spiritual truth. Another lady, Sima, had
drifted in and out of my life for numerous years. Suddenly one day she woke up
after watching beheadings on YouTube and wanted to know if they were from
God. Naheed told me how she had
experienced powerful clear dreams about Jesus Christ over the span of two
decades. But after each dream she would forget them and “turn over to continue
sleeping spiritually speaking” until she got a serious wake up call when she
came face to face with death. Wake up calls are God’s mercy alarm clocks whether in my ministry or personal life, the Church at large, or in the world. One day the final Trumpet will sound!
Dear heavenly Father, please wake up my friend who is under
a blanket of deception. In Jesus’ name, Amen. 
