Sedated

In mid-December 1986, I had an emergency surgery that lasted seven hours. I remember trying to wake up in the recovery room. There were moments when I was aware of the bright lights in the room. I had limited awareness that there were people there. I remember someone calling my name. I was fighting to try to wake up. I remember a brief conversation with a nurse, a ride down the hall to my room, and a very uncomfortable transition from the gurney to the bed. The next thing I could recall was morning the following day. I had been sedated.

Medical sedation is a good thing. We have no recollection of the pain from the surgeon’s knife, or the discomfort of our bodies being strapped down and re-positioned to make the procedure possible.

There is another type of sedation that is not so good. A few years back I was involved in a session for testing the spirits that eventually led to the need for deliverance. During that session, we took a break to debrief what had happened to that point. As we talked, we recognized that we were all fighting sleep. Not the natural sleep from being up late at night. We were engaged in a spiritual conflict. The tactic of the adversary was to make us all feel sleepy, and therefore less able to concentrate and process the events of the evening. We were being sedated.

I have seen the adversary use this tactic in counseling sessions, in Bible studies, prayer meetings and in other contexts were God is at work. As I processed all of this, I had to ask the question, “Is this one of his common tactics?” It appears to me that in many instances the Church seems to be sedated. There has been a decline over the years marked by diminished ministry capacity, fewer people in attendance, and insufficient funds to even maintain the ministry. Yet, few people seem to be troubled by the trend. What should be a cause for alarm barely draws anyone’s attention.

In other situations, no one has come to faith in three or four years; there have been no baptisms in five years; yet, no one is alarmed. It doesn’t cause anyone to cry out to God about this troubling predicament. People are more likely to become exercised over a personal preference than that the Church is failing in its primary mission.

Is it possible, because this doesn’t seem to be overt opposition, we have failed to recognize the adversary’s scheme against us? Is it possible that we have been sedated just enough so that we aren’t aware of what is happening around us? Is it possible that the conditions that should cause elders to move into crisis mode and prayer meetings to be characterized by people crying out to God; have been met with spiritual apathy and glazed spiritual eyes?

Brothers and sisters, these kinds of situations ought to raise our level of urgency. People in our communities are PERISHING WITHOUT CHRIST. It is time to wake up. It is time to recognize the urgent hour. It is time to lay aside preferences and focus our energy on the mission Christ has left to the Church.

“So then, let us not be like others, who are asleep, but let us be awake and sober.” I Thess. 5:6 NIV