Acts 20:9 “And a young man named Eu′tychus was sitting in the window. He sank into a deep sleep as Paul talked still longer, and being overcome by sleep, he fell down from the third story and was taken up dead.” Are we falling asleep in our relationship with the Lord? Today, I talk about how we can easily get distracted and grow tired on our faith journey. Let's take a moment and do an inventory. When was the last time we spent one-on-one time with the Lord, just me and Him? When was the last time I was in His scripture? When did I last ask the Lord what He thought I should do? When was the last time I sat in the classroom of silence, as Matthew Kelly calls it, and just listened to what the Lord wanted to say to me? This episode talks about how important it is not to fall asleep. What if we run out of time to wake up? We don't know when our time will come. Music:"Adding the Sun" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Am I Falling Asleep Too?
Acts 20:9 “And a young man named Eu′tychus was sitting in the window. He sank into a deep sleep as Paul talked still longer, and being overcome by sleep, he fell down from the third story and was taken up dead.”
I heard a sermon on the Elevation Podcast the other day. This sermon was called I Didn’t Know I Fell Asleep and was preached by a visiting pastor named Robert Madu. He is the pastor of a church in Texas, and he was outstanding. He read a short passage and got so much out of it. Let me read the whole passage so you have some context for the passage I selected above.
Acts 20:7-12 “On the first day of the week, when we were gathered together to break bread, Paul talked with them, intending to depart on the morrow; and he prolonged his speech until midnight. There were many lights in the upper chamber where we were gathered. And a young man named Eu′tychus was sitting in the window. He sank into a deep sleep as Paul talked still longer; and being overcome by sleep, he fell down from the third story and was taken up dead. But Paul went down and bent over him and, embracing him, said, “Do not be alarmed, for his life is in him.” And when Paul had gone up and had broken bread and eaten, he conversed with them a long while, until daybreak, and so departed. And they took the lad away alive and were not a little comforted.”
After hearing that story, I wonder if you have the same question. Why would he sit in an open window? If you have time, I highly recommend you go back and listen to the whole episode on the Elevation podcast. CLICK HERE for the episode. Pastor Madu made many good points; I couldn’t relay them all to you in the next 10 minutes.
I want to focus on the one that hit me the hardest. Pastor Madu said, “Maybe he didn’t know he was falling asleep.” As soon as he said that, I knew where he was going with this because it can be so easy for us to slowly fall asleep regarding our faith. We get busy and don’t realize it has been weeks since we have been to church. We plan to get up and devote the first 10 minutes to God each morning, and then we hit snooze a few times, and we don’t have time to spend with God now, or we will be late for work, school, or whatever we have planned for the day. We want to read the Bible and be in God’s word, yet all these other things keep coming up, and we don’t have the time.
It is so easy to fall asleep. I am not talking about literally falling asleep, although I am sure we have all done that, too. I am sure we have all fallen asleep or nodded off during mass, church service, or at least during our prayers. We are tired, and we are busy, and we do so much. We must be careful when it comes to becoming sleepy and falling asleep in our spiritual life.
Did you know that if you put a frog in boiling water, he will jump right out? He does not want to be boiled alive. He has self-preservation skills. However, if you put a frog in cold water and put that pan over a flame, and it slowly gets hotter and hotter, the frog will not jump out. It gets accustomed to the water and does not know it is in trouble until it is too late. The same can be true with us and our faith. We can grow tired on our spiritual journey, and yet it happens so slowly with one decision and then another and then another that we don’t know we are in trouble until it is too late.
Are we slowly boiling ourselves? Are we making bad decisions after bad decisions without even realizing it? Let’s take a moment to do an inventory. Have we fallen asleep in our faith life? When was the last time we spent one-on-one time with the Lord, just me and Him? When was the last time I was in His scripture, and I don’t mean mass on Sunday? Yes, mass is essential, yet that shouldn’t be your only encounter with God’s word each week. When did I last ask the Lord what He thought I should do? When was the last time I sat in the classroom of silence, as Matthew Kelly calls it, and just listened to what the Lord wanted to say to me?
All of these things are essential parts of our spiritual journey. All of these things help us grow closer to the Lord. Every time I look back at my prayer journal, I am amazed at how long it has been since my last journal entry. I love writing in my prayer journal because I usually ask the Lord to write back to me through my pen. I love spending that time with the Lord, yet I allow life to get in the way of spending time with Him. I have signed up for a Bible study to help ensure I am in His Word daily, and I love attending it. Yet, I haven’t done any reading for the study because I am doing other things. I am not even sure what else I am doing. I know I do have a lot going on, and yet I find time to spend on FaceBook or playing a game on my phone.
It’s crazy how easy it is to distract ourselves from the Lord and our relationship with Him. Our relationship with the Lord is similar to that with friends and family. It can be so easy to fall asleep in those relationships as well. What happens if you get so busy you no longer have time to talk with your spouse, kids, or friends? What happens if you get so busy that you no longer have time to listen to them? What if you don’t have time to hang out with them and spend time with them? If you do not put time into your relationships, they fall apart.
Luckily, our God is forgiving and patient and waits for us to return to Him. However, what if we run out of time? The Bible is full of parables that tell us not to fall asleep because we don’t know when our time is coming, when the bridegroom will be coming, and when the master of the house will be coming. We must stay away, we must stay alert, and we must always keep growing. Take a few minutes this morning and see if you might be falling asleep. If so, what can you do about it? I know for me, I am going to try hard to stop hitting snooze and keep my dates with the Lord in the morning. Maybe even move them from my office to the church down the street. It is open 24/7, and the last time I was in the church with just me and Jesus, it was a fantastic feeling. If you have a church near you that is unlocked throughout the day, try it. I think you will be surprised how much closer you feel to the Lord when chatting with Him in a church.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, you are amazing and we would never want to fall asleep in our relationship with you. Yet, we sometimes do. We let life get in the way gradually and then begin to forget to do all the essential things, like spend time with you, listen to you, and be in your Word. We ask that you wake us up gently, Lord. Show us where we are falling asleep and how we can change it. We want to be all in with our relationship with you. We want to be fully awake. Teach us how, Lord! We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus! I want to take a quick minute to talk with you about how you could join me in a deeper, more personal way on this journey. I will be starting a Walk Boldly with Jesus group coaching program. I will teach on a topic on Tuesday nights at 8 p.m. EST on a Zoom call. The teaching will be about 30 minutes, and then we will have 30 minutes or so of small group discussions. This small group discussion time will be as valuable as the teaching time. This will give everyone a chance to process what was just taught and then figure out how you can apply it to your life over the next week.
The best part is that you will meet with those same people next week, so you can check back in with each other and see how the week went. We will all grow so much quicker if we do not just hear the teaching but apply it immediately in our lives. If you can not make Tuesdays at 8 PM EST, I’ve got you covered too! I will record the teachings so you can watch them when you have time. You won’t have the small group live discussions, but there will be a members-only Facebook group where you can discuss how you will apply it to your lives and check back in to see how it is going. Also, if a few people cannot make it but want to form a small group discussion at another time, I can set up a Zoom call for you to do at a convenient time for those who want to do that. If you have any questions, please let me know. This new coaching program will start in November. However, you can join at any point. If you know a fellow Christian who would like to grow in their relationship with the Lord and have a community alongside them on that journey, please pass along this information. All the info can be found at walkboldlywithjesus.com. Thank you!
I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!