Wake Up

DEVOTION

THE REVELATION

WAKE UP

Rev 3:1-6

3:1 "To the angel of the church in Sardis write:

These are the words of him who holds the seven spirits of God and the seven stars. I know your deeds; you have a reputation of being alive, but you are dead. 2 Wake up! Strengthen what remains and is about to die, for I have not found your deeds complete in the sight of my God. 3 Remember, therefore, what you have received and heard; obey it, and repent. But if you do not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what time I will come to you.

4 Yet you have a few people in Sardis who have not soiled their clothes. They will walk with me, dressed in white, for they are worthy. 5 He who overcomes will, like them, be dressed in white. I will never blot out his name from the book of life, but will acknowledge his name before my Father and his angels. 6 He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.

NIV

Here we see Jesus talking to those who think there are alive and in fact have that kind of reputation, but are actually dead. This has such an overwhelming significance to us in this day. It can apply to the church in general, but more importantly to us personally. People might think of us as Christians, or perhaps as church goers, and maybe even as religious. We might even have a reputation of being a born again believer, however many of the unsaved have little or no knowledge of that phrase or its spiritual meaning. The point here is that we might look like, even talk like a Christian, but are we really truly living alive in Christ? We are admonished to strengthen what remains. This would imply we could have the right knowledge about salvation and that we have accepted Jesus as our Lord and Savior, but that we are just living a ritualistic ho-hum mediocre religious life. We are lacking the fire in the belly so to speak. We have replaced living our faith out loud, with hiding in our church on Sunday morning. In other words we are just going through the motions. Our deeds, or behaviors are not complete in the sight of God. This is a very harsh commentary on many of us who have the reputation of being a Christian. This certainly serves as a wake-up call, in fact Jesus is telling us to wake up before it is too late. If those who are simply living asleep as Christians, they are not going to be ready when he comes for his church. We have to make sure we are living fully awake, living our faith fully, living trusting completely, obeying the truth. We cannot live with one foot in the kingdom and one foot in the world. We cannot rest on just a reputation, we have to actually live being a true believer in Jesus. What good is a reputation if it is not true? But if we can live truly alive in Christ, as we are told there are some who do, we will have that white robe. We will walk with Jesus clothed in white, clothed in his purity. But there is even another great truth here. There is an insight into the love of God for all his creation. We are asked what kind of God would send people to hell. The fact is he does not ever want anyone to go to hell. He desires that all men should be saved. That truth lies in the fact that all the names of all the people who ever have lived are written in his book of life. However those people who refuse to acknowledge him, acknowledge Jesus as the only way to the Father, will have their names blotted out of his book of life. But the harsh reality in this letter is that there seems there will also be some people who just have the reputation but are not actually alive or awake in Christ who will have their names blotted out as well. That fate is strictly up to each one of us. We have the choice to live, to have Jesus acknowledge our name before the Father or to have our names blotted out. We better make sure we are awake, if not we need to wake up. I choose to live fully awake.