Wake Up
These two words are shouted often in the athletic arena by coaches and players alike. You know the moment, for some reason your team has came out flat with no emotion, energy, or excitement and the ship seems to be sinking fast. Usually a leader, either player or coach, starts barking a “Wake Up” call.
My biggest “Wake Up” call came at age 38 when God challenged me to go all in for Him. It was the best decision of my life.
Recently God shared with me another “Wake Up” call. A few games ago, I noticed one the leaders on my team was giving a “Wake Up” call before every game as he high fived his teammates in introductions.
As God often does, He placed a song in my spirit that I could not let go of. We were on the bus and I could make out the beat, but could not remember the name of the song. “Hey Ho, Let the Glory Roll” was all I could make out. I just knew I had heard this song recently, but when I woke up that day, the song was coming from deep inside me. I did my best to share the beat with our men’s and women’s coaching staffs and they were googling and trying to discover the name of the song. I wasn’t much help as I had already done what I do often, I had changed a few words to the song.
All of the sudden, the song came to me! “AWAKE MY SOUL”. A Hillsong song that had been released 3 years ago. I had recently heard a remake of the song by MBL Worship and the Holy Spirit inside me had captured it.
Recently I wrote a post called “Let’s Talk Real Power”. I am confident that God decided to expand on what He was trying to share with me in that post. In brief, the post explains that each of us have 65 to 100 octillion atoms inside us just waiting for God to ignite. We are all atomic bombs capable of the mass destruction or mass salvation.
Today, in my morning devotion time, God took that understanding to another level. I will do my best to share that powerful knowledge with you in as few words as possible.
Have you ever had goose bumps consume you, the hair on your arms stand up, or just sensed something extremely powerful was going on around you? This is often described as the presence of something supernatural. The challenge is you can’t usually see the supernatural. I have experienced both a dark presence and a very powerful Godly presence.
Until today, I thought that this power came mostly from an outside source. I understood that there is a battle raging in the spiritual realm that I can’t see. I know angels are given assignments by God to do things on our behalf. I also know that there are fallen angels led by satan that do all they can to stop God’s angels. Those demons are given assignments to torment, deceive, and prevent us from fulfilling God’s will for our lives.
What blew my mind today is that God is constantly calling what He placed inside us to “WAKE UP”. The Bible uses phrases like “do not slumber”, “be a watchman”, and uses parables that talk about the importance of being a city on a hill “keeping our lights burning brightly” by keeping plenty of oil ready.
I had heard all of those references, but I still had not grasp that the “Wake Up” call coming from God was for our soul to seek out the Holy Spirit inside us. By sacrificing all our personal and fleshly desires our souls can come into rhythm with the Holy Spirit. The result, a power beyond imagination becomes accessible to each of us.
The Old Testament Tabernacle for the Ark of the Covenant was where the power and glory of God was present on earth. Adam sinned and the Holy Spirit left humans and returned to Heaven. Death had entered the earth and God could only speak through prophets to His people. The Holy Spirit came upon people allowing them to do impossible feats. People such as David, Sampson, and Elijah all accomplished these feats through the help of the Holy Spirit. David talks of defeating troops, leaping over walls, and breaking bronze bows through the power of the Holy Spirit.
Access to the Holy Spirit changed with Jesus conquering death and becoming our perfect sacrifice. Through Christ Jesus we are all able to host the power of God in us. Through the Holy Spirit, we are host of the Glory of God.
My “Wake Up” call today was when I heard that our bodies are now the Old Testament Tabernacle. Our bodies are the outer court which experienced both natural light and outer darkness. The middle court, the Holy Court, is our Souls. Candles with oil provided the light in this court. Our souls still struggle with the outside influence and the outer darkness. Our soul is in a constant wrestling match between the outer court of human nature and the inner court of the Holy Spirit.
The inner court is known as the Holy of Holies. It is the Holy Spirit and where the Glory and Power of God resides. In order to access that power our souls must deny the flesh and come into communion with the Holy Spirit. Jesus is our High Priest and God calls us priest, thus we now have access into the Holy of Holies.
We not only have access, it is where God’s Glory, Light, and Power is unlocked to be seen in our outer court bodies. Priest were not able to go into the Holy of Holies without repenting of their sins thought animal sacrifices. Jesus provided us access to the Holy of Holies, but we are not able to access that power without repentance, obedience, and seeking God with all our heart. All of this also requires faith, a unwavering belief that God is able to do the anything. Jesus did very few miracles in His hometown due to the lack of faith of the people. We must “Wake Up’ and believe this is the truth.
So, when we sing “Awake my Soul”, what we are actually praying for? We are asking God to ignite or release the Glory that He placed inside us. Through the Holy Spirit, we have everything we need inside us to do the impossible. We are made in the image of God, meaning we were made to be more than we can even dream or imagine. The 100 Octillion atoms full of power are just waiting to ignite. That is exactly why we can feel something inside us waking up when God moves. We must have the faith to allow God to use us as a willing and powerful vessel of mass salvation.
Photo by Yann Allegre on Unsplash