Tag: sleep

Asleep At The Screen

Brent Pollard

A few nights ago, I made an error while browsing an online store via my tablet in bed on my ventilator. As I slowly dozed off to sleep, my thumb inadvertently pressed a few buttons, ordering a $70 package deal consisting of a new razor, 12 replacement razor blade cartridges, and 5 outdoor straw archery targets. The following morning, I received an email confirmation for the purchase and was also charged the amount from my bank account. (Don’t feel guilty for laughing. It is a humorous anecdote.)

No intention. No awareness. But very real consequences.

My little online shopping incident is a small object lesson in the larger spiritual truth that it is not the big mistakes we make that affect us most, but rather the many small ways we fall short of our best intentions.

Why Spiritual Vigilance Matters: The Warning of 1 Peter 5:8

The Bible says that Christians must be on guard against the temptations they face. The temptation could come at any moment, so we must always be on our guard. The Bible says in 1 Peter 5.8, “Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour.” The word néphó, “be sober,” and grégoreó, “be vigilant,” both mean to be awake. Your adversary is like a roaring lion, and a roaring lion does not attack the watchful; the sleeping is what a roaring lion attacks. Peter knew what it was like to be sleeping when something very important was happening. He was sleeping in the garden of Gethsemane when Jesus was struggling with the greatest battle of His life.

The Lord turned to Peter, who was sleeping, and rebuked him, saying, “Could you not watch with Me one hour? Watch and pray lest you enter into temptation; for the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak” (Matthew 26.41). Yet just a few hours later Peter, while spiritually lethargic, was denying his Lord before the rooster crowed. Today, this same Peter is urging us to “be sober” and “be vigilant” because our adversary, the devil, “is roaming about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour” (1 Peter 5.8).

Our adversary the devil is a wily foe. Instead of bursting through our front doors, he will slip in through an unlocked window. The most harmful temptation for Christians is the one they are unaware of—that they are being tempted to sin against God. Drowsiness is a state that causes the Christian to be less than their full potential, and in this state, the enemy of our souls does his greatest work.

How Does Spiritual Drift Begin?

My accidental purchase started with my unintentional use of my tablet. I picked it up to distract myself from the difficult process of transition from free-breathing to a ventilator. I intended to use my tablet to fall asleep. To that end, my plan was successful. However, my thumb continued tapping here and there. The items I bought were all outside my original plan. Their purchase happened unconsciously. I only realized I purchased something when I received the confirmation email, and I was surprised.

Hebrews 2.1 warns us to pay close attention to the Gospel, likening it to a harbor (pararreó) where we tie our boat to avoid drifting away. The image highlights the danger of slowly, imperceptibly losing our way if we neglect these words. To stay anchored in faith, we must heed these sound teachings, for letting them go leads to drifting.

The sleeper misses something vital: wonder. They might worship, pray, receive the Lord’s Supper, or read the Word of God, but eventually, they lack a great treasure—reverence for God. This is a tremendous loss, unnoticed by the sleeper, who does not tremble before the Holy God, an awe-inspiring being. We must worship with awe and reverence; otherwise, He holds no value for us.

Sowing and Reaping: Why Intent Does Not Erase Outcome (Galatians 6:7)

Drifting is subtle; most of the time, people don’t even realize they have started drifting. They are lost before they even realize it. The main thing to understand to begin to combat this sort of spiritual problem is that whatever a man sows, that is what he will reap. In other words, the intention behind an action does not change its outcome. A person can be spiritually lost even though they were not intentionally trying to lose themselves.

And it matters not whether or not one intended to plant a particular crop. The truth of the matter is that there are two seeds a person can sow. There is the seed of the Spirit, and there is the seed of the flesh. In the case of the seed of the flesh, a person can be sowing it without even realizing it. His neglect of the things of the Spirit can in fact bring about a spiritual famine in his life, resulting in a harvest of dry and lifeless things. The point is, however, that regardless of whether a person intends to reap a particular harvest, he will reap what he sows.

There is hope for those spiritually asleep. While the law of sowing and reaping exists, for Christians it is transformed by Christ’s blood. God’s Word, given by the Spirit, teaches us what to sow to gain eternal life. Salvation is a blessing, not a burden, and comes as we stay spiritually alert. An alert soul is filled with joy in the Lord’s presence and takes pleasure at His right hand forever (Psalm 16.11). Vigilance is not a penalty but a sign of valuing what’s most important and of awaiting its manifestation (Luke 12.34).

Staying Spiritually Awake: Practical Watchfulness for Everyday Faith

This, however, is not to say that we so easily fall into errors. No, we must always guard our hearts and direct our lives in the best fashion possible. And the best way for us to do this is to pay close attention to how we live day to day. If we pay attention to our lives, we can easily avoid errors and make them the best they can be.

We previously urged you to be watchful, as the hour of salvation is near (Romans 13.11). Stay alert in your walk and lifestyle. Sobriety and vigilance are essential (1 Thessalonians 5.6). Don’t wait for the right feelings or go through the motions blindly. Live watchfully daily. Dedicate time for prayer every day. Even before bed, when you might feel less alert, use that time to read the Word meaningfully, not as a tourist but as a resident. Regularly examine yourself during the Lord’s Supper (1 Corinthians 11.28). Beyond private devotion, avoid forsaking the saints, as gathering encourages love and good works (Hebrews 10.24-25). Simple daily practices help prevent error.

Wake up! Trim your wick. Answer the call of your Lord while it is yet today. Be a person of great expectancy as you go through your daily routine, because He is coming at an unexpected hour for His Bride (Matthew 25.13).

Most people don’t intentionally mess up their lives or look to fall from grace. They just fall asleep at the wheel or with a tablet in their hands.

Does Consciousness Continue After Death?

Gary Pollard

One of the commonly asked questions on my list is, “Does consciousness continue after death?” I was fairly confident in what I believed about this one until 3:00 PM today (11.19). Carl dropped the problem of the Transfiguration on me: How are Moses and Elijah present with Jesus before the resurrection? The purpose of this article is to sort out the Gnostic and the scriptural, but also to hopefully put more minds on this question. It’s been bothering me for several hours now. 

The overwhelming weight of scripture seems to be in favor of death being (from our perspective) an instantaneous transition to Jesus’s return and the resurrection. There are some teachings that potentially complicate this view (like the Rich man and Lazarus, thief on the cross, saints under the altar), but the concept of a “place of waiting” made no sense to me in light of the rest of scripture. What’s the point of dividing the sheep and the goats if they’ve been tortured/resting for the last umpteen years? And why are the “goats” surprised at their fate if they’ve already been punished for however long? And how/why is poor Abraham dealing with the pained cries of the rich man in torment? There is, after all, a wide abyss separating the two places (maybe the acoustics are really good). It makes the most sense that Jesus was using an image they would’ve been familiar with (from I Enoch 22, 51) to illustrate the importance of viewing money appropriately. Paul clearly says that we’re given life only when Jesus returns (cf. I Thess 4.14ff), and that Jesus being brought back to life was a visible example of what will happen to all of us too (I Cor 15.20-24). Our hope for consciousness after this life is solely in God’s promise to bring us back when his son returns. 

William Tyndale (1484-1536) said, “By putting the departed souls in Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory, you have destroyed the arguments that Christ and Paul used to prove the resurrection. … What’s the point of resurrection, then? And what’s the point of judgment? … The true faith affirms the resurrection, which is what we’re told to always watch for. Pagan philosophers deny this and claim that the soul is immortal. The Pope combined the spiritual doctrine of Christ and the fleshly doctrine of philosophers, things so dissonant that they’re totally incompatible. And because the fleshly-minded Pope is okay with pagan doctrine, he has no problem corrupting the scripture to establish the doctrine [of Heaven]. If the soul is in Heaven, tell me what the point of resurrection is?” The doctrine of “heaven” widely adopted by our culture is unsupported by scripture and has far more in common with Gnostic and Egyptian beliefs (i.e. Pleroma and Duat). 

So is there an intermediate place where departed souls go to experience the beta version of eternity? I didn’t think so. I’m pretty confident that our culture’s concept of heaven is wrong — on linguistic (ουρανος means “sky” or the place above the sky, which we call “space” today), scriptural (our new life comes when Jesus returns), and historical-cultural grounds (the early, pre-Catholic Christians believed that we would get life in a new body on a new/renewed earth when Jesus returns). 

But the original question was, “Is there consciousness after death?” From a biblical point of view, I believe (until the Transfiguration Conundrum is sorted anyways) the answer is yes and no. From the perspective of the dead, the transition between death and resurrection is instantaneous. I was comatose for about a week several years ago and couldn’t believe I’d been out for that long. Now, that’s not dead — but it at least proves a point. If you aren’t conscious you aren’t aware of time passing. So the “blink of an eye” statement in I Corinthians 15 makes perfect sense! But the bible does suggest that the dead are not conscious, though this is contested (cf. Ecc 9.5, Dan 12.2, Ps 115.17, 146.4 I Thess 4.14-17, and the 50+ times the bible describes death as “sleep”). Regardless of which answer is correct, what we can all agree on is this: 

Brothers and sisters, we want you to know about those who have died. We don’t want you to be sad like other people — those who have no hope. We believe that Jesus died, but we also believe that he rose again. So we believe that God will raise to life through Jesus any who have died and bring them together with him when he comes (I Thess 4.13-14). 1

Encouragement From Eutychus

Dale Pollard

Here’s a quick recap of the bizarre events that unfold in Acts 20.

  • Paul preaches past midnight. 
  • A young man named Eutychus falls asleep.
  • As a result he plummets to his death. 
  • He is then miraculously brought back to life.

So what?

Each word that was written in scripture was penned under God’s guidance— for our guidance. This means that even those accounts that might initially strike us as pointless are, in truth, spiritually pointed. 

With this is in mind, Let’s briefly examine three life lessons from Eutychus that deliver relevant reminders for the 21st century Christian. 

  1. A lesson on Common sense: God is with His people, God protects His people, but we still read of a young man who sits where he shouldn’t have. As a result, he tumbles to his death. Unfortunate things can happen to godly people, especially in the absence of common sense. 
  2. A Lesson On Commitment: This account is not a call for preachers to shorten their sermons, or even a warning for members who might be tempted to take a nap in worship. While Eutychus may not be the first guy that comes to mind when we think of a Bible character who demonstrated commitment— he still made it a priority to be with his Christian family. He held on, even though it was clearly past his bedtime. How many of us have forsaken the assembly simply because we don’t feel like it? How many Christians find themselves struggling to remain focused in a one hour period of worship? There is something to be said for this man’s commitment to Christ— even as the hours ticked by and exhaustion began to take its toll on him. 
  3. A Lesson On Correction: Though I would not want to be immortalized in history as the guy who fell out of a window in church, this potential tragedy became a powerful testimony of God’s grace. God does not expect total perfection, rather our constant correction. When we take a tumble spiritually, what corrections can we implement to avoid the same  mistake in the future?