Episode 1: Stay Awake

Erin Davis: Hey, Shannan, did you ever sing this song growing up?

Give me oil in my lamp keep burning,
Give me oil in my lamp I pray. 

Shannan Painter: Hallelujah!

Erin: I knew you did!

Shannan: I did, I sang all those good songs growing up! 

Erin: I only knew the original version, which I just sang part of, but apparently there were some crazy verses! Did you ever sing,

Give me gas in my Ford, keep me truckin’ . . .

Shannan: I might have, if I had grown up in Texas, I think!

Erin: Now you’re a Texas transplant, but that does seem like a Texas addition. 

Well, you may be tempted to dismiss “Give Me Oil in My Lamp” as silly, but we’re about to explore the biblical background of this song and see that it’s actually saying something really important to us.

Shannan: This is The Deep Well with Erin Davis. I’m Shannan Painter. These days we throw around terms like “awake” somewhat haphazardly. You jiggle the mouse or press a key to “wake up” your computer, but nobody wants to have “woke” theology. Or we might talk about the need for a spiritual awakening in our day and age. That’s another meaning. 

So, are you awake? I’m not talking about physical sleep, although that’s a very important topic. I mean, are you active and alert to hear from the Lord? If Jesus came back right now, would you be ready to meet Him?

In a few minutes, Erin is going to ask you some hard-hitting questions to help you evaluate your watchfulness. It’s part of our current series here on The Deep Well: “Stay Awake.”

Erin: Well, Maranatha, sister! If you aren’t familiar with that greeting, you soon will be. Welcome back to The Deep Well, a place where I love to say my favorite words: “Open your Bible!” I’m calling this season “Stay Awake,”and we’re going to be walking through the book of 1 Thessalonians. 

If you don’t already know, that’s in the New Testament. It’s an epistle, or a letter, written by the apostle Paul. It has worked like spiritual caffeine in my life in the past year or so. It’s been waking me up to the reality that Jesus is coming back! 

Five times in five little chapters 1 Thessalonians mentions the return of Jesus. Lest you think Paul was using some fancy literary device, he wasn’t. He just sat down and wrote the letter. But it’s significant that over and over and over in this little book Paul brings us back to the fact that Jesus is going to return.

Now, the authors of the Bible certainly didn’t ask me for input, but if they had, I would give this epistle this subtitle: Stay Awake! It is a message for our day. It’s a message for every day until Jesus finally and faithfully returns! 

I’m going to give you a challenge: I want you to read the book of 1 Thessalonians every day that you listen to this series. It’s a short little book. I timed myself reading it, and it took less than ten minutes. So, give ten minutes a day to reading this epistle, and I know it’s going to work like spiritual caffeine in your life, too!

As we jump into chapter 1, let me give us some context..This was one of the first letters written by Paul. In fact, many scholars believe it was the first letter written by Paul. It was addressed to a group of faithful followers of Jesus who were living in a place called Thessalonica.

In the first eight verses Paul spilled his ink esteeming these Christian brothers and sisters of his. We’ll talk more about that in a future episode.Verses 9–10 of this first chapter of 1 Thessalonians give us a strong thesis statement for the book. Remember what that means from your college classes? The thesis statement is “the big idea!” 

So let me read us 1 Thessalonians 1:9–10: 

For they themselves report concerning us the kind of reception we had among you, and how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to come.

I hope you’ve already taken the steps that Paul wrote about in verse 9; I hope you’ve turned from idols, that you’ve turned away from your old life and bowed your knee before Jesus, the living and true God! But now what?

Well, in verse 10, Paul tells us: “Wait for His Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, Jesus Who delivers us from the wrath to come.” So, first we turn, and then we wait. Now, what are we waiting for? We’re waiting for Jesus to come back!

In fact, it’s not just Christians who are waiting for Jesus’ return. We’re just the ones who are aware of it. The whole world is waiting for Him to come back. Romans 8:22 tells us that creation is groaning. So much of what we see in the natural world are the birth pains—the groanings—of creation longing for Jesus to come back.

So the question is really not, “Are you waiting for Jesus to come back?” because you are, we all are. The question is, “Are you waiting well?” And the question behind the question is, “Are you waiting ‘awake’?”

I like to remind you that every text is part of a context. I want to help connect the dots between Paul’s words in 1 Thessalonians—where we’re going to focus for the next several episodes—and Jesus’ words in the gospels.

Turn from the left of where you just were in 1 Thessalonians 1 to Matthew chapter 24. Again, let me give you the context. Jesus was gathered with His disciples on the Mount of Olives. You might have heard this passage called The Olivet Discourse.

As we look at the life of Jesus, things were accelerating rapidly by the time we get to this chapter in Matthew. Jesus was moving toward the cross. At the beginning of the chapter, the disciples—even though they didn’t really understand everything that was about to happen—Jesus had warned them that things were going to change!

They had started asking Him some really good questions. Things like, “Okay, Jesus, You have told us You are going to leave, but when are You coming back and what will it be like when you do?” I want you to listen to Jesus’ response. It’s recorded in Matthew chapter 24, verses 36–39.

Again, this is Jesus speaking. I want you to imagine Him sharing this with His disciples that He loves. And, He’s sharing it with you, because you’re a disciple that He loves. 

“But concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only. For as were the days of Noah, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day when Noah entered the ark, and they were unaware until the flood came and swept them all away, so will be the coming of the Son of Man.”

He’s talking to His disciples and He’s giving them a reference they understand: Noah’s day. They were good Hebrew men; they would have understood the story of Noah. And He’s saying, “When that flood came, everybody was just busy living their lives.” They connected the dots to the day when He comes back.

Before we go any further, it’s worth asking, “What is Jesus coming back for?” Well, He’s going to come to bring judgment. We find that in places like 2 Timothy 4 and Matthew 25. He’s also coming to establish His kingdom; we’ll talk some more about that later in this series. We also find that in Revelation 19.

But, the emphasis in 1 Thessalonians is that Jesus is coming back for His own—for His Bride! As you linger in Matthew chapter 24, I want you to again remember to whom Jesus was talking. He was talking to His disciples.

This message about His return—at least in this moment—was not for those who didn’t know Him, it wasn’t a message of “turn or burn.” He was talking to those who had committed their lives to Him. And if you’re a disciple of Jesus, I want you to listen to what He is saying to you here in Matthew 24 and then, through His Word, in 1 Thessalonians: “I’m coming back. Stay awake!”

If we keep reading in Matthew chapter 24, we get to verses 40–44, and we find Jesus describing more about how people are just going to be doing the regular things of life when He returns. Verses 40–42 say: 

“Then two men will be in the field; one will be taken and one left. Two women will be grinding at the mill; one will be taken and one left. Therefore, stay awake, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. But know this, that if the master of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake [there’s that phrase again] and would not have let his house be broken into. Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.” (vv. 40–44)

See? God’s Word wakes us up to the reality of His return. Now, Jesus is using examples here that might feel culturally strange to us. He talks about two men working in a field; He talks about two women grinding at the mill. If your life is anything like mine, you probably don’t spend a lot of time in either of those places.

But for our day, Jesus could have said, “People were just picking their kids up from school; they were just buying groceries.” It seems like I am always buying groceries! “They were just getting their degree; they were just working in their job; they were just scrolling their phones.” 

He’s not making a case that working in the field or grinding at the mill is sinful or a bad way to use their time. He’s just saying that these people were just living their everyday lives, and they were lulled to sleep by the routines of those lives so much so that the return of Jesus started to feel like a dream.

It could do that for us. Or, we could stop giving it any thought at all! Let me repeat Jesus’ warnings to his disciples from Matthew 24. Here’s verse 42 again: “Therefore, stay awake, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming.”

He repeated Himself in verse 43, and not a word is wasted in the Word of God, so when there’s repetition like that we should pay attention. Listen to verse 43 again: “But know this, that if the master of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into.”

Verse 44: “Therefore, you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.” Listener, now is a good time for me to ask you—and you to ask me—“Are you awake?”

I want you to imagine us wedged in with those disciples on that mountain. Jesus is talking, and we are really trying to understand what He is telling us. He seems very sincere, and we love Him so much! We want to be ready, and we want to do what He’s asked us to do . . . but we don’t know how, and we don’t know when.

I want you to know that what we read next is one continuous thought. The chapter and verse divisions in the Bible are not inspired, they’re put there by people to help us stay organized, and I’m glad they’re there. The Bible is a big book.

But sometimes what those do in our time of Bible study is, they interrupt thoughts. They interrupt our attention when what we’re reading is actually one continuous thought, one continuous idea.

So, it was after Jesus said, “Hey, stay awake!” and repeated, “Stay awake!” and then again, “Be ready! You don’t know when I’m coming back.” It was after He said all of that, recorded in Mattew chapter 24, that in Matthew chapter 25 He says . . . (I imagine He was probably recognizing the furrowed brows and confused looks on His disciples faces and perhaps realized, “They’re not getting it.”

He then changed gears, and He told this parable. Listen to Matthew 25:1–13:

Then the kingdom of heaven will be like ten virgins who took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom. Five of them were foolish, and five were wise.

For when the foolish took their lamps, they took no oil with them,but the wise took flasks of oil with their lamps. As the bridegroom was delayed, they all became drowsy and slept. But at midnight there was a cry, “Here is the bridegroom! Come out to meet him.” Then all those virgins rose and trimmed their lamps.”

And the foolish said to the wise, “Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.” But the wise answered, saying, “Since there will not be enough for us and for you, go rather to the dealers and buy for yourselves.” And while they were going to buy, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went in with him to the marriage feast, and the door was shut.

Afterward the other virgins came also, saying, “Lord, lord, open to us.” But he answered, “Truly, I say to you, I do not know you. [And then at verse 13, Jesus makes His point again.] Watch therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.”

Now, as you’re listening to this parable, it is easy to get lost in some of the cultural nuances that are happening here. This doesn’t sound like any wedding I’ve ever been to. But what would happen was that, when a young Jewish boy chose a young Jewish girl to be his bride, he would make that decision, and then he would go and prepare a place for her. (Oh! Jesus talked about that, too). 

And when that place was ready, he would go and get her. So this bride and these attendants, they’re waiting for the groom to come, but they don’t know when he’s coming back. It could have been at any point, day or night, and so they had to keep these lamps burning.

The wise ones, they actually expected the bridegroom to come. They were prepared, and they were ready. And the foolish ones? Well, they got left behind. 

As I’ve thought about this season of The Deep Well, my sincere hope, my prayer—which has turned into an ache as I’ve prayed for you—is that you would not forget these two words: “Stay awake!”

That’s what Jesus is saying to us here in these verses we’ve been reading. It’s what Paul is going to say to us over and over as we unpack 1 Thessalonians. Woman of God, your husband needs you to stay awake. Your children—they don’t know how to say this—but they need you to stay awake!

Your friends, the women you’re in Bible study with, the neighbor you walk with and pray with, they all need you to stay awake. And your Church—the capital “C” Church—needs you to stay awake! 

They’re always watching you—they’re always watching me—watching for signs that our eyelids are starting to droop and we’re becoming sleepy to the reality of what Jesus is doing in the world.

They need us to stay awake! More than that, more than those groups I just described, the lost—those who do not know Christ, those who are right now drowning in hopelessness every single day—they need us to stay awake to the promise that Jesus is coming back!

As you dig into 1 Thessalonians, you will hear echoes of Jesus’ words from Matthew 24 and 25. Let me circle us back to our big idea from 1 Thessalonians 1:9–10:

For they themselves report concerning us the kind of reception we had among you, and how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to come. 

There’s a song I used to sing as a little girl. Even though I wasn’t yet a follower of Jesus and I did not understand the weight of what I was singing, I sang it anyway . . . maybe you did, too.

Give me oil in my lamp, keep me burning,
Give me oil in my lamp I pray.
Give me oil in my lamp, keep my burning, burning, burning,
Keep me burning ’til the break of day! 

That little children’s song was a prayer that God has honored in my life. The prayer is this: “Lord, keep me awake!” 

The ten virgins that Jesus described were waiting, they were all waiting, just like the whole world is waiting for Jesus to come back. They were waiting for the groom to come, but five of them were foolish and five of them were wise.

They all got sleepy, but what separated the wise from the foolish is that the wise women actually expected their groom to come, and they prepared for him. They waited with hope that, even if it took all the oil they could carry, it didn’t matter. They were going to keep the flame burning for the one they loved and longed for. Church, will we? 

Will we stay awake to the call to wait for Jesus to return from heaven, just as Paul instructed first century believers to do? Now, I don’t just want the listeners to The Deep Well to be hearers. I want us to be do-ers. That comes straight from Scripture (see James 1:22). I want us to sit in God’s Word, I want us to savor it, but then I want us to ask the Spirit to help it move from our heads into our actual lives! 

I’m going to walk us through some indicators that you might be asleep. I’m praying that the Spirit will use these to wake us up and keep us awake to the imminence of His return. So think these through. 

1. If your appetite for Scripture is gone.
   
   Maybe you go through the motions, but you walk away unmoved or unchanged or you’re not opening your Bible at all . . . I’m so grateful to get to teach in a world where there are Christians podcasts, but they certainly are no substitute for getting into the Word yourself. Maybe you rely on your pastor, your Bible study leader, or other teachers to feed you. If that’s you, I want to say to you, “Wake up!” 
    
2. Have you allowed a bitter root to burrow deep into your heart?
   
   Do you resent your husband? Do you resent your children? Do you resent your neighbor? You think, If they would just . . .[fill in the blank], I wouldn’t be so irritated all the time!”
   
   You nurse old wounds. Maybe there’s a sister in Christ who won’t speak to you anymore. She hurt you! She needs to make it right! You want to see her pay! To you I say, “Wake up!” 
    
3. Your life is consumed with anxiety. 
   
   You desperately try to control your family, your work, your community. And because you cannot, you fret, you lose sleep, instead of trusting that God is in control. To you I say, “Wake up!”
    
4. You cannot remember the last time you shared your faith with someone who is far from God.
   
   In fact, you have almost no contact with the lost. You’ve insulated yourself with people who think like you, act like you, live like you. Your heart is not broken by the reality that lost people are going through a living hell today as they try to maneuver life without hope, and they are destined for a truer hell someday when they die without Christ. If your heart is not sensitive to the lost, I say to you, “Wake up!”
    
5. You do not see Christian community as essential to living the Christian life.
   
   Maybe you dropped out of your women’s Bible study . . . you weren’t getting much out of it anyway. You attend church when it’s convenient. Your home is not open to the saints. When Christian relationships get hard—and they will—you jump ship! To you I say, “Wake up!” 
    
6. You are not broken over your own sin.
   
   You cannot remember the last time you cried over your pride, your selfishness. You’ve forgotten how desperately you need a Savior. To you I say, “Wake up!”
    
7. You’re easily offended.
   
   You refuse to submit to the authorities God has placed in your life. To you I say, “Wake up!”
    
8. There’s no multiplicity in your life.
   
   You are a disciple who doesn’t have time to make disciples. To you I say, “Wake up!” 
    
9. You do not long for the return of Christ; in fact, it mostly scares you.
   
   The thought of Jesus coming back gives you way more fear than hope. You can go days, weeks, months without thinking about His return. Your heart doesn’t cry, “Maranatha!”—which means, “Come, Lord Jesus!” To you I say, “Wake up!” 

That list doesn’t just come from my own life, though it certainly could. It comes straight from 1 Thessalonians 5; we’ll get to that in the last two sessions of this series.

But if Jesus had to remind His disciples to stay awake, if Paul had to remind the faithful Christians in Thessalonica to stay awake, then we need to remind each other over and over until He comes back, “Stay awake!” 

So, how do we respond? How do we respond to Jesus’s words in Matthew 24 and 25? How do we respond to Paul’s words as he kicks off 1 Thessalonians and tells us to wait with hope for Jesus’ return? 

Well, we ask the Spirit to expose: “Have I been asleep?” And we ask ourselves, “Am I willing to hold high the banner of hope that Jesus is coming back?

Our dark world needs it! They need those of us who will believe and actually live like a day is coming when things will be radically different because our King is returning for His Bride. Like the wise virgins that Jesus described, will you keep the flame of your love for Jesus, your service to the saints, your commitment to the Word—will you keep it burning until you see the face of the One you love and long for!? As long as it takes? 

If you’ve been asleep at the wheel, consider the jolt that Scripture gives as a tender mercy. Jesus wants us to be women who are ready! 

So right where you are . . . I don’t know if you’re scrubbing dishes at the kitchen sink, or if you’re taking a walk, or if you’re in the car. But right where you are—and only if you mean it—will you sing out loud these words with me?

Give us oil in our lamps, keep us burning,
Give us oil in our lamps we pray.
Give us oil in our lamps, keep us burning, burning, burning.
Keep us burning ’til the break of day! 

Make it so, Lord! Help us to wait well!

Shannan: Erin has helped each of us think of some ways we can improve at staying awake. She’s been reminding us not to grow complacent and just focus on the things right in front of us. Instead, she’s been helping us to move our gaze to the reality of God’s coming kingdom.

We’d like to send you a book that will help you keep your eyes on what really matters. It’s called Heaven Rules by Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth. Heaven Rules will take you through the book of Daniel. Nancy will show you how Daniel stayed awake.

He was aware of spiritual realities that affected the way he lived his day-to-day life. You’ll learn to do the same thing when you read Heaven Rules. We’d like to send you a copy when you support this podcast with a financial gift of any amount. 

The Deep Well is a ministry of Revive Our Hearts, and we’re able to provide the podcast, thanks to listeners who give. Visit ReviveOurHearts.com/TheDeepWell. . If you make a gift of any size, you can request your copy of Heaven Rules.

Erin: Thanks, Shannan. I need to make a confession, which is that I kind of use The Deep Well as an opportunity to spend time with my favorite people . . . and you’re one of them! So, I asked you to be my cohost again. You were my cohost for the “Embodied” series.

I just love your heart for the Lord, and your heart for His Church. You’re a pastor’s wife, and you’re also a discipler of women. So I knew I wanted you by my side as we were talking about calling women to wake up!

Shannan: Erin, I’m so grateful for women like you that help encourage all of the rest of us, because it isn’t easy to do life, and it isn’t easy to stay awake.

Erin: That’s true.

Erin Unscripted

Shannan: It’s time for Erin Unscripted, and Erin, you just offered a list to help women determine whether they need to wake up! Including, “Your appetite for Scripture is gone.” What would you say to those women who might find themselves in that place?

Erin: Yes. For me, probably because I’m a Bible teacher, that immediately takes me to a place of deep shame, and that’s so the voice of the enemy. That reeks of spiritual attack, which is: "You don’t have an appetite for Scripture? Something’s wrong with you!”

That is just going to put you in a place where you don’t want to go to Scripture, because you don’t want the conviction. So be aware that getting yourself to the Word is a spiritual gauntlet to run through every single day, and there’s an enemy who opposes you.

But also, I would pay attention to that. When your appetites are off, it’s worth paying attention to. There could be a million reasons for that, some of them sinful, some of them circumstantial, some of them physiological. Maybe you’re just exhausted, or it’s a time in your cycle when your brain is foggy, or any number of things could be causing that. But I wouldn’t ignore it.

For me, the solution is always to press myself into the people of God, particularly the women of God. I have a discipline, which is that I am in weekly Bible study. I think I’ve said it on The Deep Well before. But, because I know my sinful tendencies, the study is in my home, because I know if it wasn’t in my home I would drop out. That is the group where I say, “I didn’t want to read my Bible this week. I did read my Bible, but I was just going through the motions,” or “I didn’t read it at all. Would you pray for me?” So, I wouldn’t ever try to muscle it up in your own strength, but I would run to the women of God!

I have guard rails in my life, and I would encourage you to have guard rails. I have a text group; we text each other about every day what we read in the Bible. I have that weekly Bible study group. I have friends that will ask me what I’m studying in God’s Word. That’s to keep those appetites alive.

This is just a metaphor, so it breaks down at a certain point. But, if all you eat is junk, all you crave is junk; but if you begin to eat the good stuff, you will begin to crave the good stuff! It happens pretty quickly, actually. The same is true for Scripture. 

So, if you can go to the Lord honestly and say, “There are a million things I’d rather be doing today, but I’m going to open my Bible, because I know it’s where I receive life,” your appetites will change. God will do it. So, sometimes you have to do it even when you don’t want to. But I would acknowledge when your appetites are off, for sure! What do you do Shannan?

Shannan: I love that you touched on shame, because I think my tendency is to want to muscle my way through everything. If I’m not feeling something, I feel like something’s wrong with me and I need to pull it together and pep-talk my way out of it.

And I agree, there are things that I have learned that sharpen my affections for the Lord. Sometimes it’s examining: what am I looking at? What am I spending too much time doing? Is that dulling my heart for the Lord?

Maybe that’s mindless scrolling, maybe it’s missing that accountability and relationship with other women in my life. It’s easy for me to want to withdraw and not press in—especially since we’ve relocated recently and rebuilding friendships takes a lot of time and energy and effort. 

I appreciate that you touched on a lot of those different things: to keep in community with people who you can be transparent with who will point you back to God’s Word, and recognizing that there are some seasons. I really appreciated that you said “hormones,” too.

Erin: It’s real! Part of where 1 Thessalonians started to really take hold in my life was when I decided, “I’m just going to park in a book for a long time and just try to go slowly through it.” I can’t even remember why I picked 1 Thessalonians. But I would just take maybe a couple verses at a time. It was a “chewing” on the book. The more I chewed, the more that I wanted.

Sometimes I think even our pace expectations can be off. I’ve said before on The Deep Well, I think I’ve never read through the Bible in a year. Now, I think that’s probably a good discipline, but for me, the times I’ve tried it, it was like, “This just feels like I’m studying for a final!”

So, it’s okay for me to read three verses in a day. So far in this series, we’ve only made it a few verses into 1 Thessalonians and what we’ve gotten so far out of the book is, “Stay awake until the return of Christ!” That is a thought that can keep you coming back the next day.

My metaphors are all over the place, but I also like to think of it as adding layers of paint. I’m not trying to paint the whole mural of God’s truth in a single day of study. But if I can get myself to the Word today and have something to meditate on for the day, and then I can come back the next day and have something to meditate on for the day, then the Lord begins to paint this beautiful picture of His character, and it all starts to add up. So, part of it is just our expectations of ourselves, self-imposed or sometimes imposed from other places that don’t come from the Lord.

Barb: Erin, this is Barb. I have to say that I just appreciate one of the things you just said, about trying to read the Bible through in a year. I have always failed with that because I am a deep person—a verse at a time. I have to get the context; that’s so important. So, thank you.

I love your teaching. You’ve been a light in a very dark place many times in my life. One thing that I wanted to say, that I’ve been very convicted of recently, and it kind of goes along with your first point, is the conviction over scrolling and being on technology and the amount of time that I waste on that! Some of your podcasts have referenced that.

I actuallly just took Facebook off my phone. I’m trying to be more intentional, and I feel like I’m still guilty of that’s what I crave. That first step really, really helped me because now I’m craving more Scripture!

We’re on vacation right now. I’m sitting. I just got off the boardwalk from walking and plugged into you guys. I was sitting here just wanting to open my Bible, and I forgot you guys were on! I was like, “Thank You, Lord, for this opportunity once again to be reminded! It just encourages me to be in the Word.” Thank you!

I think a “battle buddy” throughout these times is really, really important as we cheer each other on to stay in the Word. So thank you, Erin, I just love your ministry!

Erin: I wish we were all on the beach with you, on the boardwalk with our Bibles open! That would be amazing!

Barb: Absolutely! That would be amazing! 

Erin: To the scrolling point, which is a valid one. The algorithm is stronger than all of us! We’re all trying to wrestle our way through this thing that we can’t. To Shannan’s point, we can’t muscle our way through it. It’s doing something to our brains. There’s a built-in addictiveness to it.

We have to be aware of that and say: “I’m going to keep wanting to come back to this. I’m getting a dopamine hit every time I scroll." I think we need those practical guardrails. I have some limitations myself, Barb.

I gave up Facebook many, many years ago. That’s not the choice everybody needs to make, but it was the choice that I made, and I’m so grateful. There’s a time of day that I put my phone on the charger. We don’t need to be legalistic about it. There’s not like a set of rules that fits with every believer. But recognizing there’s always going to be this tug to settle for a lesser thing. That’s certainly true about opening our Bibles!

We could open our Bibles and hear from the Lord, and yet our phone is always close by, pulling us away. So don’t try to think that it’s just you, or that you’re just weak, or that you can solve that in our own strength. You need to lean into the power of the Spirit. You need guardrails, and it’s worth fighting through all those things. I have to fight it too, every day!

Shannan: So Erin, as you’re reading through some of these things and at the end asking us, “Are you awake?” . . . one question that might pop up is, "How do we wake ourselves up?" or "When we see other women in our church or in our social circles that seem like they’re drowsy as well, how do we wake up?"

Erin: I don’t think we can wake ourselves up. I think there is a demonic lullaby that is constantly trying to lull us to sleep to the realities of who God is and whose world it is and what He’s trying to do in our lives. So, we’re so dependent on the Holy Spirit.

But one thing (and maybe this is going to sound like an overly simple answer to a complex question, and maybe it is, but) we’ve stopped talking about the return of Jesus. I don’t know the last time I heard a sermon about it. I don’t know the last time, just in casual conversation, a Christian friend of mine brought it up. I don’t know why that is exactly.

I can think back even to the era I came to Christ, in the nineties, there were a lot of Christian songs about it. Remember this one, Shannan? People get ready, Jesus is comin’, soon we’ll be going home. 

It was everywhere, and there was just like this, “Oh, yeah!” There was this alertness that happened in our spirit, “Oh, yeah, Jesus is coming!” We’ll talk more about this in a future episode. Obviously, we don’t want to be the kind of people that obsess over the return of Christ and act like that’s the only thing that the Bible talks about . . . because it isn’t.

And there are certainly those that elevate the doctrine of Christ’s return above so many other things that Jesus said. But can we talk about it? I’ve talked many times in my teaching about the long journey I’m on with my Mom’s Alzheimer’s. The women that have meant the most to me, the things that have meant the most to me, have been the Christian women who have not said, “Everything’s going to be okay.” Because in this circumstance, everything isn’t. It’s been the ones who have said, “Jesus is coming back someday, and your mom is going to be whole, and all of this is going to be fixed.” And it’s like, “Yes. You’re right!”

You know, that doesn’t change my immediate circumstance. But just the reminder of, “This isn’t all there is. There is a promise: He’s coming!” I think if we can find ways to talk about Jesus’ return with each other more often, it does wake us up. 

And then, we’ll talk about this in a future episode, too: the Bible speaks of Jesus’ return prolifically! If you’re anything like me, there’s a reflex to kind of gloss over those passages, read them really fast, and try to get to something that is easier to understand, because the timeline can be hard to understand. 

But if we would stop doing that, if we would press in to books like 1 Thessalonians that are so clearly about the return of Christ, it gives us that jolt of spiritual caffeine that we need.

Woman: Erin, I think Number 9 is the one that sticks out to me the most, probably for two reasons. One is that I am more comfortable with the known than the unknown. We don’t really have a whole lot of information about what heaven is going to be like: “Am I really going to like this? Do I want to go there?” I know in my head that I do, but there’s not that heart longing that you’re referring to.

And the second reason is that I know so many people who are not believers yet, and I just want to give them more time. It’s almost like, “Oh, don’t come back quite yet!” That’s kind of where my heart is at this morning.

Erin: Yes, that’s a really wise and compassionate response. Because for the lost, the Day of the Lord will be a terrible day! We know that’s why the Lord is waiting; He tells us that in His Word. It’s not like He’s forgotten what He’s promised. He’s not slow as we count slowness, but it’s His hope that none would perish and all would come to a saving faith in Him (see 2 Peter 3:9). So the delay in His returning is really such an act of compassion on His part. Thanks for reminding us that. We need to have that same heart that you have!

Shannan: Erin, what can we expect on the next episode in this series?

Erin: I want to remind us that, yes, we’re waiting for Jesus’s return, but we’re not supposed to wait passively. God has given us a mission. In fact, we’re on co-mission with Him and we have an assignment!

Shannan: Well, I can’t wait to hear what that assignment is, Erin! We’re looking forward to hearing from you again.

The Deep Well with Erin Davis is part of the Revive Our Hearts podcast family, calling women to freedom, fullness and fruitfulness in Christ!

All Scripture is taken from the ESV unless otherwise noted.
 

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