The Future Belongs to Those Who Are Spiritually Awake

Introduction

Josias Laporte, guest preacher at la Chapelle, opens his message with a very simple question: who likes getting up early, and who likes getting up late? He describes the mornings of his four-year-old daughter Zoé, who can go to bed late and get up late, who stays under the blanket even when the curtains are opened, and who runs to the bus stop "in a very demoralized way", half a waffle in her mouth. In the evening, though, she comes home delighted with her day. "You can enjoy life, but you can't do both": stay in bed your whole life and enjoy it at the same time.

People say the future belongs to those who get up early. The preacher suggests correcting the saying: the future belongs to those who are awake. That is true in everyday life, and it is true spiritually. The Bible uses this metaphor: being awake, dozing off, being asleep, or even being spiritually dead. His prayer for that morning is that everyone would be spiritually awake.

This message concludes the series "Dream Big, Build Now" on the book of Nehemiah. The text is Nehemiah 8:1-12: the story of a people spiritually asleep for seventy years, whom God manages to wake up. Josias Laporte draws from it one principle and two attitudes for waking up and staying awake. He speaks of a "spiritual coffee" that we all need.

Message Outline

1. The Symptoms of Spiritual Drowsiness

• It happens to all of us: at some point in your life you were spiritually awake, then you quietly dozed off, sometimes without even realizing it.
• The signs: a loss of interest in anything spiritual; you no longer find the strength to fight the habits that poison your life, even though at first you were zealous about it; an emptiness that settles in where you used to feel fulfilled; you no longer have the strength to fight the emotions that overwhelm you; you are weary of spiritual disciplines; you become entertained by things that once grieved you.
• In the Bible, there is light and there is night. Light is one of the metaphors used for Jesus. Night is everything that is dark, everything that can damage and destroy your life.
• The person who stays in bed all day does not know that he is missing opportunities. Hence the question: how do you wake up, or stay awake? What is your spiritual coffee?

2. Nehemiah 8: A People Asleep for Seventy Years

• The people of Israel, exiled for seventy years, were brought back to Jerusalem by the grace and mercy of God. They rebuilt the ruined walls. In the seventh month, all the people gather "as one man" in the square in front of the Water Gate and ask Ezra to bring the book of the law of Moses.
• Ezra reads from morning until midday, about six hours according to Bible commentators. When he opens the book, all the people stand up. Ezra blesses Yahweh, the people answer "Amen, Amen" with their hands lifted up, then bow with their faces to the ground. The Levites explain the law and give its meaning.
• All the people weep as they hear the words of the law. Nehemiah, Ezra and the Levites tell them: "This day is holy to Yahweh your God. Don't mourn, nor weep." Ezra tells them to go eat the fat, drink the sweet, and send portions to those for whom nothing is prepared. The preacher smiles: "That's my favorite verse starting today."
• The last verse says they celebrated greatly "because they had understood the words that were declared to them". For Josias Laporte, this rejoicing is the symptom that their faith was revived, their affection for God revived, their worship revived. Among them, children born in exile, now adults, had never heard the law: something caught fire in them, their spiritual eyes were opened.
• A word of encouragement along the way for parents of a teenager who seems to have been asleep for five years: "One day, he is going to wake up."

3. The Principle: Build Your Life Around What God Wants

• A small warning about the word "revival": it often brings to mind a big move of God, lots of people coming to the knowledge of Jesus Christ. The preacher wants to approach it in a more individual and more everyday way: "How do I, Josias, stay awake?" If each person takes their share of responsibility, God does the impossible, there is a snowball effect, and it is no longer just a church that is awake, but a city.
• The wall is rebuilt. Now, how do you rebuild life and community? What is striking in the text is that it is not Ezra who imposes a reading: it is the people who ask for the Word to be read to them. It has been a long time since they heard it.
• They now know that they must build their lives on God's will, because for seventy years they built on what they themselves wanted, and it ended in ruin. They lost everything: their provision, their peace of mind, their security, their place of worship, their joy, their homeland, their work, wonderful opportunities.
• "You can't say 'I love God' but build on what I want." If you do that, you end up drifting away from God and dozing off spiritually, and the consequence is ruin.
• The question of the morning: what is your foundation? What are you building on right now? As a father, Josias Laporte tells himself he has thirteen years to lay foundations in his children, before friends and high school. In the spiritual life, it is the same: you have to be intentional.
• Illustration: houses built by developers in North Carolina, along a beach, despite the city's warnings and the risky nature of the spot, simply because "the idea of being right on the water is so heavenly". What was bound to happen happened: the houses were swept away.
• It is Jesus who brings this illustration: build on the rock, that is what is solid (Matthew 7:24-27). Only if you build on the rock can you stay close to the shore, close to God and his principles. Otherwise you end up swept away by life, by trials, far from God.
• God's grace is that when we have built on something else and are living through ruin, God welcomes us anyway. "God always welcomes you." But his wish and his prayer is to spare you the catastrophe, that you stay awake to receive everything God has for you.

4. The Sands You Cannot Build On

• Human wisdom: always more knowledge, more interviews, more experience. The problem is that it keeps changing and things contradict each other. It is a foundation with cracks.
• Religion: doing works in the hope of a reward, your salvation or something else. "You always come up short, because you never know if you've done enough." Building on Jesus means building on what he did on the cross for you, and that brings freedom.
• Your parents' faith: it is a catalyst, a model, and good for them if they brought you to church. But you have to build on your own faith, because it is personal. God has a specific path for you. It is not "second hand". Wanting to model your life on someone else's, even someone admirable, creates deep disappointment.
• Pleasures: the preacher has nothing against them, "enjoy your life", they are part of God's graces. But when you build your life only on that, you end up with an emptiness, you chase after another pleasure, then another, and you are swept far from God.
• Relationships: God is for relationships, but he says "you shall love the Lord your God, and you shall love your neighbor as yourself" (Matthew 22:37-39). Build on God first, and he will give you the model for relationships. Relationships are imperfect: separations, quarrels, disagreements.
• Building on his Word means building on Jesus instead of building on sand. The preacher's prayer: that we would not see ruin in our lives, but the power of God to sustain us.

5. First Attitude: Reverence for the Word of God

• The scrolls were sacred. It had been decades since the people had heard the Word, and not everyone had access to it. Today, the Bible is in an app, on the same phone used for so many other things. For them, it was a solemn moment.
• Their attitude shows it: they stood up, they lifted their hands, they said "Amen", they bowed with their faces to the ground. "Imagine, one Sunday morning, as soon as I open the Bible, everyone stands up, lifts their hands and goes face down on the floor."
• They listened for at least six hours, from six in the morning until noon, with children and distractions. You could say it was another era, but the preacher's conviction is that it was because of their reverence for the Word of God. "The limits of your listening stretch further when you have reverence."
• The notary illustration: you receive a letter announcing that a deceased aunt is leaving you ten million dollars, and the notary invites you to a meeting. He reads the letter in a flat, monotonous voice; outside, the cranes of Montreal, your phone ringing, your child tugging at you. One hundred percent of people will still listen, "if you have to stick the notary's mouth to your ear, you'll do it". Why? Because it is money, and all the possibilities that come with it.
• When God matters to you more than anything, you have reverence for his Word, and you can listen to it in a different way.

6. The Baseball Glove: Your Capacity to Receive

• The glove represents your capacity to receive what God has for you. The ball is everything God wants to give you: joy, peace, perseverance, a connection, a deliverance, help to get through a hard time, a different perspective, and ultimately his Son. "God throws a lot of balls."
• The closed glove: you give far more importance, reverence and honor to your own opinion than to the Word of God. "No, what I think is what matters." And you do not receive.
• The back turned: you have been hurt, and you give more importance to your wound than to God. God asks you to turn around: "I am the one who is going to take care of you, I am the one who is going to heal you."
• The glove barely open: you are afraid, you are anxious, and you give more importance to your fear than to what God tells you. It keeps you from taking a step of faith, when we only receive the things of God by faith. "Open your glove for real."
• The glove that is open but drops the ball at the slightest bump: you like receiving in comfort, when everything is going well. As soon as something goes wrong, you let go.
• The glove that never closes: you are so open to so many things that you never settle on the Lord Jesus Christ, and there is never any fruit. Jesus said we cannot bear fruit unless we remain in him (John 15:4-5). "Close your life, surrender yourself to me, that is where you will bear fruit."
• The Spirit of God wants to bring your faith to life and revive it, but that cannot happen if you despise the Word of God. First there must be an attitude of reverence.

7. Second Attitude: Obedience All the Way

• It is not enough to listen to the law with reverence, you also have to obey it. The context: it is the seventh month, the month of the Feast of Trumpets and the Feast of Tabernacles, when the people lived in booths to remember the journey through the wilderness and God's provision. A holy convocation, and a command from God: celebrate. "It's cool when God tells you to celebrate."
• But the people are weeping. Some are hearing the law for the first time, others regret what they have done. Those realizations and those tears matter, but at that moment Ezra tells them: eat the fat, rejoice.
• It is as if someone came to tell you to throw a party on the way out of a funeral: bad timing, inappropriate. Yet the text says they celebrated greatly because they had understood what had been explained to them. They received the Word.
• Sometimes God asks you to do something that does not seem to make sense to you, or does not seem to fit your timing. We see him like someone barging into a funeral. And God says: "If you did what I ask you, you'll see, it's going to be good for you."
• The childbirth illustration: the more the contractions hurt, the more intense the pain, and that is precisely the moment the doctor says to push. "It hurts? Push." His wife's angelic face was transformed, but at the end of the pain, the baby is there, and it is the miracle of life.
• "It is only if you go all the way with what I ask you that you will have the blessing. It is only if you go all the way that you will be set free."
• The preacher confesses that obeying all the way is sometimes hard, because some things ask more of you and hurt. But if you obey, you will have the joy and the blessing God promises, you will experience a revival, and you will be able to tell someone else: "Go for it, go all the way, because Jesus has something for you."

8. The Invitation

• To the one who is indifferent, maybe here for the first time: may God help you become aware of your need. We all need God.
• To the one who is building on sand without realizing it: may you become aware of it now, not at the catastrophe.
• To the one who is building on the rock: God may want to help you have a little more reverence, because things are pushing your distraction and your gaze elsewhere, and God is always throwing balls.
• To the one who feels like they are in ruins, who has tried things and no longer knows what to do: reach out to God, raise your hand as a step of faith and an act of humility, and let him do a work. "Lord, restore me, strengthen me, enlighten me, show me."
• The closing prayer: that God would repair, or completely replace, the foundations that have cracks, and that he would look at our blind spots, now, without waiting for the catastrophe.

Key Takeaways

• The future belongs to those who are awake, and that is true spiritually: the one who stays in bed misses opportunities and the promises God has for him.
• The principle: build your life around what God wants, and therefore on his Word. Human wisdom, religion, your parents' faith, pleasures and relationships are sand.
• First attitude: reverence for the Word of God. It opens your glove to receive everything God throws.
• Second attitude: obedience all the way, even when what God asks does not seem to make sense or fit your timing.
• If you have built on something else and are living through ruin, God always welcomes you. But he would rather spare you the catastrophe.

Personal Application

1. Among the symptoms mentioned (loss of interest, weariness of spiritual disciplines, emptiness, distraction), which one do you recognize in your life right now?
2. What are you concretely building on: the Word of God, or one of the sands named in the message?
3. How do you listen to the Word of God? With the reverence of someone expecting an inheritance, or with a distracted ear?
4. What position is your glove in: closed, back turned, barely open out of fear, dropped at the first bump, or never closed on Jesus?
5. Is there something God is asking of you right now that you find outside your timing? What would "going all the way" mean this week?

Verses Cited

• Nehemiah 8:1-12
• Matthew 7:24-27
• Matthew 22:37-39
• John 15:4-5

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the symptoms of spiritual drowsiness?

Josias Laporte lists several: a loss of interest in anything spiritual, less strength to fight the habits that poison your life or the emotions that overwhelm you, weariness of spiritual disciplines, an emptiness that settles in, and being entertained by things that once grieved you.

What happens in Nehemiah 8?

The people who returned from exile, after rebuilding the wall of Jerusalem, gather in front of the Water Gate and ask Ezra to read the book of the law. He reads from morning until midday. The people stand, lift their hands, bow down, weep, then celebrate greatly because they have understood the Word. For the preacher, that joy is the sign of a revived faith.

How do you stay spiritually awake according to this message?

Through one principle and two attitudes. The principle: build your life around what God wants, and therefore on his Word rather than on the sand of human wisdom, religion, your parents' faith, pleasures or relationships. The two attitudes: reverence for the Word of God, which opens your capacity to receive, and obedience all the way, even when what God asks does not seem to make sense or fit your timing.