Get Off the Couch

As we launch a new year, it is a good time, the right time and I believe a necessary time for all of us to dig in and get to work for the Lord.

So, let's finish our nap, get up off the couch and give ourselves to the Lord and His work. It will help if you shut off the TV, the computer, your tablet and your cell phone.

The songwriter George Duffield wrote:

Stand up, stand up for Jesus,

Ye soldiers of the cross,

Lift high His royal banner—

It must not suffer loss.

What a sermon, what a statement of truth, what an analysis of the need of the hour this great song is!

In this day when the darkness of evil is running roughshod upon the earth and "the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour" (I Pet. 5:8), the sons and daughters of God must meet the challenge fearlessly, faithfully and fervently.

This is a day when a significant portion of the seven billion souls inhabiting the planet have turned a deaf ear to God and set themselves on a path to destruction. We suddenly realize the preacher was telling us the truth when he said, "In the last days, perilous times shall come (II Tim. 3:1).

Perilous times, indeed, dangerous times are before us. But it is not the time to hide ourselves away in some bunker of supposed safety simply to await the trumpet heralding the Lord's return. To the contrary, it is time to act, and decisively so.

Too often our Christian brethren are lulled to sleep and soon it is that the crepe of death and the pall of mourning case a shadow over the church. The funeral dirge that follows is attended with weeping and sorrow. The "it-can't-be-done" laments reflect the somber spirit of the day.

We are the soldiers of Christ. The battlefield is before us! Defeat must not be accepted! The royal banner must be held high. "Wherefore he saith, Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light" (Eph. 5:14).

So forget the obituary! Stop the funeral procession! Don't dig the grave just yet! "Awake...and arise." In other words, wake up and then get up. I've often felt that while the passage refers to someone dead, perhaps it is talking to the same person. Some folks are asleep so deeply that they appear to be dead.

But whether in deep sleep or in the throes of death, enough already! Wake up and don't just lie there! Get up! You won't get anything done until you "awake...and arise"!

Therefore, we stand up! We stand up for Christ, for the Gospel, for the Bible, for the standards of Scripture, for the truth, for New-Testament-style Christianity; yea we stand up straight and tall; we stand up with conviction and with courage amidst the darkness, the apostasy, amidst the peril of the times!

In great cities we stand up! In small towns and in rural villages we stand up! Frankly, fervently, faithfully, we stand up! On the street we stand up! In the workplace we stand up! In the academic arena we stand up! In the homeplace we stand up!

Duffield said it was a "must do"! He said it so well. May all of us be so challenged and motivated that we will without fail "stand up, stand up for Jesus."

So, how about it? Let's get up off the couch! Let's get out of the recliner and not be a lazy boy! Drive through your town, your city or that country area where you are. Look at it freshly! Ask God for a new vision of the need, the necessity that is upon you!

"Awake" to see where you are and why you are there!

"Arise" to do the business, the biding of the Lord!

Today is the day! Amen!