When you wake with an idea that will help someone else, God is probably leading you to listen and respond. I have noticed that He will also lead unbelievers to do good to help someone until they come to believe and know that God is good and the One who prompted them!  When we wake up with someone on our mind; God’s Holy Spirit has put that person in your thoughts for a purpose. Maybe they need prayer or a call.  God always speaks with purpose.  God always has a plan with steps to take.  The steps will seem daunting at first.  The direction God presents us might seem unlikely for us given what we currently know about ourselves from our momentary perspective. 

Sometimes what God says seems so weirdly out of our daily routines and character; we wonder if it is God we are hearing!  It is, if it lines up with what Jesus taught us to be and do.  How will we respond?  Do we ask why and not do anything until we He tells us why? Do we question until the opportunity to do what He tells us passes us by?  We can be a stubborn people, right?!

Seriously though, what is our first thought and response?  Will we respond with love or hate, graciousness or sarcasm, gentleness or impatience anger, kindness or meanness?  It probably depends on who’s doing the leading!   

Ephesians 5, The Message

Wake Up from Your Sleep

^1-2 Watch what God does, and then you do it, like children who learn proper behavior from their parents. Mostly what God does is love you. Keep company with him and learn a life of love. Observe how Christ loved us. His love was not cautious but extravagant. He didn’t love in order to get something from us but to give everything of himself to us. Love like that.

^3-4 Don’t allow love to turn into lust, setting off a downhill slide into sexual promiscuity, filthy practices, or bullying greed. Though some tongues just love the taste of gossip, those who follow Jesus have better uses for language than that. Don’t talk dirty or silly. That kind of talk doesn’t fit our style. Thanksgiving is our dialect.

⁵ You can be sure that using people or religion or things just for what you can get out of them—the usual variations on idolatry—will get you nowhere, and certainly nowhere near the kingdom of Christ, the kingdom of God.

^6-7 Don’t let yourselves get taken in by religious smooth talk. God gets furious with people who are full of religious sales talk but want nothing to do with him. Don’t even hang around people like that.

^8-10 You groped your way through that murk once, but no longer. You’re out in the open now. The bright light of Christ makes your way plain. So no more stumbling around. Get on with it! The good, the right, the true—these are the actions appropriate for daylight hours. Figure out what will please Christ, and then do it.

^11-16 Don’t waste your time on useless work, mere busywork, the barren pursuits of darkness. Expose these things for the sham they are. It’s a scandal when people waste their lives on things they must do in the darkness where no one will see. Rip the cover off those frauds and see how attractive they look in the light of Christ.

Wake up from your sleep,
Climb out of your coffins;
Christ will show you the light!

So watch your step. Use your head. Make the most of every chance you get. These are desperate times!

¹⁷ Don’t live carelessly, unthinkingly. Make sure you understand what the Master wants.

^18-20 Don’t drink too much wine. That cheapens your life. Drink the Spirit of God, huge drafts of him. Sing hymns instead of drinking songs! Sing songs from your heart to Christ. Sing praises over everything, any excuse for a song to God the Father in the name of our Master, Jesus Christ.

Relationships

²¹ Out of respect for Christ, be courteously reverent to one another.

^22-24 Wives, understand and support your husbands in ways that show your support for Christ. The husband provides leadership to his wife the way Christ does to his church, not by domineering but by cherishing. So just as the church submits to Christ as he exercises such leadership, wives should likewise submit to their husbands.

^25-28 Husbands, go all out in your love for your wives, exactly as Christ did for the church—a love marked by giving, not getting. Christ’s love makes the church whole. His words evoke her beauty. Everything he does and says is designed to bring the best out of her, dressing her in dazzling white silk, radiant with holiness. And that is how husbands ought to love their wives. They’re really doing themselves a favor—since they’re already “one” in marriage.

^29-33 No one abuses his own body, does he? No, he feeds and pampers it. That’s how Christ treats us, the church, since we are part of his body. And this is why a man leaves father and mother and cherishes his wife. No longer two, they become “one flesh.” This is a huge mystery, and I don’t pretend to understand it all. What is clearest to me is the way Christ treats the church. And this provides a good picture of how each husband is to treat his wife, loving himself in loving her, and how each wife is to honor her husband.

WHAT DO WE LEARN—HOW DO WE RESPOND?

We are learning that our response to God depends on what or who we allow to monopolize our thoughts and come into our lives to fill our hearts, minds, and souls.  Afterall, our behaviors flow from what it is our hearts, Jesus teaches.

Are we drawing from the His ever flowing well of Living Water that will sustain and nourish us for eternity?  Are we following the Light or groping our own way through the dark jungle of tangling obstructions that form when we go our own way? Are we leaning on the wisdom of God who demonstrated His relentless love in the life of His Son, Jesus who saved us because He loves us no matter what?  

Could it be that we learn how to respond to God and to others by studying how Jesus responded first, then learn to love like that?  I’m pretty sure that is exactly where Paul is headed as he awakens us to love like God loves us—extravagantly, unconditionally, and faithfully.  God pursues us with mercy in His heart. Wake up to the love, mercy, and grace of God!  He is waiting with open arms—look for Him and respond with honor and respect to God and then to each other.  The rest will fall into place when we place our souls in the loving care and nourishing work of our Lord. 

We cannot save ourselves.  We cannot live to be like Jesus without the power of God’s Holy Spirit, the same power that raised Jesus from death to life, to help us.  We’re just not that good. But God?  God is good.  Only God is good.

Lord,

Thank you for teaching, convicting, challenging, and drawing me to be still, know you, learn about you so I can be more like you in every way.  Transform me from the inside out.  My heart, mind, and souls is yours.  I’m yours and you are mine.  Thank you for all that you do, all that you provide, all because of your love.

In Jesus Name, Amen