Do you ever find yourself rolling over in the morning and hitting the snooze button? We all do from time to time. It's a way to avoid the challenges that await us while we catch a few more minutes of Shut Eye.
Well, today on Insight for Living, Chuck Swindahl sounds an alarm that can't be ignored. In Romans 13, Paul warns believers to guard against spiritual slumber. Our desperate times call for eyes that are wide open. and bodies clothed in Christ himself as our armor for battle. Chuck titled today's message, Wake Up and Get Dressed.
Yeah. The Prince of the Prophets wrote in quietness and confidence. will be your strength. I have learned over the years that There is a wonderful link between Quietness. and confidence.
At the same time with constancy of movement and noise and activity and Sound. there can be a loss of confidence. My hope is that through the season You'll not only know the Lord better, you'll come to know yourself better. And there will be a growing Awareness Of strengths that you can begin to really cultivate and weaknesses you can address. And we all have both, don't we?
Paul writes of this in the thirteenth of Romans. as he very practically addresses The subject of waking up and getting dressed. What is involved in both, and we shall address both together. As we hear from these last four verses of Romans 13, beginning at verse 11. Romans 13, 11.
Do this knowing the time. that it is already the hour for you to awaken from sleep. For now, salvation is nearer to us than when we believed. The night is almost gone. And the day is near.
Therefore, let us lay aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light. Let us behave properly. as in the day. Not in carousing and drunkenness, not in sexual promiscuity and sensuality, not in strife and jealousy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ.
Make no provision for the flesh. In regards to the majority of the to its lusts. Yeah. You're listening to Insight for Living. To dig deeper into the book of Romans on your own, be sure to purchase our Searching the Scriptures Bible Study workbook by going to insight.org/slash offer.
Chuck titled today's message, Wake Up and Get Dressed. With all the noise and activity and movement of our times, it is easy to sort of tune everything out. And become Well, I may as well say it, dead in the head. Just sort of sleepily move through life, taking care of only the urgent things. and missing the important ones.
How preoccupied we can become. Jim Dobson years ago wrote a book called Straight Talk to Men and Their Wives. And in it, he addresses this very issue of how men can just. Check out. Just be in another world.
Try to restrain yourself, ladies, as I explain this. In fact, he says that story typifies many marriages. The wife screaming and clawing the air and writhing in pain, the husband oblivious to her panic and her needs. He's preoccupied with his own thoughts. Not realizing that a A single step to the right or left could alleviate the crisis.
I never cease to be amazed, he writes, at just how deaf. A man can become under these circumstances. Then he tells this unbelievable story. I know of a gynecologist who is not only deaf, but blind. as well.
He telephoned a friend of mine who is also a physician in the practice of obstetrics and gynecology. He asked for a favor. My wife has been having some abdominal problems and she's in particular discomfort this afternoon, he said. I don't want to treat her, my own wife, and wonder if you'd be willing to see her for me. My friend invited the doctor to bring his wife for an examination.
Whereupon he discovered, are you ready for this? that she was five months pregnant. Her obstetrician husband Was so busy caring for other patients that he hadn't even noticed. His wife's burgeoning pregnancy. I must admit, wondering how in the world this woman ever got his attention long enough to conceive.
We are never too preoccupied for that, are we? Several years ago, the president of Columbia University.
Sort of stunned his audience when he, in a simple way, said, I divide the world into three categories. The many who watch things happen. The few who make things happen And the vast majority of those who have no idea in the world. What is happening? Put another way, I think he divided the world into observers.
Shakers and movers. And those who just don't bother to wake up. That describes some of you. That's some of you. Oh, you live in the world, you know that things are happening, but just keep it at a cool distance.
No reason to risk, no reason to get involved. That's how trouble starts. No reason to make waves. Billy Graham in an outstanding book World aflame. says it better than most.
Mr. Average Man is comfortable in his complacency. and as unconcerned as a silver fish ensconned on a carton of discarded magazines on world affairs. Man is not asking any questions because his social benefits from the government give him a false security. This is his trouble.
and his tragedy. Modern man has become a spectator of world events, observing on his television screen without becoming involved. He watches the ominous events of our times pass before his eyes. While he sips his beer in a comfortable chair, he does not seem to realize what is happening to him. He does not understand that his world is on fire and that he is about to be burned with it.
That's some of you. You do not realize. That you have fallen asleep. At the switch. You fail to realize the valuable role you're to fill.
in your family. Married or unmarried in your family. With your relatives, with your children. with your parents. It's just Business as usual.
Stay out of the way and Someday we'll just die and leave a good-looking corpse. Not a good plan. I love the words of Edmund Burke. All that is necessary for the triumph of evil. is for good men and women.
to do nothing. If I had the time, I would turn you back to 1 Chronicles 12. the ancient Old Testament book. That is a chronicle of events, and I would point out a small band of men called the sons of Issachar. Verse 32.
The sons of Issachar, we read. understood their times. and knew what Israel ought to do. That's the kind of man I want around me. Give me a band of men who have discernment and understand our times.
And they have direction. And discipline. and knowing what we ought to do about it. Our world is on fire. We must awaken to that.
I'm not asking that we come become Disconnected fanatics. You know me better than that. I'm just saying there's a place for passion. There is a need for waking up. Paul saw this even in the ancient world of Rome back in that.
Mid first century era. And so, as he came to the end of a very practical section where he has addressed the importance of loving one another, loving those that are alike, those that are different, those who are a part of our lives, those whom we hardly know, loving one another, loving one another. That was the message last time. He says to us at the end of the same context. Do this.
Why? Because The hour is soon to come when you will answer to the one who is your Savior. In fact, the day of opportunity is upon us. Don't delay. And waking up.
We often think of the Apostle Paul as a great mind, and he was that a great theologian, for sure, aside from Jesus. There was none brighter in the first century. The one who literarily contributed more to the New Testament than any other individual, the one who formed and shaped world missions as the beginning point of that. Here is Paul very practical writing word pictures. that hold our attention right to the end of the chapter.
This word picture is a very practical one. It's a word picture designed to encourage purity of life. In light of Jesus' soon coming. and the condition and times in which we live. It's a strong appeal.
For purity. The hour is upon us.
So I decided I would just stay with the word picture and help you get up in the morning. We're going to hear the alarm. We're going to awaken from sleep. We're going to check the time. We're going to then stand in front of our closet and look at the clothing available.
We're going to see which garments to set aside, which ones to put on, and then we're going to talk about at the end how to finish well. It's all a part of the word picture in this section of scripture, and I get it from verse 11: awaken from sleep.
So let's start. with the alarm. I have to tell you, out in my pickup truck, I have a a a little alarm clock. I was tempted to bring with me. But I thought How tacky can you be in an illustration?
I was going to You know what I was gonna do, pull out the stem, let it go, na-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. And some of you would literally wake up, but We don't have enough glycerin tablets to go around today to take care of you. who might drop over if you woke up. But let's imagine an alarm going off. It's sounding in verse 11.
Do this! Do what? Love your. Fellow man and woman. Do this.
Knowing the time. It's already the hour. See the word time. Two words Paul could have used when he came to that term. One is kronos, from which we get our word.
Chronology. It's the time you see on your wristwatch. Just as the time the old clock rings in your hallway, that's the chronos time, chronology. Calendar time. The other is the word Kairos.
Sounds like the first one, but it's nothing like it. This is kind of time. Quality of time. That's the word Paul uses. Do this, knowing the kind of time in which we live.
Daniel writes of God knowing the times and the seasons. Every generation has its time. has its kind of time. The early part of the 20th century was a kind of time. The latter part of the 20th was a kind of time.
This early part of the 21st is a kind of time. First century was a kind of time. To Paul, Christ's return was imminent at any moment. In light of that, in light of the kind of time in which we live, Listen to the alarm. By the way, it's an internal alarm.
It has no snooze button. The guy that invented the snooze button. Didn't understand, did he? It isn't supposed to go off. It's supposed to keep ringing.
Why? So you'll wake up. When I was in high school, I was the drum major in my senior year of our high school band. I loved that role. I loved the instruments and I loved the sound of the band.
I admittedly love leading the band. You wear the funny hat. Out front, you throw that baton around, which I dropped more than I threw around. We had a ball game at another city. We went there on the train.
And knowing that we had a parade on Saturday morning, when we got back to Houston, our conductor said to us, that is the conductor of the band, said to us on the way back, you guys, listen to me, don't go to bed tonight. We're going to get back really, really late, like early in the morning. I want you downtown Houston at 6.30.
So don't even risk going to bed because you won't wake up. I want the full band there. He looked right at me. when he said, I want the full band there. I thought, shh.
I'll wake up. But it's a problem, you know? Remember, he said 630.
So I go home. My folks are gone for the weekend. My sister's away at college. My brother's moved away.
So I'm all alone. I set the alarm. At 11.30 that morning, I woke up to The ringing of a telephone. It was my buddies. After the parade.
who informed me I used to be the drum major of the high school band. The following Monday, the conductor had a few words to share with me. I'll not share with you today. What was the problem? I slept through the alarm.
I didn't even allow the alarm to do what it was supposed to do. It ran down. They had pounded on my windows and doors. They had rung the doorbell till their finger got numb and they got tired of trying. They could see me in the bedroom through the window.
Wake up! And I was. out of it, dead in the head. The whole purpose of the first part of verse 11 is that point. Knowing the time.
Already the hour. to awaken from sleep.
So we carry on the same word picture, and we awaken from sleep. It's already an hour for you to be awake. The purpose of an alarm is to arouse us from slumber. It has one design, is the old Comedian says here in the south, get up and get her done. That's the reason that alarm goes off like that.
Get her done. It's not time to lay. You don't lay there and sing with the alarm. Mm-hmm. You get up.
That's why it's so irritating. Alarms are never soft little chimes.
Somebody designed them. to hit that discordant thing in our brain. that makes us uncomfortable. Why? To wake us up.
Look at it. It's already the hour for you to awaken from sleep for now. Salvation is nearer to us than when we believe. What does that mean? I thought when I was born again, salvation was forever.
It is. That's conversion. I call it coming to the cross. We trust in Jesus' death and resurrection. We take it personally.
He did this on our behalf. We believe in him. We have been converted. But salvation runs its course. like the crescendo mark on a musical score.
As life gets longer and louder and larger, we are involved in either being filled with the Spirit or operating in the flesh. And it's kind of a yo-yo. This is called sanctification, which is the unfolding of the whole salvation package. There will ultimately be a day when the Savior will return from the sky and call us up to meet him in the air, and then we will stand before him individually and independently and give an account of our bodies, of our lives, You giving your account, and my giving my account, and rewards will be given. For being good and faithful servants.
It's nearer than ever. The unfolding of salvation is upon us. At any moment He could come. I read this past week of several old men that had spent years together one day a week enjoying one another's presence. Played table games, went to things together, sometimes traveled together.
And this one evening, it got a little late, and the old grandfather clock that had been You know, running all of these years didn't just. Chime 11 or 12. Chime 13 and 14 and 15. One of the old men grabbed his coat and says, I'm out of here. It's later now than it's ever been in my life.
That's Paul's point at the end of verse 11. It's later than it's ever been in our lives. Wake up! Look around. Read through the news.
See beyond the evening broadcasts. See what isn't tangible. Check the time. That's what the alarm does. Helps you check the time.
It's the first place you look. When the alarm goes off, you check the time.
Now that's in verse 12. The night? It's almost gone. And the day. is near.
Isn't that the truth? We're living in the time of night. Day. is near. Night is almost Gone.
Another word picture: the world as we know it, the opportunities, the events of today, all of this is seen as night. May I remind you of how it passes? Every new wrinkle on your face. Every new pain in your body is a reminder that the night is passing. Each gray hair Yeah.
Yeah. I thought this morning, oh for the days of gray hair.
Some of you are busy covering them up. You're a different color than you were this time last year. Truth be told. Your color is gray. May I be serious and say every funeral service Every disease is a reminder that the night is almost gone.
Cynthia and I have wonderful friends at a former church. He was uh on the pulpit committee that took the risk and hired this young guy. to come and pastor the church for a number of years. His name is Hamp. Hamp and Sue friends of ours for now almost 37 years.
I got a letter from Hamp. this past week. And I cried. Here is this wonderful, vivacious couple. This great, strong, stout-hearted, fun-loving guy.
Hamp and his wife Sue. who now has Alzheimer's. And she has become combative and Psychiatrist was brought in. They had fixed her a lovely room at a assisted living place and She resisted medication and finally They've had to place her in a psychiatric hospital.
So he's writing me about this. And he's having an angiogram because he has heart problems. His family of four are all grown and gone. And he's alone. At home.
Last night. Cynthia and I are together on our side porch, and I said to her. thinking about hamp right now. How different it is now. Life is like that.
Age is no friend.
So opportunity for living is upon us. Take advantage of it. Tragically, some people die at age 30 and don't find out about it until they're 75. And they just kind of drift along. Unburied, but Dead in the head.
Don't go there. Therefore, look at the therefore in the middle of verse 12. This is another Second alarm. Therefore. It's time to change clothes.
Look at it, therefore let us lay aside Deeds of darkness. And let us put on. Look at the next word. Does that surprise you? You expect clothing of light.
You expect garments of light. Armor. Why? Because this world is no playground, this world is a battleground. If you could see the unseen forces of principalities and powers, it would take your breath away.
You stand with your mouth open. The combative forces. in the unseen world. Which I personally think explains a number of the suicides. Demonic forces against angelic powers, God's plan against the enemy's plan, all of it at work, and when you're half asleep, you don't even think about it.
When you're awake. You could hardly put it out of your mind. That's why you Choosing. Armor of Light. Chuckswindahl has challenged us to examine our spiritual wardrobe, the books we read, the screens we watch, and the people we run with.
Paul warned us to make no provision for the flesh. You're listening to Insight for Living, and we're midway through a message titled, Wake Up and Get Dressed. Stay with us because there's much more that Chuck wants to show us. You know, after hearing today's message, perhaps you're inspired to put on the Lord Jesus Christ, just as Paul described. It's like wearing a garment.
Well, to gain a better grasp on what this truly means, we urge you to take a deep dive into Paul's letter to the Romans, using your Bible and a custom Bible study workbook we've created for you. Both volumes for this Bible study on Romans are part of our Searching the Scriptures studies, and all the details for ordering your copy can be found at insight.org/slash offer. We're also pleased to offer a brand new hardbound 25-day Advent devotional. When you request it today, it'll arrive in time for the holidays. This new book, written by our own Carlos Susueta with Chuck Swindahl, is called Everlasting Light, A Journey from Promise to Presence.
It's yours when you make a generous gift to defray the cost of providing Chuck Swindahl's messages on the radio, online, and the many other ways you can freely access Insight for Living. This thank you gift from Insight for Living provides a two-fold objective. First, it will help your family prepare for Christmas. And second, your gift will help others embrace the hope of Jesus, our everlasting light. Thanks for giving generously as you measure the impact of Chuck's teaching on both your life and countless others.
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Spiritual complacency is dangerous. I'm Bill Meyer. Chuckswindahl describes how to defeat spiritual slumber. Thursday on Insight for Living. The preceding message, wake up and get dressed, was copyrighted in 2007, 2010, and 2025, and the sound recording was copyrighted in 2025 by Charles R.
Swindahl, Inc. All rights are reserved worldwide. Duplication of copyrighted material for commercial use is strictly prohibited.
