Wake Up Call

I am by no means an expert when it comes to travel, but I have stayed in my share of hotels and inns. One of the amenities that I have found to be pretty standard regardless of the number of stars the establishment boasts is the wake up call. Very simply, you call the front desk and let them know you would like a wake up call and what time you would like it to happen. The clerk or concierge then inputs your request into their computer which in turn rings your room phone at the requested time telling you it is time to get up.

I think we get all sorts of wake up calls from God. God's Word calls it fruit. One of these that I was talking about recently with a friend is the issue of family life and spirituality. This area of my own walk with the Lord has been a real struggle for me. I guess this is hard for me because of my learning style. I am one who can read it and learn some, hear it and learn some, but I tend to learn exponentially more when I see it modeled and have someone coach me as I do it. I, like many, grew up in the church. Yet, it grieves me that I saw (or see) so few examples of how to lead my family spiritually. Oh, I received the message that I was supposed to be doing it, and even saw a few doing. However, until the last few years, after I have blown it big in many ways, there hadn't been many who were willing to invest in me and my family. I have had a few astute people that have been gracious enough to point out the obvious to me (that I screwed up) but never said, "Say, do you know how to do this, I noticed you were having trouble. Can I show you how I do it?" Usually what I heard was versions of "You moron, get your head out of your rear and get it done!"

When you look at instruction Deuteronomy and in Paul's letter to Titus, we get very specific instruction in verses 1-8 of chapter 2 that examples should be set as a key element instruction, not just imparting information, but demonstrating how to do it. Mentoring is becoming a lost art. Author, speaker and pastor, Steve Farrar, attributes this to the Industrial Revolution when fathers were taken out of the homes where their sons worked along side them. If this is the model Christ used, shouldn't we pay a little more attention to it? Now parents are absent from the home, they abdicate their responsibility to the church. We step outside of God's design, for the family, the church or society and then have the gall to act surprised when our world comes crumbling down around us.

God gives us wake up calls every day. It is time we pick up the phone and answer the call. "Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. The one who sows to please his sinful nature, from that nature will reap destruction; the one who sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life." - Galatians 6:7-8