NO TIME TO RELAX

Some of you reading this devotional have taken a vacation from “fighting the good fight.” You are weary of heart and have said to yourself, “I’ve got to ease up or crack up! I’m not going to love the Lord any less and I’ll stay faithful. But I must follow my heart and my heart is telling me to relax.”

Beloved, your timing could not be worse! Spiritual relaxation or letting up is the final spring in the devil’s trap. You are choosing midnight to go on vacation. “And that, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep: for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed. The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light” (Romans 13:11-12).

If the night were far spent and the day of the Lord near when this was written, then how much nearer must it be now! There can be no relaxing in this last-days warfare. “Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour: whom resist steadfast in the faith” (1 Peter 5:8-9). Satan will not relax; he will increase his efforts. We dare not sleep!

All through the New Testament, God is calling us to be awake, to be vigilant and aware, and to put on the whole armour. We are not to sleep as others, but we are to be looking for and hastening the day of the Lord.

Relax in this war, and you are dead. Relax, and you are going to be caught in the devil’s trap. That call to relax is right out of hell! It is the siren call of Satan himself. Be warned because it is high time to awaken!

“Keep me from the snares which they have laid for me, and the [traps] of the workers of iniquity” (Psalm 141:9).