2:32 am - The Divine Wake Up Call
Sometimes an event occurs in our lives that is beyond coincidence.
Sometimes events occur that have so much impact that our entire world view starts to change.
Such an event has happened to me....and here is the story.
To start off, I need to confess something big and something really important. When this event happened to me I was an avowed new ager. I was someone who professed that all paths led to God, that God was an unknowable impersonal spirit, and that there was truth in all paths. I also secretly held a deep seated animosity towards Christianity and Christ. I thought Jesus was probably one of the dumbest fairy tale legends of all religions I had ever heard of. I was sure that the path to God was through enlightenment. I only just needed more time away from the ways of the world so that I could sit in meditation, getting ever deeper within myself and develop new and amazing abilities that would prove that everything was energy and we had to tap into how to manipulate it.
I knew better, than those crazy religious people who were stuck in their primitive ways and world view.
Little did I know that all of this was soon to change.
Little did I know at the time how wrong I was.
I was also secretly miserable. I didn't know just then how my misery could be transformed to joy by giving up my self and giving my life over to Christ. This is how it happened.
I awoke startled from my deep sleep....2:32 am again. Why does this keep happening I wondered to myself. I had been waking up every night for weeks at this exact same time and could never get back to sleep. Here it was happening again. Another day of caffeine and exhaustion I thought to myself silently as I desperately tried to fall back to sleep. No luck. I would toss and turn yet again. Every night, night after night, I woke up at this exact time. Not one minute earlier, not one minute later....and I could never fall back to sleep.
After about the third day of this occurring I had started trying to see if this was some kind of message or something from the Universe. All to no luck...and it just kept happening night after night after night. Until the special day that would be different. Until I cracked the code. I didn't know why I thought this or where the idea came from at the time, but on a whim I thought I would check and see if I could glean some wisdom from the bible. I didn't even own a bible. That was no problem, I searched my smartphone for a free bible app. Sure enough there was one. On a hunch, I thought to start with the new testament. I would find all books that started with a 2, then I would go to the third chapter, and look at the second verse and then read all the way down until the natural ending of the section. What I proceeded to find and string together would not only astound and amaze me, but it would radically alter my life in the most amazing way beyond anything I could ever experience. As I found matching books, chapters, and sections I wrote everything I found down. What is even more amazing is that since that day I stopped waking up at 2:32 am. It all stopped immediately. Except one very important thing started, I WAS BORN AGAIN.
I share this message with you now, for it is a message for everyone, everywhere and I have since been guided to share this and much more. Please read it. It is my sincerest hope that it can offer the start to a radically better life to you the way that it has been to me.
2 Corinthians 3, 2You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, known and read by everyone, 3 revealing that you are a letter of Christ, delivered by us, written not with ink but by the Spirit of the living God, not on stone tablets but on tablets of human hearts.
4 Now we have such confidence in God through Christ. 5 Not that we are adequate in ourselves to consider anything as if it were coming from ourselves, but our adequacy is from God, 6 who made us adequate to be servants of a new covenant not based on the letter but on the Spirit, for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.
2 Thessalonians 3, 2 and that we may be delivered from perverse and evil people. For not all have faith. 3 But the Lord is faithful, and he will strengthen you and protect you from the evil one. 4 And we are confident about you in the Lord that you are both doing - and will do- what we are commanding. 5 Now may the Lord direct your hearts toward the love of God and the endurance of Christ.
2 Timothy 3, 2
2 For people will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, 3 unloving, irreconcilable, slanderers, without self-control, savage, opposed to what is good, 4 treacherous, reckless, conceited, loving pleasure rather than loving God. 5 They will maintain the outward appearance of religion but will have repudiated its power. So avoid people like these. 6 For some of these insinuate themselves into households and captivate weak women who are overwhelmed with sins and leg along by various passions. 7 Such women are always seeking instruction, yet never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth. 8 And just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so these people - who have warped minds and are disqualified in the faith - also oppose the truth. 9 But they will not go much further, for their foolishness will be obvious to everyone, just like it was with Jannes and Jambres.
2 Peter 3, 2
2 I want you to recall both the predictions foretold by the holy prophets and the commandment of the Lord and Savior through your apostles. 3 Above all, understand this: In the last days blatant scoffers will come, being propelled by their own evil urges 4 and saying, “Where is his promised return? For ever since our ancestors died, all things have continued as they were from the beginning of creation,” 5 For they deliberately suppress this fact, that by the word of God heavens existed long ago and an earth was formed out of water by means of water.6 Through these things the world existing at that time was destroyed when it was deluged with water and by means of water. 7 But by the same word the present heavens and earth have been reserved for fire, by being kept for the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly.
8 Now, dear friends, do not let this one thing escape your notice, that a single day is like thousand years with the Lord and a thousand years are like a single day.9 The Lord is not slow concerning his promise, as some regard slowness, but is being patient toward you, because he does not wish for any to perish but for all to come to repentance. 10 But the day of the Lord will come like a thief; when it comes, the heavens will disappear with a horrific noise, and the celestial bodies will melt away in a blaze, and the earth and every deed done on it will be laid bare.
11 Since all these things are to melt away in this manner, what sort of people must we be, conducting our lives in holiness and godliness, 12 while waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God? Because of this day, the heavens will be burned up and dissolve, and the celestial bodies will melt away in a blaze! 13 But, according to his promise, we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth, in which righteousness truly resides.
What does this all mean?
Trust God’s word. Find Christ. He is waiting to receive you. Just by living every day centered on Christ and trying to live his message my life has gotten better and more meaningful. I have found that the veil of depression of a sinful and material world lifts itself away and a sense and feeling of purpose in even the smallest things shows itself when I lean on the Lord.
When is the world coming to an end? I don't know. Are these the end times? I believe that they are. As I read God's word more and more I discover though, that it doesn't matter whether they are or not. We are commanded to live by God's word and to turn away from our fleshly falsehoods. As long as we focus on that, as long as we focus on entering through the narrow gate of Christ, it doesn't matter what times we live in. Martin Luther summed it up brilliantly. He said, "Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree."
I know that all I need to do is focus on God's word and keep growing, planting, and sowing his goodness in all that I do and each and every day I am creating a new Heaven and a new Earth side by side with the Lord.
I can say that I have learned to trust God’s word and take seriously the direction to which I am led. I do not move forward with fear. Move boldly as if it will soon be gone. I know that internally my old world is gone and I am renewed, and renewing daily. I feel that each and every day I am viewing a new heaven and a new earth and that is what matters to me.
God says he will come like a thief in the night and that no one knows the day or the time. I sure didn't know my day or time, but I can tell you that the Lord came to me like a thief in the night. He robbed me of my rest, he disturbed my being, and destroyed my old world...all so I could find rest in him. Honestly, that is my wish for you too.