Return to God

Have you ever been under anesthesia? Remember what it’s like trying to wake up? That groggy, foggy-headedness, the heavy eyelids and attempts to focus on what the sounds are around you?

Some people talk nonsensical when coming out of that deep sleep, a sleep I’ve heard called “coma sleep.” It’s a bizarre sensation.

Wake Up! Wake up!

Have you ever felt like you were under some kind of spiritual anesthesia, like no matter how hard you tried to focus, God’s voice wasn’t clear? Like the nurse saying, “Wake up! Wake up!” you know someone is talking, but it just isn’t making sense. Or maybe the spiritual sleep was so deep it was only upon waking up you realized something drastic had happened.

Over the last several years, God has burdened me tremendously over the need of our churches to experience revival, a manifestation of the presence of God and nation to experience awakening, an experience where millions would come to Christ. It does seem to many (and to me) that we are in a deep, coma-like spiritual malaise. Our country is experiencing moral upheaval and most churches seem powerless to respond.

We need to return to God.

In our spiritual walk we face the possibility of failing or becoming distracted from our pursuit of God. As I noted in Bible Studies for Life, Awake: “It may be subtle at first, but after a while we look back and realize we’re not the people we wanted to be. At that point we often wonder, What does it take to get back on course?”¹

How do we return to God

There is no clearer story in the Old Testament of leaving the path of God than Jonah. The book of Jonah contains a personal story of repentance and return (the prophet himself), and a national story of repentance and return (the city of Nineveh).

Jonah’s run is in chapter 1, where God says, “Get up! Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because their wickedness has confronted Me. However, Jonah got up to flee to Tarshish from the Lord’s presence.”² Chapter 3 records the repentance of Nineveh, “Jonah set out on the first day of his walk in the city and proclaimed, ‘In 40 days Nineveh will be demolished!’ The men of Nineveh believed in God. They proclaimed a fast and dressed in sackcloth–from the greatest of them to the least.”³

In each of these instances people had departed from following God, repented, then returned to Him. The keys to seeing God move among us are repentance from sin and returning to Him. It will happen no other way.

Repent and Return

It could be there are many you will see this week, either at church or a small group study, who have departed from following God. Distracted, they are living for self rather than for God.

It can be easy to sit in judgment on those who are not following. Yet, some of the time we are just as guilty. We need to repent and return. We need to awaken from spiritual slumber that we might follow God once again.

Yours for the Great Commission,

Ronnie W. Floyd

Senior Pastor, Cross Church
General Editor, Bible Studies for Life
President, Southern Baptist Convention

References

¹– Bible Studies for Life, Awake, Ronnie Floyd
²– Jonah 1:2-3a, HCSB
³– Jonah 3:4-5, HCSB