Here’s what I’m thinking about Paul’s references to day and night: it’s not literally day or night that is the issue, but light and darkness. Light can overcome darkness. But darkness can also mean lack of awareness, disconnectedness, isolation, and blindness. It is a personal spirit asleep.
I Thessalonians 5:5, 6a, 7a, 8a, 9
You are all sons of the light and sons of the day. We do not belong to the night or to the darkness. . . . So then, let us not be like others, who are asleep, . . . For those who sleep, sleep at night, . . . But since we belong to the day, . . . For God did not appoint us to suffer wrath but to receive salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Being asleep in this way is a type of wrath, it’s a loss, a handicap to full living.
How often have I chastised my teens for sleeping away the day. For me, it’s time wasted, time lost to an unconscious activity. Oh, I know, that many good things come from sleep and the body and mind both need this time of recovery. But, there is the long sleep, the running away from life sleeping, the disengagement. And just as people sleep overly much when depressed, so can the personal spirit sleep. John Sandford calls it a “slumbering spirit.”
As believers, followers of the Christ, we are supposed to be awake. We are encouraged to be awake. We are expected to be awake and to operate in the Light.
Unfortunately, even believers can be asleep in the spirit.
“I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.” [John 14:12]
Gotta be awake to do any of the things that Christ did. Gotta be in the Light. Gotta be transparent. Anything else is living in the wrath of night.
Meditations from Zion 