- 1 Peter 5:8 Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. As people live their lives, they nod off or sleep without being aware of it. Sometimes people nod off for an instant without knowing while driving.
Accidents occur for many reasons when people are driving. However, accidents happen especially due to nodding off [behind the wheel]. In the same way, you experience ‘sleepiness in life and sleepiness in faith’ every day for 365 days a year.
‘Sleepiness of life, sleepiness of faith, and sleep of faith’ refer to the moment you don’t live by God’s Word but instead, live thinking other thoughts and miscellaneous thoughts, and taking action on other things. People who do that are like ‘those who are driving while nodding off.’ It is at that moment that your thoughts, mentality and actions flow toward other things and thus, the core of your faith will crumble, a major accident will happen with your faith, your faith will die or various other problems will occur. An athlete in a race cannot win while nodding off and sleeping. In the same way, those who are nodding off and sleeping in everyday life cannot achieve ‘victory in life.’ If you have a certain goal but ‘nod off or fall sleep in your daily life,’ you will fail each time you do that.
Hundreds or thousands of people die absurdly each year in each nation due to car accidents caused by people falling asleep behind the wheel. If they had known that they would die while nodding off, they would have punched their heads with their fists to wake themselves up. Every day, there are so many cases where people die absurdly even though they would have lived if they had thoughts just slightly better. The same is true in the world of faith. Even though they used to work so hard, they fall into ‘the drowsiness and sleep of faith’ because they are lazy and not alert. Then their faith dies in an instant and they helplessly go to [the domain of] death.
In this world, health mishaps are the most numerous. Hundreds of thousands of people are dozing off or sleeping in managing their health. Since people are negligent with managing their health, they end up struggling with their lives and end up losing their lives helplessly. The same is true with managing your faith. Is there anyone who wishes something to go wrong with their faith? Everyone wants to be successful. However, as people live their lives they eat and play as they please, think only about things they like, and because they like living comfortably for now, they lean toward doing that. As they do, they neglect ‘the life of their own faith.’ That is why they are overcome by ‘drowsiness and sleep of faith’ without knowing. Then they desert that path and go in a different direction and in the end, they kill their own souls and spirits and cause their bodies to live in the domain of death.
The body too. If it doesn’t get out of feeling sleepy, it will fall sleep thoughtlessly. Therefore, if you feel sleepy as you are living life, you have to sprint like a cheetah, be swift in action, and move like fire. Then you will get out of drowsiness and thus, will not fall asleep. The same is true with faith. You have to get out of it when sleepiness is coming over you. If you don’t, you will fall into ‘the sleep of faith’ thoughtlessly. Just as you pour cold water over yourself and shake off the sleepiness when you start to feel sleepy, you have to control your heart and actions at the moment your mind becomes dull and you are about to quietly slip into it with your thoughts. You have to quickly shake it off at the beginning stage of you feeling drowsiness in faith! If you fail to get out of it at that moment and go beyond that stage, you can’t get out of it.
Just as there is a way to control sleep, there is a way to control drowsiness and sleep in daily life. It is this: To control it by annihilating it at the beginning when you first feel sleepy. You have to take action as you would put out a fire at the moment a spark is present, at the beginning of a fire. Sleepiness in everyday life, bad thoughts, unrighteousness, any problems, Satan, and evildoers you should not take them lightly because they are small at first. Instead, you have to deal with them in the same way as you would put out the fire at the beginning. Cancer too. At the very beginning, cancer cells are only as big as a grain of rice. It is nothing. However, while you are nodding off and sleeping about health, the cancer will become mid-grade to terminal and the cancer cells will do what they want with your health. In the end, you will reach a point of incurability. Then you will lose your life. It is to get treatment at the very beginning and to squash it at the beginning.
Your contradictions too. It is to ‘squash them at the beginning.’ Sin too. It is to ‘squash it at the beginning.’ You have to swiftly squash it at the beginning before it grows and before it gets to an incurable stage. Everything is easy at the beginning. Squashing at the beginning is key to solving all problems. If you take action perfectly having nothing to do with sin at all, then you don’t even need to squash it at the beginning. Thus, it is even more perfect. A person who takes action perfectly having nothing to do with sin is like a clear blue sky without a cloud in sight. So he is perfect to the point not even a drop of rain will fall.
At the beginning, things are only the size of ‘a dot’ or only the size of ‘a grain of sand.’ Therefore, you can carry it easily at that time. They grow bigger and bigger and become ‘a rock’ or ‘a boulder.’ Could you carry them at that point? Both drowsiness and sleep are only the size of ‘a grain of sand’ at the beginning. [At that point,] you only keep blinking because you are sleepy. If you come to your senses saying, ‘Should I be sleeping at a busy time like this?’ your eyes will open back up. If you pour cold water on your [face] at that moment, you will get out of ‘the drowsiness and sleep.’ The same is true with the sleepiness of faith and the sleepiness of sin. At the beginning, they are only the size of ‘a grain of sand.’ It is like you’re blinking because you are feeling sleepy. If you squash it and control it at the beginning, then you will get out of it. At the beginning of sleepiness, you should pour ‘the fiery mentality and action and the fiery Word,’ and get out of death. In all circumstances, you have to possess a divine mentality. Then you will gain divine power and get out of physical nature, get out of the various accidents, get out of the sleep of faith, get out of sleepiness of various things in daily life, get out of physical death, and also get out of eternal death.