Daily Encounter: A Week-day Devotional by a staff of ACTS International.

Thursday, September 6, 2018

"'Wake up, O sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.' Be very careful, then, how you liveâ€"not as unwise but as wise."¹

The man huddled on the cabin floor was slowly freezing to death. It was high in the Rockies in southwestern Alberta, and outside a blizzard raged. John Elliott had logged miles that day through the deep snows of the mountain passes. As he checked for avalanches and as dusk and exhaustion overcame him he had decided to "hole-up for the night."

He made it wearily to his cabin but somewhat dazed with fatigue, he did not light a fire or remove his wet clothing. As the blizzard blasted through the cracks in the old cabin walls, the sleeping forest ranger sank into oblivion, paralyzed by the pleasure of the storm's icy caress.

Suddenly, however, his dog sprang into action, and with unrelenting whines, finally managed to rouse his near-comatose friend. The dog was John's constant companion, a St. Bernard, one of a long line of dogs famous for their heroics in times of crisis.
"If that dog hadn't been with me, I'd be dead today," John Elliott says. "When you're freezing to death you actually feel warm all over, and don't wake up because it feels too good."²

Life can be like that too. Millions of people, whose lives are filled with the pleasures and occupied with the pursuits of the world, are lulled to sleep spiritually, warm and cozy in their complacency, oblivious to the fact that they are heading pell-mell towards a lost eternity without God and without hope.*

Suggested prayer: "Dear God, please use me to help awaken those who are spiritually asleep and unaware that they are on their way to a lost eternity without you. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus' name, amen."

1. Ephesians 5:14-15 (NIV).
2. "Paralyzed by the Pleasure of an Icy Caress," The Prairie Overcomer. Cited on Aces Online www.acesonline.org.


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