Awake! Sleeping Giant: A Call to Arise to the Truth of Victorious Living

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INTRODUCTION

Several years ago I was traveling to Texas for a conference. My early arrival at the airport in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, afforded plenty of breathing time to sit and relax before boarding. My baggage was checked and I sat down and pulled out a good book. As it grew near the boarding time, I was puzzled that the waiting area was not yet buzzing with other passengers.

Suddenly, the thought struck me: Check your boarding pass. All that time, I had been relaxing in the wrong waiting area!

Alarmed, I jumped to my feet, grabbed my bags, and ran full speed to the correct boarding area for my flight. Breathless, but thankful, I arrived at the gate just moments before the doors closed. I was the last passenger to board the flight. Close call!

Didn’t I arrive at the airport early? Didn’t my boarding pass give correct instructions? The flight attendant told me that my name was called several times over the intercom. The plane was headed in the right direction to Texas, but I—lulled into complacency, distracted with other things—failed to pay careful attention to the correct instructions in my hand.

Friend, you cannot afford to be complacent about arriving at your life’s destination. Your successful experience on this journey of life calls for you to be alert to the whole truth that answers man’s on-going quest for stability, peace, and the joy of true victory.

This book will point you safely to your destination. The sleeping giant is now fully awake and sits in the cockpit. He invites you to hop aboard. Yes, there are often bumps and turbulence along the way, but as you read you will notice the voices of confusion, frustration, fear and hopelessness that once screamed in your head now begin to disappear. All of your past losses and dilemmas will be mere air pockets that temporarily jolted your focus out of kilter.

There’s promise for a safe ride ahead as you allow the captain to guide your way through the pages of this book. The choice to recalibrate your journey is in your mind. Your boarding pass to freedom and victorious living is at your fingertips with every turn of the page!

Bon voyage!

—Rosalie Gregory

CHAPTER 1

CHASING WIND

Truth. What is it? Can it ever be found? Imagine there’s a toddler running fast and hard. Back and forth, back and forth. What is he after? He skips and runs across the grass so excitedly. He squeals, jumps and laughs with glee. His little arms reach way up high to grasp at something. He falls, but bounces right back on his feet and goes at it again. Poof! Tirelessly, he blows again through his new bubble wand. Out shoots a long stream of bubbles—bubbles of all sizes race into the air. Again, he reaches high to grasp. Every one escapes, slipping out of sight. He is just too young to grapple the frustration of grasping but unable to hold.

Now, leap ahead. He is 39 years old. Broken marriage, shattered dreams, lost opportunities—all slipped away. His empty soul groans, yet still he grasps. Still unable to hold. Surely by now his emotions are wrapped around that elusive bubble. Frustration is his frequent companion. But why does he continue to reach and reach again for that escaping bubble…and another…and another? Emotional drainage. Deflated by disappointment, abandoned by hope. Life, where are you? Everything disappears into invisible nothingness—an irretrievable bubble!

We all grasp at bubbles. Iridescent orbs of trapped air. Soluble, floating wishes that dissolve into the distance. Young college students bustle from class to class. They seek identity in one major course of study or another. Two, three years into a degree program of choice, the search continues. They graduate, still unable to grasp the unattainable quest for truth, for identity, for fulfillment. Another elusive bubble.

Quench my thirst, God! Where are you? I grew up in Your Church, yet why does the growl in my belly cry out in such deep hunger? I long for something real. Broken promises fill my memories, incomplete assignments. God! Is this Your best offer?

Friend, I have been there. Failed promises—bursting bubbles, all of them! A winding road with no end. Fizzles! Vapor!

Can you label your evaporating desires? What drives your search? They vanish like mist into thin air. Were they difficult to identify? Did the escapee whiz by too fast to slap on a label? One more pain hides itself, imprisoned in your mind—until another fleeting whim floats in and out of view.

My on-going search for reality led me to the Prophet Isaiah. In his writing, I found what appears to be an invitation to all seekers like myself.

Ho! Everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat. Yes, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.

Isaiah 55:1

Buy? No money, no price? Wine and milk? What kind of dinner party is this? Now he gets even more personal—

Why do you spend money for what is not bread, and your wages for what does not satisfy? Listen carefully to Me, and eat what is good, and let your soul delight itself in abundance.

Isaiah 55:2

Who told the prophet of my eternal quest? How does he know my soul craves to be satisfied? Hunger pangs gnaw at my soul, not my flesh. Listen to God? I starve for truth, not more religious ideas. Real truth!

I read the prophet’s invitation over and over again in an attempt to decipher its meaning. Suddenly, my mind reflects on the trial of Jesus. The Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, had asked Jesus, What is truth? (John 18:38). Wow! The ultimate question of the ages. Jesus returned no answer. Back up a bit. What led to such an obscure question? A man is about to be crucified, and Pilate asks, What is truth?

Pensively, my mind flashes back to one Sunday, years ago. I filed into the pew behind other church-goers and quickly found a seat close to the front. The annual Easter drama was about to begin. Until this moment, the crucifixion of Jesus was a jumble of empty words in my mind. A tale of sorrow for old folk.

But, today, as I watch the drama unfold, I am mesmerized! The crowds jeer, they spit, they pull the hairs off his bloody face. Nails, driven through His feet, driven mercilessly through His hands, into rough wood that tears into His back. The congregation gasps, they stare in shocked silence. Every thud of the hammer, a hollow echo into my empty soul. Thoughts whirl in search of the elusive answer to Pilate’s question. Has anyone found the answer?

The prophet’s invitation to buy and eat sits on my desk. Can my hungry soul ever be satisfied? Come, let’s go together to this wine and milk party.

Buy the truth, and do not sell it, also wisdom and instruction and understanding.

Proverbs 23:23

So many times have I read this scripture. One morning, coffee cup in hand, open Bible on my lap, words suddenly jumped off the page into my heart, and answered an unresolved question. Every week I minister to women, incarcerated in the local detention center. Anxiously, they await court dates—most for drug or alcohol charges. Many of these women grew up in the church. They believe in God, sing the songs, quote the verses, but return to the system. Repeat offenders, over and over. Twenty-one times, one woman revealed!

Compassion stirred me to examine the problem. That morning, I arrived at this conclusion from Proverbs. At some point they bought the truth, God loves me. He forgives me. But, oh, how easily they sell freedom for one more joint, another bottle of booze. Quoting the Bible, but gripped. Unable to be free, hooked by the enemy of truth! No woman could claim she had engaged in an even exchange.

In his letter to the early Christians in Rome, the Apostle Paul refers to people who suppress the truth (Romans 1:18), and those who exchanged the truth of God for the lie (v. 25).

A satisfied soul loathes the honeycomb, but to the hungry soul every bitter thing is sweet.

Proverbs 27:7

The empty human soul reaches out, stretching its neck for anything that appears sweet. Anything at all to possibly fill that deep hole. Sweet? No! Like sugar substitute in iced tea, it leaves its bitter after-taste. A trap of deception. Sweet, pleasurable sin—but only for a season.

Jesus asked two poignant questions: What will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul? (Mark 8:36, 37).

Has a nation changed its gods, which are not gods? But My people have changed their Glory for what does not profit.

Jeremiah 2:11

The truth of God. What is the inevitable consequence of an exchange of His truth for a lie? A deadly consequence.

Therefore I will scatter them like stubble that passes away by the wind of the wilderness. This is your lot, the portion of your measures from Me, says the Lord, Because you have forgotten Me and trusted in falsehood.

Jeremiah 13:24, 25

Futile, of no profit! All is vanity and grasping for the wind (Ecclesiastes 1:14). Transitory, aimless pursuits.

So, Isaiah offers wine and milk, no money and no price? But, we are charged by Proverbs to buy truth, wisdom, instruction and understanding. Are you as baffled as I am?

And then there is Job, a righteous man from the land of Uz, who asks:

But where can wisdom be found? And where is the place of understanding? Man does not know its value, nor is it found in the land of the living.

Job 28:12, 13

Reality escapes our grasp. It is not here on this Earth. Beneath the cold soil lie dry bones of seekers who were never finders. Tombstones mark the end of the search for truth. Last breaths were exhaled in the absence of purpose, the absolute truth of why their feet walked on planet Earth. But we are compelled to hunt. Hunt for truth like a famished lion hunts in the wild. Truth is solid! It can never fizzle. Wisdom, instruction and understanding are solid. They will never dissipate into the wind.

What was the experience of the children of Israel after Joseph died? A new Pharaoh ruled Egypt. Pharaoh, afraid that the children of Israel multiplied faster and grew mightier than his own people, threw a fit in jealousy and fear:

So the Egyptians made the children of Israel serve with rigor. And they made their lives bitter with hard bondage—in mortar, in brick, and in all manner of service in the field. All their service in which they made them serve was with rigor.

Exodus 1:13, 14

God sends His man, Moses, to beg Pharaoh to let His people go. Rebellious Pharaoh, defiantly instructs the taskmasters, Give no more straw to these Hebrew slaves!

Go, get yourselves straw where you can find it; yet none of your work will be reduced. So the people were scattered abroad throughout all the land of Egypt to gather stubble instead of straw.

Exodus 5:11, 12

Satan, the brutal taskmaster, coerces us to thrash against the wind. Angst, beads of sweat, vanished expectations. The devil laughs! His wages for our endless toil are frustration, oppression, and depression.

In answer to Job’s question, "Where can wisdom be found," let us delve further into this passage:

The deep says, It is not in me; and the sea says, It is not with me. It cannot be purchased for gold, nor can silver be weighed for its price.

It cannot be valued in the gold of Ophir, in precious onyx or sapphire. Neither gold nor crystal can equal it, nor can it be exchanged for jewelry of fine gold. No mention shall be made of coral or quartz, for the price of wisdom is above rubies.

The topaz of Ethiopia cannot equal it, nor can it be valued in pure gold.

From where then does wisdom come? And where is the place of understanding?

It is hidden from the eyes of all living, and concealed from the birds of the air. Destruction and Death say, We have heard a report about it with our ears.

Job 28:14-22 [Emphasis added.]

Another dead-end search! Where is this life-long search headed—this running, senseless grabbing? Let’s hunt together for the treasures of truth, wisdom—whatever it’s called.

Does your unquenchable thirst qualify you to buy Isaiah’s wine and milk? No money in your pocket—no price tag on his goods. He suggests that the wages you earn are spent on bread that cannot satisfy. He is right about that. More stuff, more jingles and jangles.

He invites you to eat what is good, then your soul will find delight in abundance.

Abundance? Tally your stuff: a college degree, closets filled with fashion, sprawling house on the lake, entertainment to keep your appointment book bulging? Do you qualify? Oops! Another growl in your hungry belly? Fill me, God, with reality! He hears your cry and says, "Come, child. ‘Open your mouth wide, and I will fill it’" (Psalm 81:10).

Our search intensifies. We step back into the pages of history to Athens, a city of the Roman Empire. Idols and shrines of worship fill the city. Massive confusion and unrest. Crowds in angry uproar. Accusations abound concerning a particular man— Paul, the apostle. He was formerly a Christian-killing Pharisee. Here in Athens he is considered a babbler who creates factions among the people, one who promotes the teachings of Jesus, the crucified King of the Jews.

Paul taught in the synagogues of the Jews of Thessalonica where he reasoned with them from the scriptures about Jesus Christ (Acts 17:2). Paul claimed Him to be the long awaited Messiah Who was crucified and risen from the dead. Some believed, but envious, unbelieving Jews incited the mobs against his teachings.

Moving into the next region of Berea, Paul’s teaching was greeted with more open-minded enthusiasm. Daily, the Bereans