When I was first saved in the 1980s, a popular worship song by David Hadden was ‘Awake, awake, O Zion.’ Its lyrics came from Isaiah 52:1-3:
‘Awake, awake, Zion,
clothe yourself with strength!
Put on your garments of splendour,
Jerusalem, the holy city.
The uncircumcised and defiled
will not enter you again.
2 Shake off your dust;
rise up, sit enthroned, Jerusalem.
Free yourself from the chains on your neck,
Daughter Zion, now a captive.
3 For this is what the Lord says:
“You were sold for nothing,
and without money you will be redeemed.”’
I have not thought of that song for years, but as we have been praying for God to move afresh in power through His Holy Spirit, as God has been stirring our hearts to pray for revival and as we have been crying out to Him to give us a spiritual hunger and thirst which only He can assuage, I have been drawn back to these words. Before we see God move like this, we need to wake up! We cannot see God move if we are spiritually asleep, oblivious to the way His Spirit is already moving.
These verses remind us that God has provided clothes for us: garments of splendour which are far greater than our filthy rags of unrighteousness, garments of praise, robes of righteousness, spiritual armour which gives us strength to stand. As we put on Christ and clothe ourselves with with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience (Col 3:12), we can know the holiness which Christ has purchased for us. We can shake off the dust and rise up, standing tall in God. All that is not of God will be removed as we sit in those heavenly places which can be ours now by faith (see Eph 2:6) and we can free ourselves from the chains around our neck (Heb 12:1-2).
Paul reminds the Thessalonians ‘You are all children of the light and children of the day. We do not belong to the night or to the darkness.‘ (1 Thess 5:5) Because of this, he goes on to say ‘So then, let us not be like others, who are asleep, but let us be awake and sober. For those who sleep, sleep at night, and those who get drunk, get drunk at night. But since we belong to the day, let us be sober, putting on faith and love as a breastplate, and the hope of salvation as a helmet.‘ (1 Thess 5:6-8) Our prayer for us all is that we wake up and smell the coffee, so to speak; that our eyes are opened to all God wants to do in us and through us and in our world.
I haven’t sung the David Hadden song for years, but Chris Tomlin’s ‘Awakening’ expresses a similar desire:
‘In our hearts, Lord, in this nation
Awakening
Holy Spirit, we desire
Awakening
For You and You alone
Awake, my soul; awake, my soul, and sing
For the world You love
Your will be done, let Your will be done in me.’ (‘Awakening’, Chris Tomlin)
