Falling Asleep at the Wheel 

Wake up! Strengthen what remains and is about to die, for I have found your deeds unfinished in the sight of my God. Remember, therefore, what you have received and heard; hold it fast, and repent. But if you do not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what time I will come to you. (Revelation 3:2-3)  
  
On our honeymoon, Ginger and I decided that we would drive from Houston to Colorado. We had a cabin that had been provided for us outside Grand Lake, Colorado. We left the day after we got married and began to drive.   
  
Because my car was not reliable enough to take this trip, her dad loaned us his brand-new car. It was one of those big boats of a car. Before the days of mobile phones, he had a phone in the car on the console. We were very excited that we had a chance to drive a nice car all the way to Colorado.   
  
At about 2:00 in the morning, I began to get sleepy, so I asked Ginger if she would like to drive. She said, “Sure, I can drive.” I pulled off to the side of the road. She shifted over to the driver's seat; I got out and moved to the passenger seat. We went down this lonely highway and I just nodded off to sleep. I don't know how long I had been asleep, but I suddenly felt this bump, bump, bump. I realized that we had some tires off the main pavement, and we were hitting the rumble strips. That woke me up; I looked up and saw we were headed for one of those reflector posts. I looked over to the left and there was Ginger asleep with her head down. All I could say was, “Ginger, wake up,” and I grabbed the wheel and tried to get control of the car.   
  
At that moment, she woke up and realized that she had been asleep. She grabbed the wheel and quickly steered the car back onto the pavement. That caused the car to spin. As I looked ahead of me, there was a highway patrolman. There weren’t any other cars on the road, just the highway patrolman coming in our direction and facing us. I watched him pull off to the side of the road. He drove into the borrow ditch because he didn't know what would happen with this crazy woman at the wheel. We spun around and the car lifted on two wheels. When we finally landed back down, we were headed in the opposite direction. Fortunately, we actually survived that experience!   
  
The highway patrolman came up to us, looked at us and said, “Are you okay?” We both said, “Sure.” And he said, “I'm sorry, but I will have to give you a ticket.” I said, “We're on our honeymoon, but do you have to give us one?” He said, “Well, you scared me to death. Yes, I have to give you a ticket.”   
  
We were headed to have fun, enjoy each other and begin our brand-new life together. The problem simply came down to this: Ginger fell asleep at the wheel.  
  
The same thing can happen to us spiritually, which is why we need to be careful. We can have the best of intentions to start fresh and be on the right path, but if we are not diligent in our faith, we can fall asleep at the wheel. In our walk with Christ, we can hurt ourselves (and possibly others) in the process.   
  
Do you think you are asleep at the wheel right now in your faith? If so, I encourage you to ask the Lord to give you a spiritual wake-up call and reignite your love and fire for Him today.