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“Arise, O Sleeper” is a six-year long journey that I took with God to find out what being born again really meant. During the journey God showed me some hidden truths that haven’t been taught from the pulpit. And it was here that I realized that although God was trying to speak to his people through the authorities of the church, they weren’t leading the people out of their bondage.

For instance, we have been taught that the church is a place to go when we need to be encouraged to hear what God is saying. Some even enter the doors for prayer. But mostly people go to a church building to feel better about themselves. We get all dressed up and smell really good, listen to a sermon that makes us feel better and then we go home and live like hell the rest of the week.
But that’s not what Church is. Church is the “Body of Christ” here on this earth. We, the people who invited Jesus to come and live inside us, are the Church. We are the Church whether we walk into a place of worship or a grocery store. We never stop being Church. The Church of God is something we are, not some place we go to.

It isn’t my intention to stir up a fight amongst the people, but it is my intention to cause a stir. I would like to see everyone open their eyes to the things of God. Some people have been doing the same thing year after year believing that they are good people, when in reality they are pushing away their true character hiding behind a title or a position instead of God’s truth. I would love to see people wake up from their deep sleep and come to the real truth of whom they are and what they have been doing.

We tend to live in a world that holds way too much pressure on us, and some of us forget that there is a purpose to our lives. We end up simply crossing things off of our lists of things to do, but we never seem to get around to the things we are SUPPOSE to do. I call this the “deep sleep” mainly because we walk around as if we are always tired, too sleepy to pull ourselves out of the rut. We get so complacent that we don’t mind becoming the sleep walkers. If we forget our purpose and let everything else trample us, we become stagnant, sleepy, and we forget our way. That’s what the enemy; Satan has been trying to accomplish since he was thrown out of heaven.

I like to write. I have been a list writer for years. I spend so much time and paper writing everything down. Walking with God didn’t change that, if anything it caused me to be even more aware of the things I was doing. I wrote down my fears, questions I had asked him, and lessons I had learned along the way. I had so many pages filled that I couldn’t help but put them together in a book format, so that if ever I needed to read something again I knew where it was.
So on January 17, 2001 when God told me to write, “Arise, O Sleeper” I had already learned the pattern of putting together a book.

I was sitting in a church, listening to the pastor teach when I heard God speak to me. He asked me if he could just love me? Then he told me to write a book called “Arise, O Sleeper.” He said to be prepared to go through the fire, to be ready for large battles with the enemy, and be prepared to cry and yell a lot but do not run. So six years we walked and talked together. The entire time God was answering questions I had been asking, leading me through his written truth, and helping me put together “Arise, O Sleeper.”