A Deep Sleep

“While he was speaking to me, I was in a deep sleep, with my face to the ground. Then he touched me and raised me to my feet.” Daniel 8:18

This was Daniel’s account of his own condition after being shown a vision and hearing God instructing Gabriel, His angel, to explain the vision to Daniel. I love to take Old Testament stories and apply them to New Testament living. The image that struck me was the one that lay beyond the stoned tomb. Christ, being in the earthly sleep of death, laid there to receive the golden touch of the King. The same hand who created this earth and separated the land from the seas reached down and divinely touch His Son and raised Him to His feet to take His royal place seated next to the Father.

As we live our own lives we too are entombed in our circumstances, our own deep sleep of walking in trance-like state through this life. We lay ‘face to the ground’ in our despair when adversity hits feeling as if the stone will never be rolled away and light will never again permeate in our dark areas. Don’t buy the enemy’s doom and gloom. It is all smoke and mirrors and the cold brick walls are simply a curtain of feathers that God will breathe upon and blow apart. Our deep sleep is merely the devil’s successful scheme at brain washing. He lures us into the cave and rolls that stone over the opening darkening our spirits and convincing us that this is our plight. God is in the darkness with us and the enemy has rolled the stone only to enclose us with the One who will touch, will comfort, and will raise us up from these circumstances. He will place us back on our feet and walk with us in that darkness. If we need to be carried for a while, He will use His feet to carry us through our burdens.

Notice in Daniel that in the deep sleep God was talking, God was touching and God was raising him up. This wonderful and precious God of Daniel is the same God who is with us.

Hear Him, feel Him and be raised by Him in everything.