Spiritual drift does not make an announcement. It simply arrives, one postponed prayer at a time, one skipped Scripture at a time, until one morning you realise the fire is lower than you thought it was. Romans 12:11 is the alarm for that morning.
“Do not lag in zeal; be ardent in spirit; serve the Lord.”
Romans 12:11
തീക്ഷണതയില് മാന്ദ്യം കൂടാതെ ആത്മാവില് ജ്വലിക്കുന്നവരായി കര്ത്താവിനെ ശുശ്രൂഷിക്കുവിന്.
റോമാ 12:11
The central message of the blog post is:
God calls believers to wake up from spiritual complacency, rekindle their passion for Him, and serve Him wholeheartedly without delay.
A Memorable Takeaway
“The alarm of God’s grace is ringing—don’t snooze your faith; rise, rekindle your zeal, and serve the Lord today.”
The Alarm You Cannot Snooze
It goes off every morning.
The first time, you stir. The second time, you murmur. The third time, you reach for it in the dark and, with the practised reflex of a thousand mornings, you press snooze.
Silence returns. And so does sleep.
Most of us have made an art of snoozing. We have perfected the science of delay. We know exactly how many minutes remain before we absolutely must get up, and we spend every one of them in the warm, unremarkable comfort of not yet.
Romans 12:11 is God’s alarm. And it does not have a snooze button.
The First Ring: “Do Not Lag in Zeal”
The alarm sounds. It is not gentle. The Greek word behind “zeal” here is spoudē—a word that hums with urgency, with forward momentum, with the energy of a person who moves as though something matters. Paul does not say “do not lose your zeal entirely.” He says do not lag. Do not slow. Do not drift into the comfortable deceleration that feels, from the inside, like rest, but looks, from the outside, like a faith that is going cold.
Lagging is rarely dramatic. It does not announce itself. It simply happens, one small postponement at a time. The prayer that gets shorter. The Scripture that goes unread. The act of service quietly replaced by something more convenient. You do not notice the lag until you look back and realise you are somehow much further behind than you intended to be.
The alarm rings. Are you moving?
The Second Ring: “Be Ardent in Spirit”
You stir. But stirring is not the same as rising.
The second phrase is the most vivid in the entire verse. The Greek behind “ardent” is zeōn—literally, boiling. Bubbling. Churning with heat from within. Paul is not asking for a polished performance of enthusiasm. He is describing a condition of the interior life: a spirit that is genuinely, measurably, undeniably hot.
A boiling pot cannot be still. It moves. It makes itself known. You do not have to ask whether a pot is boiling—you can see it, hear it, feel the warmth from across the room.
The question the alarm is asking is not whether you go to church, say your prayers, or keep the external forms of faith. The question is whether anyone standing near your life can feel the heat. Is there something boiling inside you, or has the burner been turned quietly down to the lowest possible setting—warm enough to feel safe, too low to do anything significant?
The alarm rings again. Are you on fire?
The Third Ring: “Serve the Lord”
This is where the alarm becomes a commission.
The first two rings are diagnostic. They locate the problem. But the third ring tells you what to do with the energy once you have it. Paul anchors zeal and ardour to a single, clarifying direction: the Lord. Not the crowd. Not the calendar. Not the applause of the people who notice your service. The Lord.
This is the correction that changes everything. Much of what exhausts us in Christian life is zeal misdirected—spent on being seen, on being needed, on keeping score. When you serve the Lord rather than the expectation, the audience changes. And when the audience changes, so does your energy source. You are no longer running on the fuel of human approval, which runs out. You are running on something that does not.
The alarm has rung three times. You are awake. Now get up and serve.
What Happens When You Keep Pressing Snooze
There is a particular sadness that belongs to the believer who meant to do more. Who had the conviction but delayed the action. Who felt the fire once and assumed it would still be there whenever they finally decided to move.
Fire does not wait. A fire unattended does not maintain itself—it reduces, gradually, to embers, then to ash, then to the cold grey residue of something that once burned. You cannot warm yourself beside the memory of a fire.
The spiritual life works the same way. Zeal delayed is zeal diminished. Ardour postponed is ardour lost. The alarm does not keep ringing indefinitely out of obligation—it rings because there is something to be done today, in this hour, with this life. Every snooze is a small surrender of the present moment to the comfortable fiction that tomorrow will be a better day to begin.
Tomorrow is not promised. The alarm is ringing now.
The Alarm That Will Not Be Silenced
Here is the remarkable thing about Romans 12:11.
It is not a rebuke for the apostate or the deliberately rebellious. It is a word spoken to people who are already in the community of faith—people who already know the Lord, already love the Lord, but who have, in the ordinary drift of ordinary days, allowed the temperature to drop without quite noticing.
Paul is not standing over a grave. He is standing beside a bed, pulling back the curtains, letting the light in, and saying: you are not too far gone. The warmth can return. The zeal can be rekindled. The spirit can boil again. But you have to get up.
God’s alarm is not a punishment. It is an act of grace. The fact that it is still ringing in your life means the day is not over. You have not been written off. The Lord who calls you to serve is the same Lord who sustains you in serving. He does not command what He does not also enable.
This Morning’s Invitation
You are reading this because the alarm went off.
Maybe it has been going off for weeks—in a nagging sense that something in your spiritual life has gone quiet, that the fire is lower than it used to be, that your service has become mechanical, that prayer feels like a transaction rather than a conversation.
That awareness is not your enemy. It is the alarm. It is grace ringing through the fog of habit and comfort, calling you back to the person you were made to be: not a sleeper, but a servant. Not a spectator, but a flame.
Do not lag. Do not settle for lukewarm. Do not serve anyone’s expectation but the Lord’s.
The alarm is ringing.
Get up.
When you are honest with yourself, where is your spiritual temperature right now—boiling, warm, or going cold? And what is the one thing that, if you started it today, would begin to raise the heat again? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
Today’s reflection is written by Johnbritto Kurusumuthu, inspired by the verse shared this morning (1 June 2026) by His Excellency, the Rt. Rev. Dr Selvister Ponnumuthan—Bishop of the Diocese of Punalur—a cherished practice he has faithfully continued for over three years.
If today’s reflection stirred something in you, the Wake-Up Calls series delivers a fresh word to your inbox every morning. Subscribe at riseandinspire.co.in and start your day with something that matters.
Rise & Inspire
Wake-Up Calls | Reflection 147 of 2026 | Post Streak 1043
Monday, 1 June 2026
© 2026 Rise & Inspire — Reflection, Renewal, Relevance