Song of Solomon 5:8

I charge you, O daughters of Jerusalem, adjuring them most earnestly, if ye find my Beloved, that ye tell Him that I am sick of love, her longing had now become overwhelmingly great, due to the very indifference professed by the Lord.

This paragraph correctly pictures the spiritual sleep which sometimes falls upon a single congregation or upon a whole section of the Church. There may still be some feeling of duty and a corresponding battling against the benumbing influence of sleep, but in the eyes of God such a community is dead, even while it has the name that it is living, Revelation 3:1. When the Lord comes to such a church to admonish and incite her to true watchfulness, she is often unwilling to be disturbed. She would prefer to go her lukewarm way, without true life and spirituality. And so the Lord, after an urgent call and attempt to arouse the Church, withdraws His merciful presence. Meanwhile the Church arouses herself to the remembrance of the many evidences of grace and love which she has received at His hands, and so she, on her part, now tries to hold Him back from leaving her. She is again filled with the sweet savor of good works flowing from true faith; her heart eagerly seeks Him; she realizes that His condemnation Revelation 3:17 applies to her. Having been deprived of His presence, she searches most diligently. But the very men who should have aided her in finding the Bridegroom now abuse the Church, while she loudly protests her love for the Bridegroom. Compare the words of the Lord, John 7:33: "Yet a little while am I with you, and then I go unto Him that sent Me. Ye shall seek Me and shall not find Me; and where I am, thither ye cannot come. " If at such times the individual congregation or the Church as such relies only upon the grace of the Lord, there is the best hope for the future.