That we live in the last days is a fact established in the Bible and corroborated by day-to-day life experiences. One key ingredient to surfing these days is sensitivity of spirit. In a number of passages, the Bible warns against excesses with regards to the appetite. Hear what Proverbs 25:16 says for example: “When you discover something sweet, don’t overindulge and eat more than you need, for excess in anything can make you sick of even a good thing” (TPT). Still on the need to exercise restraint, Thomas Brooks said, “Many more perish by intemperance than by violence. Intemperance is the source and nurse of all diseases. More perish by surfeiting than by suffering. Every intemperate person digs his own grave with his own mouth and teeth, and is certainly a self-tormentor, a self-destroyer, a self-murderer”. Put in other words, intemperance is violence against one’s body.

“Intemperance will lead to deadness of spiritual faculties, making it difficult to receive signals from the Spirit of God …Temperance has the power to keep both the physical and spiritual components alive.”

Now, if by some stroke of luck an intemperate person is able to maintain his health and stay alive physically, yet there are other dimensions of existence that are at risk. This is the point of our text. Intemperance will lead to deadness of spiritual faculties, making it difficult to receive signals from the Spirit of God. This may proof more ruinous than physical death as one may be out of alignment with God and not know it. Temperance has the power to keep both the physical and spiritual components alive. There is a time appointed by God to round off the affairs of the world as presently constituted. It will give way to the golden era of the saints. Such a season requires keen spiritual sensitivity. If there is no danger of missing the time, Jesus would not have sounded the warning