Be sober, be vigilant… Part 1
As 2025 begins to draw to a close, I woke up this morning with a pull towards silence. Not the aesthetic kind. No candles, playlist, or perfectly timed journal moment. Just a quiet, internal nudge to pause; to stop moving, stop responding, and stop carrying everything for a moment.
I realised I needed distance from the noise. Not just notifications and opinions, but the constant demands on my life. The weight of ministry that never really switches off. A Master’s degree that follows you even into rest. A career that requires leadership, excellence, and vision. Motherhood; beautiful, sacred, and relentless in how it asks you to pour, again and again.
All good things.
All God-given things.
And yet, all capable of becoming loud and distracting.
This morning, I wasn’t trying to be deep or dramatic. I just knew that if I didn’t intentionally create space, I wouldn’t really be enquiring of the Lord, I’d be squeezing Him into the margins of an already overcrowded mind.
So, phone on airplane mode… I chose silence.
Not to escape responsibility, but to recalibrate.
Because there’s a difference between being busy for God and being attentive to Him.
In that stillness, I asked Him plainly:
“Lord, what’s the move for 2026? What’s the strategy?”
And His response was simple.
“Be sober. Be vigilant.”
I remember pausing, because this wasn’t the first time He’d spoken these words to me this year, and I’ve learned when God repeats Himself, it’s not because He’s short on new words. It’s usually because there’s something in there I’ve skimmed over, something I’ve understood enough to nod at, but not enough to live out yet. So instead of rushing past it, I grabbed my bible, concordance, and notebook and I went back to study 1 Peter 5:8-9, properly.
If this was going to be the word for 2026, I wanted to understand what God was actually asking of me; not just spiritually, but practically.
“Be Sober”… but sober from what?
What made this word hit differently for me is that I don’t actually drink alcohol. So when the Lord said, “Be sober,” I knew immediately He wasn’t talking to me about wine or partying or anything obvious like that. That easy interpretation didn’t apply, which meant I couldn’t skim past it or tick a box and move on. That’s what pushed me back into the text.
The word translated as sober in this scripture comes from the Greek word νήφω (nēphō), Strong’s G3525. So yes, while at its most basic level it does mean not drunk, when you follow how it’s used across the New Testament, it becomes very clear very quickly that God isn’t limiting this instruction to alcohol.
νήφω (nēphō) carries the idea of being:
clear-minded
steady
self-controlled
not under the influence
Essentially, to ‘be sober’ in this context, means to be mentally and spiritually clear. Not numbed out, overstimulated, emotionally disregulated, or moving through life on autopilot. And that’s when it really clicked for me; sobriety in the Bible isn’t about being dull, restricted, or rigid. It’s about being clear enough to discern what’s actually going on beneath the surface.
Which led me to ask myself a slightly uncomfortable question:
If God is telling me to be sober, and I don’t even drink, what has been influencing my mind without me realising?
Because Scripture is very honest about this: there are plenty of things that can intoxicate you without ever touching a drink.
So what does intoxicate us?
Once I accepted that God wasn’t talking to me about alcohol, I had to sit with the real implication that sobriety is about influence.
What has access to your mind? What shapes your reactions? What’s quietly directing your decisions?
So I went back to Scripture and actually studied it, tracing how the Bible talks about sobriety, discernment, and deception across different passages. The Word is very clear that intoxication isn’t limited to what you drink. There are patterns, attitudes, and internal states that Scripture consistently warns will dull spiritual alertness and distort judgment.
Through that study, it became clear that the Bible identifies several things that can intoxicate us, not always loudly, not always obviously, but subtly enough to shift our thinking and influence our choices without us even realising.
Fear and anxiety are one of the first. (Luke 21:3 & 2 Timothy 1:7)
Jesus talks about the cares of this life weighing the heart down, and that wording matters. Anxiety doesn’t always show up loud and dramatic. Sometimes it just makes everything feel heavy. You’re praying, but distracted. Reading the Word, but not really taking it in. Always alert, always braced, always anticipating the next thing and the worst case scenario.
Not only does fear and anxiety narrow your vision, it pushes you into reaction mode, and makes urgency feel like wisdom. Paul contrasts fear with a sound mind, and when you look at the word he uses, it’s about being balanced, disciplined, and clear. Anxiety does the complete opposite, it overstimulates the mind until clarity feels distant.
Lust and unchecked desire are another. (1 Peter 1:13–14 & James 1:14–15)
Scripture treats lust as deceptive, not just tempting. It messes with your reasoning before it ever becomes behaviour. You start justifying things you’d normally have the sense to walk away from. You convince yourself it’s “not that deep,” when deep down, you know it is. That’s why Peter links sobriety to not conforming to former lusts. Because once desire clouds judgment, you’re already compromised.
Pride and self-reliance show up repeatedly. (Isaiah 5:21, Romans 12:3, Revelation 3:17)
This one’s sneaky, because it often looks like strength, competence, and “I’ve got this.” But Scripture consistently warns about being wise in your own eyes. And sometimes pride doesn’t look loud or arrogant, sometimes it looks like moving without checking in with The Holy Spirit, praying after deciding, or carrying things alone because you’re used to being the strong one. Self-reliance can numb sensitivity and land you in a place where you’re still functioning, still producing, but less dependent on the Lord, and less yielded.
False teaching and deception are explicitly described as intoxicating. (Ephesians 4:14 & Revelation 17:2)
When Paul warns that believers can be “tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine” , he isn’t just talking about confusion. He’s describing a lack of grounding, where your beliefs are constantly being shaped by whatever sounds convincing in the moment. What stood out to me as I studied this is that being “tossed” doesn’t mean you’ve rejected God, it means you haven’t settled deeply enough in truth to recognise when something is pulling you off course. Revelation takes this even further by saying that nations were made drunk by deception. That language is really intentional. Deception doesn’t usually arrive as something obviously false or aggressive. It comes wrapped in familiarity and sounds reassuring. It often carries just enough truth to feel safe, while slowly dulling discernment over time. What became clear to me is that false teaching rarely denies Scripture outright. Instead, it selectively uses it. It emphasises the parts that feel comfortable and quietly avoids the parts that challenge, convict, or call us to maturity. Over time, this creates a version of faith that feels easier to live with, but lacks depth, accountability, and transformation.
Paul also warns that people will seek out teachers who say what their ears want to hear. That tells me deception often partners with desire. It feeds what we already want to believe, which is why it’s so intoxicating. It doesn’t feel like error in the moment; it feels like relief. Without sobriety and vigilance, truth can slowly be diluted, conviction can soften under the guise of grace, and discernment can become less sharp, not because we don’t love God, but because we’ve been influenced by something that sounded right while quietly shifting our understanding.
That’s why this instruction to be sober matters so much. Because not everything that sounds loving is rooted in truth, and not everything that feels affirming is actually from God.
Distraction, excess, and pleasure are also named. (Luke 8:14)
Not sin. Not rebellion. Just… too much.
Too much information, too much stimulation, too much noise.
Jesus says pleasures can choke the Word; not because they’re evil, but because they take up space. When your attention is constantly split, it becomes harder to sit with God long enough to actually hear Him. So in this case, sobriety isn’t just about what you avoid, it’s about what you give your attention to.
And finally, unresolved hurt, trauma, bitterness, and offence. (Hebrews 12:15 & 2 Corinthians 2:10–11)
Scripture treats bitterness as defiling, which immediately tells me this isn’t just about emotions, it’s about perception. Unhealed wounds and unprocessed trauma don’t stay contained to the past; they quietly become filters of the present. Trauma shapes what feels safe, what feels threatening, what we expect from people, and even how we interpret God’s voice. Trauma and unresolved hurt also have a way of keeping the nervous system on high alert. You become stuck in survival mode, coping, functioning, never fully present, but always braced. And when you’re constantly braced, clarity is harder to access. Everything is assessed through pain memory first, and not present truth.That’s when discernment gets cloudy. Bitterness, trauma, and offence don’t just hurt and mark you, they alter your perception.
By the time I got to the end of this study, it was clear to me: anything that dulls spiritual alertness, distorts judgment, or quietly replaces trust in God is biblically intoxicating. It was easy to analyse the Scriptures, highlight the verses, and nod along in agreement. Much harder to let the Word turn the mirror back on me. Because once you understand that intoxication isn’t always obvious, you have to ask yourself whether you’ve been influenced in ways you didn’t initially recognise.
So I had to ask myself some honest questions.
What has been shaping my reactions this year?
Where have I been more reactive than discerning?
What have I been carrying that I normalised because “that’s just life right now”?
Where have I relied on myself more than I realised?
I didn’t ask these questions to condemn myself, but to bring clarity. Because truth is you can’t surrender what you refuse to name.
So I made a list. Not a dramatic one. Just an honest one. Everything that came to mind; and one by one, I surrendered them before God. Not in shame, or with long explanations. I just brought it to Him as it was, no performance, no overthinking. Just the quiet awareness that He already knew, and was still inviting me closer. That moment reminded me that surrender isn’t dramatic. It’s gentle, it’s honest, and about choosing closeness over control. I didn’t leave that moment with a list of rules or a rigid plan. I left with clarity. The kind that settles you, not the kind that pressures you. It reminded me that sobriety isn’t about restriction, it’s about freedom. Freedom to see clearly and to discern without strain, to respond from truth instead of habit, fear, or fatigue.
As I move towards 2026, I’m holding this word gently but intentionally. Not trying to perfect or perform it. Just choosing to stay aware of what has access to my mind and heart, and being honest with God about anything that tries to take up space it shouldn’t.
This is only Part One.
Next, I’ll share what I’ve been learning about what it means to be vigilant, not anxious, not guarded to the point of hardness, but awake, anchored, and properly positioned.
For now, I’ll leave you with the question I’m still sitting with myself:
What has been influencing your mind lately? and are you giving God room to speak into it?
Take your time with it.
P, xo
