Sleep Archives : Life with the King

How much does sleep impact your day-to-day life? Do you have to be intentional to get healthy sleep? For the majority of people living in Western culture, sleep is often talked about like a luxury, a commodity, or something to be envied. Sleep is a gift God gives (Psalm 127:2). It’s also been a huge struggle for me, as I wrote in Falling Awake. But today, I want to write a bit more about physical, literal sleep.

Have you ever experienced your eyes becoming heavy? All of a sudden, you can lose track of the conversation or tv show or song or task at hand, and just feel powerless to keep from falling asleep. As someone who has experienced insomnia for much of my life, this level of being tired is usually a welcomed state of being. However, there are times when being asleep is more than a little embarrassing, like with Peter, James, and John in the Garden of Gethsemane.

In both the Gospel of Matthew and Mark, we find the story of Jesus’ disciplines falling asleep in Gethsemane, after Jesus had told them to watch while He prayed: “And he came to the disciples and found them sleeping. And he said to Peter, ‘So, could you not watch with me one hour?Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.’ Again, for the second time, he went away and prayed, ‘My Father, if this cannot pass unless I drink it, your will be done.’ And again he came and found them sleeping, for their eyes were heavy. So, leaving them again, he went away and prayed for the third time, saying the same words again.Then he came to the disciples and said to them, ‘Sleep and take your rest later on. See, the hour is at hand, and the Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners‘” (Matthew 26:40-45). Jesus, even on the night He was being chased down for arrest, showed compassionate, loving grace toward the weakness of the flesh in his best friends.

He knew their spirits were willing to keep watch and pray, and their hearts were in the right place. However, their physical bodies could not keep up with their hearts and they, seemingly beyond their control, in weakness, “took their rest.” Paul wrote, “For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Corinthians 12:10). When we are weak and we surrender our weakness to Christ Jesus, in His great mystery He somehow becomes our strength.

In our weakness, we can surrender to be led by God, as a sheep to our Good Shepherd. The prophet Ezekiel used this analogy, “I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak, and the fat and the strong I will destroy. I will feed them in justice” (Ezekiel 34:16). Everything provided for the sheep is from their Shepherd.

It follows that rest and sleep are the gifts of God for us. Rest is built into the very Creation, darkness of night being a daily time for rest, and the slower seasons of plant productivity being a longer time for rest taken by the earth. In a culture of overwork and little sleep, it’s important to remember that the grace of God can be demonstrated to us by rest and sleep. If we aren’t paying attention, we may miss this facet of His grace for us.

I am not saying that trying to stay awake is always disobedience; it also can imply a great God-fearing desire or effort on the part of a person. King David said, “I will not enter my house or get into my bed, I will not give sleep to my eyes or slumber to my eyelids, until I find a place for the Lord, a dwelling place for the Mighty One of Jacob” (Psalm 132:3-5). When our work is for the Lord and we’re within His will and purpose for us, He will give us the strength we need to stay awake to accomplish it if necessary. But those periods require discernment. Those periods are often only for a season. Rest is a need, and a gift God wants to give us as our trustworthy Shepherd; resting in Him, we experience His peace.

God the Father doesn’t sleep. He doesn’t need to! It is because of His work that we can rest: “He will not let your foot be moved; he who keeps you will not slumber. Behold, he who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep. The Lord is your keeper; the Lord is your shade on your right hand.” (Psalm 121:3-5). That God is our keeper is such Good News! God shows us grace in every way, and one of them is to give us the assurance and rest of His strong Presence in our weakness.

I had a minor Peter, James, and John moment just this week. I fell asleep when I really needed to stay awake, and a domino effect of consequences followed. At first, I was upset with myself, but I soon realized God knew my heart, just like He knew that of His disciples’ that night in the Garden. He had already forgiven my weakness. I just needed to thank God for His understanding and let go to take the next step with Him.

While God made us all fearfully and wonderfully (Psalm 139:14), Jesus knew our weakness firsthand. Not only was He fully human, He saw how his best (human) friends couldn’t stay awake with Him. He knew then and knows now, we are jars of clay (2 Corinthians 4:17), not steel. “As a father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him. For he knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust” (Psalm 103:13-14). Even in Jesus’ most difficult moment of anguish in His life to that moment in the Garden of Gethsemane, He showed incredible grace for the fragility of our human flesh, and continues to show us His amazing grace for our weaknesses. Can I get an amen?

If you ever feel reluctant to give yourself grace like me, remember in Jesus’ grace, you are already forgiven. He knows you are human, and He knows your heart. Leave unforgiveness at the cross, and find rest in His presence and peace today.

“The Lord bless you and keep you;the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace” (Numbers 6:24-26).

Thank you for spending some of your time journeying with me. If you haven’t yet, please subscribe to Life with the King, and like & follow the Facebook page; it truly helps me continue writing this blog. Grace and peace.

Historically, sleep has been one of the biggest struggles in my life. I’d sleep when it was time to be awake, and be awake when it was time for me to be asleep. Since I can remember, I’ve had nightmares of sleeping through my alarm and missing something important (even though I can’t remember one time when I actually did).

I’ve felt like I was running late for my whole life, never feeling like I was calm or collected or fully present when I’d show up to pretty much anything. My soul was stressed trying to catch up to wherever my body was due to be. And I’d beat myself up for it. Why did I have to be that way? So I’ve made myself suffer more than anyone else, and been my own worst enemy too. When I finally matured enough to understand the importance of loving myself, well, I was rudely awakened (pun intended).

But this isn’t really a story about literal sleep. I want to tell the story of being asleep spiritually. Only we know where we are spiritually–that’s a private, intimate understanding between you and God alone. No one keeps us accountable for how much we’ve died to ourselves and surrendered to God today. We experience the consequences of that, certainly. But we don’t have the accountability of others unless we invite them into that journey, and they’re willing to walk with us.

Since my life completely spun out last year, I’ve had no other option but to ask for help. I had to let go of the pride that tried to convince me I could handle it with just me and God. Initially, it was purely a survival move to ask for help, not a spiritual one.

If you’re suffering, and trying to handle things alone, let this be an encouragement to let go of what’s holding you back. Ask for what you need. Needing help is not weak, it’s human. Remember that none of us can do anything on our own anyway. We’re just not as powerful in that way as the world wants us to believe, and that is a relief because it helps to move towards what we authentically are–broken and in need of help and a Savior. And in Jesus, we are given His authority to be more powerful than any powers or principalities in this world; through our weakness He is strong (2 Corinthians 12:10). Lay down whatever you’re holding on to and ask for the help you need to be more fully who you really are, and not what the world wants you to be.

I’d heard about surrendering to God for years, but had convinced myself I didn’t really know how to do that. How was I supposed to find time to surrender to God? I had bills, demands on my time, and a mind that could barely focus or be still without it feeling like torture. How was I supposed to even know what He was saying to me so that I could obey?

Those of you who have walked with the Lord a long time will know that I had drifted from the heart of God and wasn’t putting Him first in my life. It had happened slowly and gradually over the course of several years. I spent less time in prayer, less time in the Scriptures, less time desiring to be in His presence and in worship of Him. I spent more time thinking about my own life, where I wanted it to go and what I wanted to do, and unknowingly started building my own kingdom, like I wrote about last week in Jesus’ Kingdom vs. my kingdom. Spiritually, I wasn’t growing. When I’m not growing in relationship with Jesus, I feel like I’m dying. And I was.

But once I asked for help, and stopped pretending everything was good enough to keep going without any changes, I started to wake up, or to “fall awake.” I started to realize I had been asleep to God’s leading, asleep to the subtle changes that indicated I was growing further apart from His will, and asleep to who He had made me to be. I had been living in a way that had become resigned to the status quo, and just trying to get by. I was too tired, burned out, and stressed to wake up. Until I was simply unable to live like that anymore.

I got accountability, reduced responsibility, and focused on enjoying life again. And soon, God convicted me about surrender. I thought I’d surrendered my life to Jesus many times. I’d even surrendered each area of struggle and sin in prayer at a Freedom conference in 2023. But my life didn’t look different, it just felt more like a trap.

God gave me His whole heart, and had been patiently, kindly waiting for me to give my whole heart to Him too. He never asks us to do anything He hasn’t already done first. I had to give my whole life to Him, not just the parts I was comfortable with. I had to surrender all, just like the hymn says.

For me I’ve learned that surrender means not moving ahead with a decision without praying first and waiting for discernment, peace, and understanding from God. Surrender means not letting fear keep me from driving a car or talking to strangers or being vulnerable in a blog post, not by willpower or unfounded affirmations, but because Jesus is enough for me. He empowers us to lean on Him even as we do things that scare us and are uncomfortable for us and trigger our nervous system to shut down. Even there, I am being taught to trust Him in those moments to never forsake me, and to be strong when I am weak.

Surrender means dying to self daily (see The Serpent’s Question). Surrender for me means trusting God for provision when I can’t provide for myself, and changing my career to be aligned with who He made me to be and furthering His Kingdom in all the ways He has made me able. Surrender ultimately means living freely and lightly (Matthew 11:30).

There’s no quick fix, no way to surrender once and for all. It’s an ongoing, living, breathing relationship with Jesus that sustains us in a life of surrender to Him. And there’s no better life to live, because it leads us to freedom and eternal life with Him, the King of Kings.

So, I’m still working on surrendering everything every day, and will be for the rest of my life. Surrendering my literal sleep, a place where I’ve allowed years of shame to come on me, is one of the areas I’m working on now. But I have immeasurable hope, whereas before my hope had grown dull. God who began the good work He started in us will carry it on to completion (Philippians 1:6), no matter how far we may fall along the way. But once we are awake to His truth and His life, we can continue to choose to stay awake.

May we stay awake to the voice of God, and to the work He is accomplishing in the earth.

But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me (2 Corinthians 12:9).

Tag: Sleep

Grace for Sleep

Falling Awake