Sleep is a very precious and natural body process. God designed our bodies to be self-maintaining, meaning it normally sustains itself naturally. Think about how the body responds when a tooth is aching: the whole body is in pain, and is trying to counter the hurt it feels.
It's the same way with sleep. Sleeping is a natural body process needed for the body to recover from the day's stresses and challenges. We naturally feel sleepy when we lack adequate nutrition, are exhausted after a long day of work, or even when we are simply sad.
When sleep is disturbed
When we lack sleep, we feel a lower level of energy and alertness. We're naturally weaker than usual, since our bodies were not able to rest. Often many of us lack some sleep for various reasons, things that aren't always valid:
- We are rushing to finish our jobs;
- We can't sleep thinking about our worries;
- We lack sleep because we had a movie marathon (or some other entertaining activity);
- We just can't sleep because of caffeine and other things.
Seriously, we can avoid all of these if we literally heed what the Lord Jesus said:
"I must work the works of Him who sent Me while it is day; the night is coming when no one can work." (John 9:4)
How your faith in God helps you sleep better
God created man. He knows that our bodies are frail and that we need rest. Like how inventors caution buyers to take good care of the inventions they purchase, God wants us to take care of our bodies. After all, we are temples of the Holy Spirit (see 1 Corinthians 6:19-20).
Here are some ways our faith in God helps us get a good night's sleep.
1.) We make sure to work excellently for God when we are at work – Colossians 3:22-25
Most of us fail to get enough sleep because we have overtime hours at work. When we work for God, however, we are motivated to work excellently and efficiently, making sure to finish when we should. This is very logical: Finish work on time for God, get enough time to sleep.
2. We entrust our worries to God and trust Him for His goodness and mercy – Psalm 23
After we do our best at everything with the strength that God supplies, we then entrust to Him things that we cannot do. We can't drive away tomorrow's woes by worrying about them today; instead we entrust them to God whose goodness and mercy shall follow us all the days of our lives if He's our Shepherd.
3. We trust that He guards us as we sleep – Psalm 3:5-6, 4:8
Lastly, after doing our best and entrusting the outcomes of our work as well as our tomorrows to God, we then trust that He will protect us as we sleep. He never sleeps, and will protect us as we do.
