I've been loosing sleep: lots of sleep. There have been several nights when I've woken up at 3 or 4 in the morning and been up. This mornings sermon was really helpful. It was over John 14. A passage I love to read over and over again when I'm feeling anxious.
3 "And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am."
6 Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
12 Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father. 13 And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. 14 You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it.
18 I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.
19 Before long, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. 20 On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you. 21 Whoever has my commands and keeps them is the one who loves me. The one who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love them and show myself to them.”
It's a sweet passage as the master gently and lovingly prepares his disciples for what is to come. A fitting preface to Easter.
This morning, Mark Dever, my pastor, went on a tangent about sleep. I've got notes from the rest of the sermon, but I was so tired, I didn't retain a ton. But he talked about how we should pray that God would be glorified in more of the things that we do. Then he used sleep as an example. Sleep is a humble thing. For the Christian, when we sleep, we are trusting that our God is still soverign and still working all the things out for my good and his glory. I can sleep with confidence that nothing will happen while I'm asleep that my God is not in control of. I can sleep without fear.
I believe the inverse of that might also be true for me this week. When I can't sleep, sometimes it's because of a lack of trust. I would like to believe that I can use my own logic in the wee hours of the morning to plan out my response to every potential contingency situation that might happen. I should think through the most likely contingencies for those big life decisions, but I don't need to spend hours and hours coming up with a plan every possible thing that I can imagine going wrong. In one sense I waste a lot of time and energy planning for things that will never happen. But my God is also far more creative than I am. As I look back, most of my life has been spent dealing with the things I never even thought to imagine. The hardest things, the things I wish I had been more prepared for, the best moments of my life so far, none of those are things I ever thought to imagine. I've spent so much time worrying about the things that would never come to pass that I don't spend time focusing on the things that will be important regardless of whether the seller of this house agrees to pay for this or that. Things like growing in the fruits of the spirit. Things like discipleship. Things like being kind toward the children that have been entrusted to me rather than rude and harsh because I haven't slept worried about the mortgage guy or galvanized steel pipes.
So tonight, I pray that God would be glorified in my sleep. I pray that he would give me strength to lay aside my desires to control everything and sleep. I pray that I would trust God's goodness more. Even if his plans are not my plans I pray the I will trust that his plans are indeed higher than my plans. I pray that I would be faithful to the work that I need to do this week. That I would be a good model of a loving authority that would point people to God's loving authority.
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