Things That Go Bump in the Night
>> Thursday, November 6, 2008
Eldredge talks about his sleep being stolen in this section. Make sure that you are reading this section and not narrowing it to sleep, but to the fact that something is being stolen. Sleep is what is being stolen from him, but it might be something different for each of us. Do you notice that anything is being stolen from your life lately? What might you be surrendering right now through subtle agreements, like his "You're probably going to start waking up at 4:30 a lot. It just comes with getting older."
What is your response to his prayer? What do you think about ending the day asking the Father to restore and renew you, rather than just letting exhaustion, anger or anxiety be the end of your day? He also brings up a lot of spiritual warfare. He points out that God wants us to be intentional, to rise up and fight, not try to ignore it and "fluff up your pillow and go to sleep."
2 comments:
Right now I feel like our health is being stolen from us. Since Nov. 1, someone in our family has been sick. I got strep and the rest of the family got some kind of stomach thing. We got healed up and now Jeff has strep, the doctor is treating the kids for it just in case, and Jadyn has pinworms again.
I think one of the agreements I made was "Everyone's going to get sick since one of us did." It's true that strep is pretty contagious but God is bigger than the illness and can protect the rest of the family.
I think it's very important to end the day asking for restoration and renewal. So much happens during the day to draw us away from God and make us feel exhausted, anger, anxious....By asking God to restore us we are getting rid of all the junk from the day and will be able to sleep more peacefully and be ready for a better day the next day.
On a more personal note (hopefully not too personal)I also feel like my intimacy with Jeff is trying to be stolen. We have come a long way and have made huge progress in the sex department, even before our trip to Hawaii. Since we've been back, we have been so busy and one of us has been sick so we haven't been able to keep things going. I really feel like Satan is trying to attack us there because he's afraid of how much stronger our marriage is and our family is because of the renewed intimacy between Jeff and I.
Being intentional and fighting back in this spiritual battle is key to everything. If we're fighting how can we feel defeated?
Lately I feel like our sleep has been stolen. There are some nights that it seems as thought the boys are all tag-teaming us. One gets up, then another....as if they are taking turns. Sleep is a biggy for us because it is like a domino effect. No sleep leads to a tired, low energy family. Zach and I will end up snapping at one another out of exhaustion, the kids end up fighting more during the day and have meltdowns over things that would normally not bother them.
We have realized for sometime that this was a spiritual attack and pray against it. Sometimes it takes several times and we have to get fairly ticked off and heated about it, but at least it is at the enemy and not our own family. We HAVE to be intentional about it! Not being intentional is like knowingly letting the enemy mess with your family. If someone man broke into the house and tried to rob or harm us, we would fight back, wouldn't we? This is the same thing - you have to fight to protect your family.
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