Insomnia

My church just finished a series called Insomnia: What Keeps You Up At Night.

I starting thinking about what robs me of sleep. For years it was the fact that I had a baby or a son with special needs. But today it is more often my own anxiety or fear that keeps me awake.

So what keeps you up at night? I know that my issues are all around my inability to truly trust God; to trust Him with the future, with my failures, with my children and husband, with all that I deeply care about. The crazy thing is that I have absolutely no right not to trust Him. I know from experience that He is faithful. I'm encouraged by this story about the Israelites:

1 Samuel 7:7-12 (New Living Translation)

When the Philistine rulers heard that Israel had gathered at Mizpah, they mobilized their army and advanced. The Israelites were badly frightened when they learned that the Philistines were approaching.

“Don’t stop pleading with the Lord our God to save us from the Philistines!” they begged Samuel.

So Samuel took a young lamb and offered it to the Lord as a whole burnt offering. He pleaded with the Lord to help Israel, and the Lord answered him. 10 Just as Samuel was sacrificing the burnt offering, the Philistines arrived to attack Israel. But the Lord spoke with a mighty voice of thunder from heaven that day, and the Philistines were thrown into such confusion that the Israelites defeated them.

The men of Israel chased them from Mizpah to a place below Beth-car, slaughtering them all along the way.

Samuel then took a large stone and placed it between the towns of Mizpah and Jeshanah. He named it Ebenezer (which means “the stone of help”), for he said, “Up to this point the Lord has helped us!”

You have probably been, and may even now be, in a situation where you too were badly frightened at what was approaching and you pleaded with the Lord to save you.

I have been there. And I can say, like Samuel did that day, that up to this point the Lord has helped me.

That gives me hope and courage for the future, even as the next unsettling thing approaches.

Sleep Well