Cheer Up!

Prov.17:²² “A cheerful heart is good medicine, but a broken spirit saps a person’s strength.”

If only you play a lot, if you will just laugh a lot, if you just allow God to be God, your life will be without stress. Years ago, my wife will wake me up dead in the night and it takes a lot of effort to wake me up because God gives sleep to His beloved. It is part of God’s promise so why would you want to deny yourself of that beautiful promise. When I am working, I am working. When I am playing, I am playing. When I am sleeping, I am sleeping. The problem with a lot of people is that when they are supposed to be working, they are actually playing. When they should be playing they are working and when they should be sleeping they are working. They mix everything up.

So, my wife had awoken me in the middle of the night and I am wondering, “what have I done again” because ‘midnight talk’ equals ‘serious talk’ in my family. It has not happened in a long time but back then it was pretty frequent. Guess what the problem was?  ‘Why are you able to sleep, with all these problems that we have? You need to explain it’. Excuse me? Why am I able to sleep? She says, “do you know where we are going to get the money to pay our rent?” I say, “I do not know; we are trusting God.” “Yet you are able to sleep?” she says. I say, “Think about it, will my staying awake pay the rent? You have been awake for a while, has that paid the rent?” It has not! In fact, you need to rest well, wake up in the morning energized, then work hard so that you can pay your rent!

We should stop depriving ourselves of sleep because it will tell on your physical body. I attended a conference for church leaders some time ago, and I met some young men that were really fired up for God. It is really refreshing to see young people that can do full-time ministry. We got talking and I cannot remember how we got to the place where they told me their ages. They were between the twenty-nine and thirty-one age brackets. So, they asked me for my age and I asked them to guess. Guess what they said? They looked at me and said thirty – thirty-one and I laughed and told them to add twelve more years to that. They could not believe it, their jaws actually dropped. I knocked it off that maybe these ones could not estimate. Fast forward to a week after that, I was playing golf with a man and for some reason he asked that question. So again, I asked him to guess and he said thirty-two. So, I told him to add ten years to that and he was shocked. Am I saying I look thirty-two? I do not think so, but I am, they said so.

Prayer: Father, help me not to take myself too seriously and let God be God, in Jesus Name. Amen!