Sleep VS: Rest

I've had to learn very quickly the difference between rest and sleep. If you can image using your brain everyday for hours to think and ponder on many, many things that are being taught to you and then you are asked to come along side the vision of a church and serve the community at the same time. Wouldn't that be tiring? Well, it's down right exhausting! That's where you need to know the difference between rest and sleep. Let me explain what I have learned from this whole experience.

First, sleep is when you've been up all day, working all day, and need sleep to keep awake and when you finally hit your pillow, you feel that relaxation and you fall asleep instantly. The true test is when you wake up and feel like you got a lot of sleep or if you got none, but instead you wake up every hour or so. That's when you have just experienced "sleep." See, we as natural human beings think we need sleep to make up for lost time. We think that sleep will fix everything, but that's not the case. We need our "rest" and that rest comes from the Holy Spirit.
It says in Isaiah 40:31 that "But those who wait on the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint." In this scripture, it says if we relay on the Lord, He will renew our strength. If we rest underneath the shadow of His wings, we can gain rest. This includes when we sleep at night.

So next time before you hit the pillows and go to sleep, remember that if you only have like 5 hours of sleep before you need to wake up again, that God can give you the rest you need. Next time allow Holy Spirit to invade your heart and just let Christ overload your spirit with rest. If you do this then you will be sleeping in Jesus' presence all the time!