Want to Follow God? Go to Sleep

Why rest is paramount to a “successful” spiritual life.

Karen Swallow Prior

Whether you’re a morning person or a late owl, when you sleep is less important than your amount and quality of sleep. Sleep is so important, in fact, that the Centers for Disease Control is increasingly monitoring U. S. sleep behaviors because the effects of sleep-deprivation on public health are so dramatic. Poor sleep patterns are linked to stress,depression, memory loss, weight gain, lower attention, increased accidents. Good sleep habits, on the other hand, are associated with longer life, weight loss, increased creativity, athletic stamina, and higher grades in school. No wonder Shakespeare called sleep “Nature’s soft nurse.”

We know all this, yet as a culture, many of us continue to lead sleep-deprived lives. 

Read more at Christianity Today

Valentine the Brave

FROM R.C. Sproul Jr. Feb 14, 2012 

A godly husband, then is not one who four times a year takes up the aggravating task of trying to be relational, in order to keep his wife from getting grumpy. Instead a godly husband is tasked with the constant call of communicating his love and commitment to his wife. This is not a few days a year, but every day. Too often husbands get frustrated, even offended by this hard reality. “Doesn’t she think I’m a man of my word? I promised ‘Until death do us part’ and I meant it.”

Such reasoning shows our relational weakness. She doesn’t want to know that she can count on you to grimly see your vow through to the end. She wants to know that you would make it all over again today, and tomorrow, and the day after that. She doesn’t want to know that you will stay with her, but that you want to stay with her.

Read more at Ligonier Ministries

Smart is Not a Fruit

by R.C. Sproul Jr.

We will not begin to get better until we embrace this obvious truth: smart is not one of the fruits of the Spirit. Of course we are to love God with all our minds. But we are to love God with all our minds, not merely understand Him. When our knowledge cannot traverse the distance from our heads down to our hearts, we are suffering from spiritual emptiness. We will not begin to get better until we come to embrace this obvious truth: we come into the kingdom not as scholars or students, but as children.

Read more at Ligonier Ministries