3 AM Moments

It’s 3:00 o’clock in the morning…

I am realizing that my bouts of insomnia are the result of an undercurrent of worry in my life.  Tonight, I awoke again with nagging thoughts of impending financial ruin…how my family continues to flirt with disaster, running just a couple of months away from losing it all.  I am harassed by the thought of just how much overhead it takes to run my family and my real estate business….its enough to make me nauseous.

I’ve been plaugued by this monster for the last 18 months or so as I have chosen to feed my family with a job that is very cyclical in nature.  Any man who lives and breathes a 100% sales commission existence knows that of which I speak.  The constant pressure to cultivate new business…close the deal.  

I feel like I have been treading water for many seasons and it is getting more and more difficult to keep myself afloat.  I relax for a bit and catch my breath when there seems to be some money in the pipeline…but that feeling is quickly swallowed up by the 3am wake up call that screams…”who are you kidding?  you’ll never get ahead of this…its a train wreck waiting to happen.” 

Fortunately, I recognize the deceitfulness of my thoughts in the midst of the sleepless nights and feel compelled to capture them…even if it is the middle of the night. 

I am also aware of another stream of consciousness however, in the calming influence of God’s Word which reminds me of his past provision…and His promise of a hope and a future.  It may not look like the future I had planned but then again, did I not commit my life to the One who asks to live out His Life through mine?

He wants a complete run of the house…He wants the hopes and desires for my future to be yielded to His…He wants these 3am moments and struggles with stewardship to be about more than just my plans and activities, He wants these left sacrificially at the alter as I allow His life to be lived in and through me.

Author and fellow brother Ian Thomas reminds me that “every step you take, every attitude you adopt, every decision you make, everything you do and hope to be, is either in dependence upon the God who created you as His own dwelling place, or else the byproduct of the demon spirit of this world…which perpetuates a lie through a mind-set of self reliance in fallen humanity”.

For most of my life, I have worshipped at the altar of self-reliance.  It has been all about my plans and selfish satisfaction of my needs.  And my flesh rebels frequently against being brought into submission.  As a Jesus follower, I have not yet arrived at the place that I long for in my spirit…the place where I crave His intimate counsel, where I earnestly seek to order my daily priorities around His plans for my life, to live out a life of abandon to love…freely giving that which has been so generously given to me.

Sometimes, it takes a 3am moment to remind me that my life is not my own and that the worries of my day are inconsequential to a God who loves and cares for me in a way that I will never understand this side of Heaven.