worry

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Why You Should Be Tired More Often

Did you know that you can be too tired to worry or be stressed about something? … It happened to me on the weekend.

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TODAY viewers share the funniest spots where their kids have fallen asleep.

When you are tired, you lose some important cognitive abilities … like when I’ve fallen asleep on the couch watching TV and Lily says, “Come on Paul, it’s time for bed.” It makes perfect sense to get up and go to bed – after all, I am sleeping and our bed would be much more comfortable. 

But brain connectors get short-circuited when you are tired. You don’t see things the same way. You don’t think rationally at all. 

When Lily tells me to get off the couch, my brain tells me that the show is not over. Truthfully, I’m not watching the show – I’m asleep! My brain tells me that I’ll miss something, but actually I’ve already missed a lot of things. 

Your brain doesn’t reason well when you are tired; you accept things the way they are.

So sometimes I’ve stayed on the couch, sleeping in some weird position that I pay for in the morning … all because my brain makes me think that this is better than getting up and going immediately to bed.

I’ve been told – though I can’t verify it to be true – that you study better when you’re tired because your brain will more readily and easily accept the information you put into it. When you are alert, you question the information or challenge it. … Just make sure the information you are studying is correct or you will do brutally on your exam!

That brings me to this weekend …

Normally, when I get a phone call late in the evening, I’m immediately concerned even before I answer the call. But on Saturday night I had already nodded off when my cell phone started ringing. 

I just instinctively reached for it.

It was my guest speaker for our church service the next day. Very quickly he told me that his plane had been grounded and he would not be able to make it to speak at our church in the morning. 

Now, normally that would send me into a little bit of a panic. What will I do? What should I speak on? How can I possibly prepare something in time? 

But I was tired and I just accepted the information, jumped into bed and went to sleep. 

No panic, no stress, no worry. I was so tired that my brain didn’t challenge the information. It just accepted it. 

In the morning, I remembered I had spoken at a men’s breakfast a few weeks earlier. I pulled out that talk, spent about forty-five minutes editing it, and was ready to preach. 

No stress, no worry. … Man I’m glad I was tired when I got that phone call!

Here’s the thing: There was one more thing I did do that night as my head hit the pillow. I prayed and asked God to somehow give me a sermon or something to preach. And very quickly in the morning the idea of preaching that men’s message popped into my head. It seemed like God was saying, “Here you go”. It would have made more sense to be stressed and start to work on something right away. But really we should rely more on God to supply our need … and maybe be more tired, so we don’t stress or worry about how He’s going to come through.

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: What are you stressed about right now that you should ask God for? Leave your questions and comments below.

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How Your Words Carry A Lot Of Weight

I think I may be helping my wife lose her mind. We have more power in what we say than we realize, so we really need to make sure what we say is true and right.

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Recently, Lily and I were getting ready to go on a vacation. There was just one glitch. I had to do some scrambling to get a post-dated pay cheque. But I finally got it and we took off.

Things were going well for the first bit of vacation when I realized it was past pay day. So I said to Lily, “We have to get my cheque in the bank”, and promptly got the reply of “where is it?”

I couldn’t believe she was asking that question because I was positive I had given it to her when I came home. So I told her, “You have it!”

She looked at me with a stunned look and I could almost see the wheels in her brain spinning back and forth trying desperately to remember where she had put the cheque.

Both of our minds were now working overtime trying to figure out where this cheque was. We both started looking in places where we might have put it and even places where there’s no way it would be.

All the time I kept telling Lily, “I gave it to you”. And, to be honest, I only thought I gave it to her but I couldn’t actually remember handing her the cheque.

This mini crisis went on for a while. Lily called our son to see if he had seen it at home. She checked to see if we could get by without it. There was even talks of contingency plans of having it couriered to us.

All the while, I was drumming it into Lily’s mind that I had given her the cheque.

For about twenty minutes this kept up, and I was trying to retrace my steps in my head because I thought maybe I hadn’t given my cheque to Lily … not that I was going to publicly admit that out loud!

As I went through my steps, I picked up a folded piece of paper on the coffee table in our cottage. Although I had looked at this paper before, I had only glanced at it because, of course, I had given my pay to Lily.

This time I unfolded the paper and looked at what was there. Guess what? My pay cheque was inside. It all came back to me how I got the cheque and what I did with it.

At this point, however, Lily blurted out, “No wonder I think I’m losing my mind! It’s you planting thoughts in my head that aren’t true that get me worrying that I’m not able to remember things!”

Now she thinks it’s my secret plan to drive her crazy!

Here’s the thing: It’s not a good thing to lead someone to believe something that’s not true. It’s criminal to lead someone to believe something about God and His Word that’s not true. We need to be very careful when speaking for God that our words are not just hearsay. The answer is to know God’s Word and then be careful using words like “God told me” or “God says”. Make sure it’s really true before you lead someone to believe it.

That’s Life

Paul

Question: Have you led someone to believe something that you later found out was not true? I’d like to here your thoughts; you can leave your comment below.