I confess that sometimes I fall asleep while praying on my bed at night. I have often felt guilty of this, especially when I wonder how excited God is about my prayer, when I can\u2019t even stay awake to complete it. On other occasions, I feel OK with it, since sometimes God responds to my prayer while I sleep, and I awake refreshed, with a new answer. After all, the Psalmist says that God, \u201cShall neither slumber nor sleep\u201d (Psalm 121:4). Furthermore, since God is awake while we are sleeping, \u201cHe gives to His beloved even in his sleep\u201d (Psalm 127:2). I\u2019m not alone. For instance, as far back as the late 1800s Saint Th\u00e9r\u00e8se of Lisieux, also known as \u201cThe Little Flower of Jesus\u201d and one of the most popular Catholic saints of the early 20th century, wrote in her autobiographical manuscripts, \u201cA Story of a Soul\u201d that she often fell asleep while praying. She was of the opinion that like all parents, God probably loves His children best when they are asleep. She also popularized the theory that if you fall asleep while praying, your Guardian Angel finishes it for you. I\u2019m not so sure about the angel part, but it is good to have company in falling asleep while praying. I\u2019ve seen this idea on t-shirts, bumper stickers, coffee mugs, and posters, and it\u2019s been attributed to any number of authors\/speakers. I\u2019m not sure who originated it, but I like it: Some fall asleep while counting sheep, I prefer to fall asleep talking to the Shepherd. Give it a try and let me know when you wake up with an answer.<\/p>\n
Join me in praying for the following global concerns (even if you fall asleep doing so):
\n\u2022 Pray for Joe as he works with a new church start in the \u201cOctober\u201d region of Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine.
\n\u2022 Pray for the approximately 134,850 Dutch who have immigrated to Germany and for Timothy, who is living and working among them.
\n\u2022 Pray for Chuck and Vikki in Poland as they share \u201cThe Operation Christmas Child\u201d packages for younger children on January 12th.
\n\u2022 Pray for Randy and Joan as they prepare to return to a new city in Slovenia after a 4 month in the U.S.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I confess that sometimes I fall asleep while praying on my bed at night. I have often felt guilty of this, especially when I wonder how excited God is about my prayer, when I can\u2019t even stay awake to complete it. On other occasions, I feel OK with it, since sometimes God responds to my…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1483","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-monday-morning-manna"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1483","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1483"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1483\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1483"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1483"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1483"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}