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He Gives Sleep to His Beloved: What a Sleep Doctor Taught Me About Rest, Faith & Business

Dr. Lee C. Cordell

— 7 min read
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He Gives Sleep to His Beloved: What a Sleep Doctor Taught Me About Rest, Faith & Business

🎙️ Listen to the full episode on CEO Kingdom Seekers: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2529717/episodes/19204913

For almost a decade, I worked night shifts. Twenty-hour shifts, to be exact.

I would go in at noon and get off around 7:30 or 8 the next morning. And I wore it like a badge of honor.

I would tell people (with a little twisted pleasure, if I'm being real) "Yeah, I haven't slept in 30 hours. But look at how well I'm still functioning."

I thought that was strength.

I thought that was dedication.

I thought God was proud of me for how hard I was pushing.

He wasn't.

And deep down, I think I knew that.

Because I never once said, "God is so good" in the same breath as "I haven't slept in 30 hours."

Those two things did not go together in my heart, even when I was trying to convince everyone around me that I was fine.

When I finally left clinical practice, I slept so much I could barely function.

My drive disappeared. My ego took a hit. And one Sunday morning (a morning I would normally have been coming off a night shift a few short months prior) I woke up and felt something I didn't recognize.

I wasn't tired.

I am not exaggerating when I tell you that I almost cried. I had no idea what it felt like to be rested. And that moment changed everything for me.

So when Dr. Benjamin Long, a sleep physician, military officer, seminary student, and author, came on the podcast to talk about the theology of sleep..

Y'all, I was all in. And what he shared in this conversation has been sitting on my heart ever since.

The Verse That Changes Everything

Dr. Ben opened our conversation with Psalm 127:2, and I want you to sit with it for a moment:

"In vain you rise early and stay up late, toiling for food to eat — for He grants sleep to those He loves."

Here is what our culture does with this verse: it skips it. Or it twists it into a productivity hack, with the message "get better sleep so you can perform better."

But that is not what the psalmist is saying at all.

He's saying that the anxious toil, the rising early and staying up late, the grinding and the striving?

All of it, without God is vain. It produces nothing of lasting value.

In actuality, God gives sleep to His beloved as a gift.

Not as a reward we earn by hitting your revenue goals. Not as something we get when you finally deserve to rest.

A gift. Because He loves you. And me. And us.

Dr. Ben put it this way: our culture asks, "How can I manipulate sleep to get the outcomes I want?" But the biblical question is, "How do I receive this gift that God is offering me?"

That is a completely different heart posture. And it requires a completely different kind of trust.

Why the Enemy Loves Your Sleep Deprivation

Let me name something directly, because I think the enemy is very intentional about this.

The devil does not want you rested.

A rested person is a clear-headed person. A clear-headed person can hear God. A person who can hear God is dangerous to the kingdom of darkness.

So the enemy will whisper things like:

If this is really your calling, you should be thinking about it all the time. You should be doing it all the time. You should be completely focused.

He will convince you that rest is laziness, that margin is wasted space, and that the only way to prove your dedication — to God, to your family, to your business — is to push harder.

And then, when you are exhausted and depleted, he will flip the script and say:

See? This is too hard. Why bother? Just give up.

Both lies. Both designed to keep you off the path God has for you.

Dr. Ben made a brilliant point that the worldview teaches us to treat our bodies like machines and sleep as a fuel source.

That perspective completely misses the fact that sleep is a relationship, a daily act of trust.

It is you saying to God, "I am going to close my eyes and let You hold the world tonight, because I cannot."

What I Had to Learn the Hard Way

Here is what I know now that I wish I had known ten years ago:

Rest comes before the work, not after it.

I used to think I would rest when I had earned it. When the business was stable. When the kids were older. When the launch was done. When the revenue hit the number.

And God kept trying to tell me, Lee, that is not how this works. But I coudn't hear him through the noise (and the exhaustion.)

The Jonah parallel is real for so many of us, y'all.

We're out here laboring in vain- running away from God's direction and provision, doing things in our own way, on our own timeline, with our manmade strategy...

And all the while God is watching us, likely thinking,

I already know you're going to do this. And I'm going to use it. But my heart hurts when you don't listen.

And then, "all of a sudden", the storm hits. The whale sized fish shows up and swallows us whole.

We hit a wall. We get sick. The business stalls. The relationship breaks. The burnout comes.

And when we finally go, "Okay, God. My bad. I' want to do it your way...."

He spits us out RIGHT where we were supposed to be all along.

I am not shaming those who ignore God's design for rest and sleep, because I've LIVED that life. I've been Jonah, exhausted and grumbling under a tree at how other people had it easier than me.

I believe Jonah was so upset because he had tried it the hard way and realized that it wasn't necessary to struggle in order to receive God's grace.

I'm not Jonah anymore- and I want it to be EASIER for you to learn to rest than it was for me.

The Practical Shift That Changed My Business

Here is something that might sound strange: since I started prioritizing rest and asking God whether He wants me to work or rest in any given moment, my business has grown more than it did when I was grinding.

I will put up one social post instead of my former five, and that one post will bring in a hundred people.

People have started asking me, "Lee, what are you doing differently?" And I tell them: "Nothing- other than not doing anything above and beyond what He tells me to."

Dr. Ben talked about margin, and I want to bring that home for you as a business owner.

Profit and abundance come from margin. If you are running at 100% capacity all the time, giving every ounce of your energy, effort, and focus to your business just to keep it alive...

You have no margin.

And without margin, there is no room for God to move, no room for creativity, no room for the unexpected blessing or the divine connection or the idea that changes everything.

But if you build in rest (real rest, God-honoring rest) and you only need 50% of your capacity to run your business well, then you can have a string of mediocre days and still grow.

Because the margin is there.

Because God is in the margin.

What to Do If You Cannot Sleep

I asked Dr. Ben directly: what do you say to someone who has listened to all of this and thought, "Yeah, that sounds great, but that is not me. I cannot sleep. I have tried everything."

His answer was so beautiful I want to give it to you in full.

Here's what He said:

  • Start by understanding that your sleep is part of your spiritual life.
  • Instead of trying to find shortcuts to get back on track, imagine that Jesus is sitting right next to you in your sleepless night.
  • Ask yourself: what would I say to Him? What would I talk about?

Because here is the thing- your sleeplessness might not be a problem to solve, but an invitation.

God might be in that 3am wakefulness, waiting for you.

And the most powerful thing you can do is stop fighting it and start listening.

Dr. Ben also reminded me of something I had never considered: Jesus Himself experienced sleeplessness. In the Garden of Gethsemane, He was in such distress that He could not sleep. He sweat drops of blood. He asked His Father if there was another way. And He did not get the answer He was hoping for.

We worship a God who has been in the dark, sleepless hours with you.

He is not distant from your exhaustion... He is intimately acquainted with it.

My Invitation to You

If you are someone for whom rest comes easily, for whom sleep is not a struggle...

I want to challenge you.

What are you doing with the margin God has given you? Are you stewarding that gift?

Are you using that rest to go deeper with Him, to build something that lasts, to pour into the people around you?

And if you are someone who cannot even imagine what it feels like to be rested, who has been grinding so long that exhaustion is just your baseline...

I want you to hear this: God is not impressed by your hustle.

He is not keeping score of your hours.

He wants you.

He wants to meet you in the quiet.

And He is waiting for you to let Him.

Rest is not laziness. Rest is not weakness. Rest is not something you earn.

Rest is a gift. And He gives it to those He loves.

That includes you.

Always rooting for you,
Dr. Lee

Ready to Build a Business That Runs on God's Rhythm, Not the World's Hustle?

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