Rise and Pray
Pacing the floor at 2 a.m. is an unpleasant, unexpected event, especially when you fell peacefully to sleep at 11:00.
How many times have you been sleeping fine when agitating thoughts suddenly rose to the surface from your subconscious mind? Soon you're wide awake worrying and wondering: "How am I ever going to get through lunch with Gertrude tomorrow? When is the insurance bill due? Why did Harry look at me that way?"
In the light of day most of these wild obsessions don't even make sense, but at 2 a.m. they're monsters. What should you do?
Don't lie there and add fuel to the fire; get up and pray! Jesus told His disciples in the Garden, "Why do you sleep? Rise and pray, lest you enter into temptation" (Luke 22:46, NKJV).
Granted, these men were not pacing the floor, but they were "sleeping from sorrow," but the solution is the same...go on the offensive. Get up and ward off those negative thoughts lest, as the Lord warns, you enter into the temptation (i.e., let them take root and start to act on them).
Prepare for the next "surprise attack" that the enemy may try to launch at an odd time by thinking through your strategy now. Determine in your mind that you WILL get up; you WILL rebuke the enemy and send every one of those thoughts running. Then sleep well. The enemy of your sleep has been defeated!
God loves you and wants to answer your prayer. Say this prayer with me:
Heavenly Father, I thank You that no antics of the enemy are beyond Your power. Help me to get up and call on Your power to defeat the enemy when he next arouses me with negative or tormenting thoughts. I will rise and pray, and thus be restored to a sound, peaceful sleep. In Jesus' Name, Amen.