Sometimes When Your Mind is Racing at 3am, You Just Need to Let It Out
This one is a bit heavy and doesn’t relate to Mooresville, but sometimes when your mind is racing at 3am, you just need to let it out.
We often live our lives swinging between oblivious complacency and paralyzing fear, usually at one extreme or the other, seldom in between.
This week, we’ve witnessed the 10-year treasury bond drop below 4% causing economic turmoil, global stock markets crumbling, and fears of recession. The government adds $1 trillion to the deficit every 100 days, practically ensuring future economic collapse. We’re obsessed with politics and culture, becoming angry or aggressive towards those with differing views, whether we voice it or not. Some of us are out of touch, while others despair over health issues, finances, kids, relationships. The list goes on. I hear it all in my business. Every day.
Over the past year, I’ve seen at least six close friends and acquaintances lose their lives or come near death with everything from heart attacks to colon cancer, all but one younger than me. I am 51. Just last week, another friend took his own life, overwhelmed by the weight of his slowing business and a breakup. He was a Christian man, but no one knew what he was struggling with. He carried it all alone, and it broke him.
I share this because these are things that we should not allow ourselves to worry about and obsess over. We were not given a spirit of fear and anxiety.
I am fortunate to attend a church with a Pastor who steadfastly refuses to compromise the Word or bend to the pressures of political correctness and the world. He simply preaches the truth and lets it sink in. Not everyone likes what they hear and he doesn’t care. It’s like WD-40 penetrating rust. Sometimes we’re content holding on to the rusty bolt, afraid to let go but WD-40 knows how to get down in there and break things apart.
On Sunday, he preached a portion of a sermon written nearly 250 years ago by Jonathan Edwards Jonathan Edwards is known as the Father of the First Great Awakening in the colonies. His sermon is titled “Sinners in Zion Tenderly Warned.” In biblical terms, Zion refers to the church, so this message essentially means sinners in CHURCH tenderly warned. It was so powerful that I looked up the entire sermon and read it yesterday. I have linked it below. It’s not an easy read, but it will certainly put into perspective how insignificant the things of this world are which we choose to argue and obsess over when compared to what’s arguably the most important thing in human existence.
If you choose to read it, remember that when God said, “let us create man in our image,” He wasn’t referring to a human body. He created in us an eternal spirit. A spirit that possesses a soul (our mind) and resides, temporarily, in a body. When the body fails or is destroyed, our spirit, along with our mind, leaves the body and goes into eternity. He created us this way so that He could spend eternity with us yet He gave us the free will to decide if we wanted to spend it with Him. That is what we are supposed to be doing with this limited time we’re given in the body. We’re not supposed to be arguing over what color a presidential candidate is or who the first round draft pick should’ve been.
Again, its a long read and written as a sermon so the first part is setting up. Keep reading. I cannot imagine what heaven will be like, and until reading Jonathan Edwards’ sermon, I hadn’t thought much about the alternative. But after reading it, I can say it puts things in perspective.
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Sometimes When Your Mind is Racing at 3am, You Just Need to Let It Out
This one is a bit heavy and doesn’t relate to Mooresville, but sometimes when your mind is racing at 3am, you just need to let it out.
We often live our lives swinging between oblivious complacency and paralyzing fear, usually at one extreme or the other, seldom in between.
This week, we’ve witnessed the 10-year treasury bond drop below 4% causing economic turmoil, global stock markets crumbling, and fears of recession. The government adds $1 trillion to the deficit every 100 days, practically ensuring future economic collapse. We’re obsessed with politics and culture, becoming angry or aggressive towards those with differing views, whether we voice it or not. Some of us are out of touch, while others despair over health issues, finances, kids, relationships. The list goes on. I hear it all in my business. Every day.
Over the past year, I’ve seen at least six close friends and acquaintances lose their lives or come near death with everything from heart attacks to colon cancer, all but one younger than me. I am 51. Just last week, another friend took his own life, overwhelmed by the weight of his slowing business and a breakup. He was a Christian man, but no one knew what he was struggling with. He carried it all alone, and it broke him.
I share this because these are things that we should not allow ourselves to worry about and obsess over. We were not given a spirit of fear and anxiety.
I am fortunate to attend a church with a Pastor who steadfastly refuses to compromise the Word or bend to the pressures of political correctness and the world. He simply preaches the truth and lets it sink in. Not everyone likes what they hear and he doesn’t care. It’s like WD-40 penetrating rust. Sometimes we’re content holding on to the rusty bolt, afraid to let go but WD-40 knows how to get down in there and break things apart.
On Sunday, he preached a portion of a sermon written nearly 250 years ago by Jonathan Edwards Jonathan Edwards is known as the Father of the First Great Awakening in the colonies. His sermon is titled “Sinners in Zion Tenderly Warned.” In biblical terms, Zion refers to the church, so this message essentially means sinners in CHURCH tenderly warned. It was so powerful that I looked up the entire sermon and read it yesterday. I have linked it below. It’s not an easy read, but it will certainly put into perspective how insignificant the things of this world are which we choose to argue and obsess over when compared to what’s arguably the most important thing in human existence.
If you choose to read it, remember that when God said, “let us create man in our image,” He wasn’t referring to a human body. He created in us an eternal spirit. A spirit that possesses a soul (our mind) and resides, temporarily, in a body. When the body fails or is destroyed, our spirit, along with our mind, leaves the body and goes into eternity. He created us this way so that He could spend eternity with us yet He gave us the free will to decide if we wanted to spend it with Him. That is what we are supposed to be doing with this limited time we’re given in the body. We’re not supposed to be arguing over what color a presidential candidate is or who the first round draft pick should’ve been.
Again, its a long read and written as a sermon so the first part is setting up. Keep reading. I cannot imagine what heaven will be like, and until reading Jonathan Edwards’ sermon, I hadn’t thought much about the alternative. But after reading it, I can say it puts things in perspective.
