Give It to God and Go To Bed Minta

Set Your Boundaries With God’s Map

For every good night’s sleep, another tomorrow will come with its own set of challenges. Just like your alarm clock or phone alarm, stress will sound its alarms in your life every day. You can plan ahead, however, and order your life so you are not suffering a constant train wreck of chaos and stress. You can choose to filter stressors so you are not swimming in their aftermath. People who swim in stress all day long find it hard to give it all to God at night and go to bed!

How do you set a plan to filter stressors? I have found three important steps that are helpful (and for easy recall, all begin with the letter A): Acknowledgment, Assignment and Alignment. Acknowledge that every situation passes through God’s hands. Bad things that happen don’t originate with Him, but, as I like to say, He is not on vacation when they happen. Ask Him for insight on them. He will give it. Seek His perspective on stressful situations, and ask Him if He has an assignment for you in response to them. Then carry it out. Finally, align (or realign) yourself with your “first love.” Maybe you have been out of earshot of God’s voice. He might be talking, but you have been on a different radio frequency. Through prayer and His Word, get back to the channel you once heard Him on.

Next, map out your goals. Who or what has been defining the boundaries of your life? Set (or reset) those boundaries according to God’s map for you. Then put the disciplines in place to help you reach your dreams and goals. Remember to keep your three-part self—body, mind and spirit—healthy. (You might even need what I call a “total-temple detox” to get there.) Eat right physically. Ingest and digest God’s Word. Study out your God-given dreams to see what He is saying to you in the night. Pray about how you respond. Understanding the dreams God sends you and acting accordingly can even save your life, or someone else’s. It has saved mine more than once. There is nothing like a prophetic directional dream to set you on the path to fulfilling God’s purposes for you (or for helping others fulfill theirs).

So give it all to God and go to bed . . . and sleep and dream and get peaceful, revitalizing rest.

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