Pray the Word with David Platt is a resource from radical.net.

Psalm chapter 4, verse 8, in peace, I will both lie down and sleep.

For you alone, O Lord, make me dwell in safety.

This is a great verse, particularly following up on the verse we meditated on from Psalm

chapter 3 in verse 5, where David wrote, I lay down and slept and I woke again for the

Lord sustained me.

So he was talking about how God sustains him and waking him up in the morning.

And then in chapter 4, we have David talking about how when he goes to sleep, he goes to

sleep in peace. Why? Because God makes him dwell in safety. I want you to think about what happens

when you lay down at night. You put your head on your pillow and you think about the day, all that you did,

all that you said, all that you saw, maybe you consider the next day. There's so many things going on

in our lives that we have to think about when we lay down at night. Sometimes we just want to

stop thinking about it all. Sometimes our minds are just full of all these things, sometimes with stress or worry or anxiety

about this or that. And in the middle of it all, Psalm 4-8 says, you can lie down and sleep in peace.

Why? Because you know that the Lord causes you to dwell in safety. In other words,

the Lord has your life in his hands. And this is peacegiving. You think about it, sleep is a pretty

humbling thing. One of my favorite quotes on sleep is from John Piper. He once said,

sleep is a daily reminder from God that we are not God. Once a day, God sends us to bed like

patients with a sickness. The sickness is a chronic tendency to think we are in control and that

our work is indispensable. To cure us of this disease, God turns us

into helpless sacks of sand once a day. How humiliating to the self-made man or woman that he or she

has to give up all control and become as limp as a suckling infant every day. Oh, what a great reminder.

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