The Dangerous Sleep

One of the places that man suffers his major defeat is in the bed. The sudden trouble of a lot of people started on their beds. One wonderful thing that God can do for you in life is to give you power over the battle of the bed. When you win that battle you will start moving the way God wants you to move. You will not become a prayer warrior if you are still in the bondage of the bed. You will not be useful to the Almighty if the bed is still your cell. You will not become anything powerful to the Almighty if you spend too long a time on your bed.

I read the story of a man who died at the age of 75. He spent almost 25 years sleeping and about six months praying, out of 75 years. It is clear that the fellow had gone to hell fire. He spent one-third of his life sleeping. If you are still caged by the bed then you cannot make any headway spiritually. The major spiritual battles that many people won in their lives were won after midnight.

Matthew 13:25 says, “But while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares, among the wheat, and went his way.”

The enemy does not come to entertain. Sometimes, we start firing at the enemy when he had already planted his evil seed and is gone. We start firing when the destruction has already been done.

Sometime ago, a friend of mine boarded a vehicle to Lagos from somewhere in the eastern part of the country. He sat beside the driver and as they were going he noticed that the driver was dozing. He told him to park the vehicle and sleep for a while before continuing on the journey, to avoid an accident. But the driver abused him and told him that he was not sleeping. He slept off again and before they knew it, they had ended up in a pit. The accident occurred because the driver was sleeping but did not admit he was doing so, like many people would do. Some people allow the spirit of slumber to operate their spiritual life. Today, they are awake and tomorrow they are asleep. Witches and powers of darkness look at many of us in amazement because they don’t sleep. They don’t need coffee to remain awake. I know of a fellow, a child of the devil, who decided to hold night vigils against a person for one month. For the one month, from midnight to 3.00 am, he was cursing the man. The person being cursed was busy sleeping until he started seeing himself walking into a coffin.

Please, at this juncture I would like you to pray like this: “You the powers of the night, my life is not your candidate, in the name of Jesus.”

If you are the kind of person who sleeps so heavily that you cannot wake up at the first tap, you need deliverance, because it means you are going deep down and to the level that anything could happen to your spirit man. If your spirit man can sleep that far, there is a problem.

Romans 13:11 says, “And that knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep: for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed.”

Paul said they were sleeping and had to wake up. If physical sleep is very bad what about spiritual sleep?

Sleep is a period of rest during which the sleeper loses the awareness of his surroundings. So, the danger in sleep is the loss of awareness. The elder brother of sleep is what medical people call “coma.” Some people are in spiritual coma. Messages and prayer do not worth anything to them. They may be at church service but would not hear what the preacher is saying because they are already dead spiritually even though they are alive physically.

When a person falls asleep, all his physical activity decreases, his muscles relax and he could have a nightmare. Occasionally a person sleep-walks. A person who is sleep-walking can rise up, go to the kitchen, drink something go back to the bed and continue to sleep. And if you say, “Who drank this thing?” He would say, “I never stood up, I did not go there.” This is not common in Africa though. I pray that it will not happen to you, in Jesus’ name.

Some people even discuss in their sleep. That is why a local proverb says that sleep is the friend of death. It is during sleep that the agents of satan in our environment lay evil eggs in people’s lives and they try to make sure that their victims do not know what they have done, because if they know, they will shake off the evil eggs. That is why the Bible says that while men slept, his enemies came quietly, planted evil and went away. It is not all enemies that will attack you directly. In fact, most enemies will not attack you directly. They just come, lay their evil eggs and go away.