I was surprised the first time I read The Life of Antony when Antony talked about sleep and its relationship to the spiritual life.  This is because monks often wake up during the night and pray for hours holding vigils, whether individually or communally.  What surprised me was how Antony spoke about how demons can wake us up and cause us to think about praying instead of going to sleep.  He said, “They do this repeatedly, scarcely allowing us to sleep at all” (Life of Antony, ¶25.2).  He then explained if we heeded these calls by demons thinking instead about the importance of prayer (without thinking about what sleeplessness will do in the long run) and being blinded to the strategy of the demons, then the end result would be to “bring to despair those who are sound and to make them say that their ascetic discipline is useless…burdensome and wearying” (The Life of Antony, ¶25.4).  Why?  Because soon the body will force us to go to sleep, and we will not have any energy to pray.  Plus we will despair when we should be full of hope.

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I cannot remember where, but I remember there was another monk who said that the monks must follow a schedule where time is allotted to prayer and time allotted to sleep, otherwise, soon there will be no more prayer due to exhaustion, and then the life of prayer, our lifeline to God, will cease.  What will be the benefit then?  We should follow that advice too, and have some type of spiritual schedule so we can make sure to always pray and not lose the energy to pray or read the Bible or go to church.

Sleep and the spiritual life are related, and if we do not take sleep seriously, then our spiritual lives will suffer in four ways.

1. We will be angry

Psalm 37:8 says,

“Cease from anger, and forsake wrath;
Do not fret—it only causes harm” (NKJV).

Proverbs 15:18 says,

“Those who are hot-tempered stir up strife,
but those who are slow to anger calm contention” (NRSV).

The Bible is clear about anger.  There are many other verses that guide us away from anger and explain how the wise and righteous keep themselves from anger.  Certainly, those who are mature in their faith are often calm and are not easily angered.  Those same people if they lack sleep can easily become angered.  Now think about those who do not have good control over their anger even when they are well rested, and those people lose sleep.  The anger they can develop from their lack of sleep can be destructive.

Anger will affect our relationships with others including those we love most or those we cannot afford to anger.  Lacking sleep can lead to us hurting those we love most, getting in trouble at work, or not performing at our best at work.  These factors can cause our spiritual lives to collapse because it will breed more anger, lack of trust, resentment, fear, and possibly the inability to pay rent.

Think about how distracted we will be when we come to pray or read the Bible or serve in church with all these problems on our minds.  They could have all been avoided if we paid more attention to our sleep.

2. We will not be able to concentrate

Another way lack of sleep can affect our spiritual lives is by making it more difficult for us to concentrate.

If we are involved in service in our church, whether it is lay service or ordained service, then this is going to be a serious issue.  We cannot afford to not be able to concentrate with those who need us most.  So, actually at this point our lack of sleep will not only affect us spiritually, but those whom we serve as well.  They will not be served the best way when we are unable to concentrate.

In addition, if we want to go deeper in our faith by studying the Bible or reading spiritual books and we do not have the ability to concentrate, then we will not be able to get that depth of faith.

3. We will be forgetful

In addition, we will become forgetful and will have difficulty remembering new things.  If we want to apply advice from a sermon or what we read in a spiritual book, we probably will not remember it if we are lacking sleep.  If we want to memorize Psalms so we can pray them, we will have an extremely difficult time, and it will be impossible to memorize them.

4. We will have no energy

That brings us to the fourth and most important point: we will have no energy to do any good.  If we serve, this is a major issue.  If we are priests leading Bible studies, then delivery will suffer and the congregation will not learn.  If it is the Sunday sermon, then delivery will also suffer.  If we are Sunday school teachers, then we will not be able to prepare and present effective lessons.  More importantly, we will have no energy to pray and to spend time with God or thank and praise Him or to pray about the things pressing on us.  We will have no energy to read the Bible or spiritual books.  We will have no energy to go to church or serve in the community.

Now, not all people have the ability to get a full night’s sleep especially those with extremely demanding work schedules, those with newborn children, and those with insomnia.

However, bearing in mind how lack of sleep can affect our spiritual lives, it is best to try to get as much rest as you can because it will result in calmness, concentration, high energy, and improved memory.  These will all help us grow spiritually in our journey following our Lord Jesus Christ.

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