What do you do when you can’t sleep? Sometimes I simply wait it out, eventually falling back to sleep. While I suppose that keeps me in a restful state waiting on sleep to return, I also later feel those were wasted hours! Sometimes then, I’ll get up to read or pray, in hopes it will make me sleepy, so at least I can feel like I was being productive!
Last Saturday night, when I couldn’t sleep, I got up to pray. Three verses came to mind:
“The LORD is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit” (Psalm 34:18).
“Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:5-7).
“Come near to God and he will come near to you” (James 4:8a).
I don’t remember how I arrived at thinking about those verses and the nearness of the Lord. I think I was praying for friends who had lost a loved one, grieving with them, praying for the nearness of God to their broken hearts. My mind probably then took off on the theme of God’s nearness and where else we find that word in Scripture, those being familiar passages to me.
When I got up later that Sunday morning, I started reading “Preparing for the Lord’s Day,” a weekly post our church puts out to prepare us for worship. In it, it said, “To prepare for worship, spend time reading and meditating on… Psalm 34:15–22, Philippians 4:4–7…, and James 5:13–18.”
Two of those passages contained the verses I had pondered in the night, and the third one was one chapter later, but only a page away in my Bible. The sermon focus was not on the nearness of God, but on how God calls every Christian to pray. But it was interesting to see those three Scriptures again being reinforced.
Yesterday, I was looking up a devotional book at Amazon, glancing quickly at the sample pages. The sample devotional started with, “The Lord is near….” quoting after it those verses from Philippians 4:5-7. This sample devotional page from the book was in the context of anxiety: “if the Lord is near, everything changes. You aren’t alone, and the one who is in control, to order and provide, he’s near and he cares for you and he is involved.” (David Powlison).
Today, I opened my photos to go back and find a photo with a friend from a visit I remembered in 2018, and beside those photos was this random one I had saved 7 years ago, not even remembering it, nor now knowing its source:
What do we make of times where the Lord keeps bringing a repeated message? I’m not sure, but one thing, if nothing else, is simply encouragement. We can be encouraged with the message that comes to us through God’s Word and in prayer. We may or may not see an exact application, but we can remember it and hold on to it.
Who couldn’t be encouraged with the thought that, in all of our circumstances, the Lord is near. He sees you, He knows you, He knows what you are going through, He knows your joys and your sorrows, and He is near. Not distant, but right there with you, drawing near to you when you draw near to Him. The Lord is near; we have no reason to fear!
That’s a message I can go with today! Perhaps it will encourage you too.
“But as for me, the nearness of God is my good;
I have made the Lord GOD my refuge, That I may tell of all Your works.”
Psalm 73:28
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