Pastor Chigozie planted his church in Kubwa, on the edge of Abuja, with eleven people in a rented classroom. Nine years later it had six hundred members, two Sunday services, a Wednesday Bible study, a Friday night vigil once a month and a deliverance meeting every Saturday evening. He preached at all of them. He counselled couples on Tuesday nights. His phone was never switched off, and he was proud of it. “A shepherd does not sleep while the sheep are in danger,” he liked to say. He had not taken a day of leave since the church began.
His wife Uloma had stopped complaining about it years before. She simply learned to run the house around his absence. The children knew that Daddy belonged to the church, and that if they wanted to see him they should come to the vigil.
One Saturday night in March, after the deliverance meeting finished at a quarter to one, Chigozie drove home with their youngest daughter asleep in the back seat. He had been up since five. He remembers the street lights of the expressway, a song on the radio, and then a jolt and the sound of the tyres hitting the kerb. He had fallen asleep at the wheel. The car mounted the edge of the road and stopped against a drainage culvert with a crumpled bumper and a burst tyre.
Nobody was badly hurt. His daughter woke up crying with a bruise on her forehead. Chigozie sat in the driver’s seat on the dark roadside, shaking, holding her, thinking about how close it had been.
When the elders of the church heard, they came to his house on Monday. They told him, kindly but firmly, that he was going to take a month’s leave, starting immediately. And Chigozie, the man who had built a congregation out of a classroom, felt something he had never felt in nine years of ministry. He felt ashamed. “What will people say?” he asked Uloma that night. “A pastor who goes on holiday while his people are suffering?”
It is a question many faithful people carry.
Jesus noticed they had not eaten
Mark tells us about a day when the apostles returned from their first mission. Jesus had sent them out two by two to preach, cast out devils and heal the sick, and they came back full of reports. Mark records what Jesus said next: “Come ye yourselves apart into a desert place, and rest a while: for there were many coming and going, and they had no leisure so much as to eat” (Mark 6:31).
We have looked at this passage in an earlier teaching on diligence. Here I want to draw out one detail. Mark gives us the reason Jesus called them away, and it is strikingly physical. They had not eaten. The crowds were so constant that the disciples had not had time for a meal.
Think about what that tells us. Jesus was at the height of His public ministry. The need around Him was enormous and genuine. People were sick and lost and hungry for His word. And in the middle of all that, Jesus noticed that His friends had skipped lunch. He paid attention to their bodies. He saw their tiredness and hunger as something that mattered, and He did something about it.
The apostles had also just received news of the execution of John the Baptist (Mark 6:14-29). They were carrying grief as well as fatigue. Jesus did not tell them to press on because the harvest was plentiful. He told them to come apart with Him. “And they departed into a desert place by ship privately” (Mark 6:32).
That word privately matters. The rest Jesus prescribed involved leaving the crowd. It required a boat and a deliberate departure. Rest that can be interrupted at any moment by a phone call is not quite the rest Jesus gave His disciples.
When the crowds ran ahead and met them on the other shore, Jesus had compassion and taught them, and then He fed five thousand people. Compassion sometimes cuts rest short. But notice what Jesus did afterwards: “he constrained his disciples to get into the ship, and to go to the other side before unto Bethsaida, while he sent away the people. And when he had sent them away, he departed into a mountain to pray” (Mark 6:45-46). He sent the crowd home. He sent the disciples away. And He withdrew to be alone with His Father. Even the Son of God ended a day of ministry by dismissing the crowd.
He giveth his beloved sleep
One of the psalms of ascent, sung by pilgrims on their way up to Jerusalem, speaks directly to people like Chigozie:
Except the LORD build the house, they labour in vain that build it: except the LORD keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain. It is vain for you to rise up early, to sit up late, to eat the bread of sorrows: for so he giveth his beloved sleep.
The psalm is headed “for Solomon,” the king who built the temple and many other great works. That makes its message even more striking. The great builder is reminded that building is ultimately the Lord’s work. “Except the LORD build the house, they labour in vain that build it.” The watchman stands on the wall all night, but unless the Lord keeps the city, his watching is in vain.
Then the psalm turns to the person who cannot stop working. “It is vain for you to rise up early, to sit up late, to eat the bread of sorrows.” The bread of sorrows is the bread of anxious toil, eaten hurriedly by someone who believes everything depends on him. He gets up before dawn and stays up past midnight, not because the work demands it but because fear does.
“For so he giveth his beloved sleep.” Some translators render the line slightly differently: he gives to his beloved while they sleep. Both readings say something precious. Sleep is God’s gift to those He loves. And God goes on working while His beloved are asleep. The harvest grows in the night. The city is kept while the watchman dozes. Your church, your business and your family remain in God’s hands during the eight hours when you are unconscious.
Sleep, then, is an act of trust. When you lie down at night and let go of consciousness, you are confessing that you are not the one holding the world together. David knew this: “I laid me down and slept; I awaked; for the LORD sustained me” (Psalm 3:5). He wrote that, according to its title, while fleeing from his son Absalom. In the middle of crisis, David slept, because the Lord sustained him.
Only one Keeper never sleeps. “Behold, he that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep” (Psalm 121:4). That is a description of God, not of His servants. Chigozie’s proud saying, “A shepherd does not sleep,” was true only of the Chief Shepherd. Every under-shepherd needs to sleep, precisely because the Lord does not.
Asleep on a pillow
If we want to know what a perfectly faithful human life looks like, we look at Jesus. And one of the most surprising pictures of Jesus in the Gospels is this:
And when they had sent away the multitude, they took him even as he was in the ship. And there were also with him other little ships. And there arose a great storm of wind, and the waves beat into the ship, so that it was now full. And he was in the hinder part of the ship, asleep on a pillow: and they awake him, and say unto him, Master, carest thou not that we perish?
Jesus was asleep. The storm was violent enough to fill the boat with water, and He was sleeping through it “in the hinder part of the ship, asleep on a pillow.” Mark includes that homely detail, the cushion in the stern, as if to make sure we understand that this was real sleep. Jesus had spent a long day teaching the crowds from a boat. He was tired, and He slept.
John gives us a similar glimpse. On the journey through Samaria, “Jesus therefore, being wearied with his journey, sat thus on the well” (John 4:6). The Son of God was tired from walking. He sat down. He was thirsty, and He asked a Samaritan woman for water.
These details are not incidental. They tell us something about the incarnation. “Wherefore in all things it behoved him to be made like unto his brethren” (Hebrews 2:17). Jesus took on a real human body, with real limits. He grew tired. He needed food and sleep. He withdrew from crowds. And He did all of this without sin.
That means physical limitation is not sin. Tiredness is not a moral failure. Needing sleep is not a sign of weak commitment. If the sinless Son of God slept on a cushion in a boat, you may sleep in your bed without guilt. The limits of your body are the limits of a creature, and Jesus shared them.
It also means that Jesus understands your exhaustion from the inside. “For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities” (Hebrews 4:15). When you come to Him tired, you are coming to Someone who has been tired. He does not look at your weariness with impatience.
If the sinless Son of God slept on a cushion in the stern of a boat, you may sleep in your bed without guilt. Physical limits are the limits of a creature, and Jesus shared them.
Strength for the faint
Some believers answer all this with a verse from Isaiah. They that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength. Surely, they say, a person full of the Spirit does not need to rest like everyone else. Let us read the whole passage:
Hast thou not known? hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God, the LORD , the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary? there is no searching of his understanding. He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might he increaseth strength. Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall: But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.
Isaiah begins with God: He “fainteth not, neither is weary.” Then he turns to us, and he is unsentimental about it. “Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall.” The strongest human beings, at the peak of their energy, run out. Isaiah does not treat that as a spiritual problem. He treats it as a fact about being human.
The promise is for exactly those people. “He giveth power to the faint.” The renewal of strength is a gift to the weary, not a reward for refusing to be weary. And the condition is waiting upon the Lord, which in the Hebrew carries the sense of hopeful expectation, of looking to Him and trusting Him. Waiting is the opposite of frantic striving. It often involves stillness.
God’s renewal can come in many ways. Sometimes He gives fresh strength in a moment of prayer, beyond anything we could explain. Very often He gives it through the means He built into our bodies: sleep, food, a day of rest, the company of friends. When the angel came to the exhausted Elijah, the first form that renewal took was a meal and a long sleep. Waiting upon the Lord and resting your body are not rival strategies. The second is frequently one of the ways the first is answered.
A rhythm written into creation
The fourth commandment puts rest into the heart of God’s law:
Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work: But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is , and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.
“Six days shalt thou labour.” Work is commanded. “But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work.” Rest is commanded too, with the same authority.
The reason given in Exodus goes all the way back to creation: “For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth... and rested the seventh day.” God did not rest because He was tired. Isaiah reminds us that “the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary” (Isaiah 40:28). He rested to establish a pattern, and He “blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.” Rest was built into the structure of the world before sin ever entered it. It belongs to the goodness of creation, not to the curse.
When Moses repeated the commandments in Deuteronomy, he gave a second reason: “remember that thou wast a servant in the land of Egypt, and that the LORD thy God brought thee out thence through a mighty hand” (Deuteronomy 5:15). Israel had lived under Pharaoh, who never gave them a day off. When Moses first asked for a few days to worship God, Pharaoh’s response was contempt: “Ye are idle, ye are idle” (Exodus 5:17). He doubled their workload. In Pharaoh’s economy, rest was laziness and the only measure of a person’s worth was the number of bricks they made.
The Sabbath was God’s declaration that His people were no longer slaves. A free people rest. That is why the command extended to servants, strangers and even animals. Nobody in Israel was to be treated as Pharaoh had treated them.
PunchlineMany believers today still hear Pharaoh’s voice. When they stop working, something inside says, You are idle, you are idle. That voice does not come from God. It comes from the old house of bondage.
Under the New Covenant, believers are not bound to the Sabbath as a legal requirement for righteousness. Christ is our rest, and Paul speaks of sabbath days as “a shadow of things to come; but the body is of Christ” (Colossians 2:17). Sincere believers differ on how a weekly day of rest should be kept today, and Paul allows for that difference (Romans 14:5-6). But Jesus Himself said, “The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath” (Mark 2:27). The rhythm of work and rest was made for our good. A believer who never stops is ignoring a gift God built into the world for him.
When availability becomes the measure of devotion
In many ministries, and many workplaces, there is an unspoken rule that the most devoted person is the most available person. The pastor whose phone is always on. The worker who answers messages at midnight. The choir director who holds rehearsal until one in the morning. The volunteer who never says no. We praise these people, and we quietly look down on anyone who protects an evening or takes a holiday.
But availability is not the same as devotion. Jesus Himself was not endlessly available. After a night of healing in Capernaum, He rose early and went to a solitary place to pray. When the disciples found Him and said, “All men seek for thee,” He answered, “Let us go into the next towns, that I may preach there also” (Mark 1:37-38). There were still people in Capernaum who wanted Him. He left anyway, because He knew what His Father had sent Him to do. Luke adds that “he withdrew himself into the wilderness, and prayed” (Luke 5:16) at the very time when great multitudes were coming to be healed.
There is a quiet arrogance in the belief that everything will collapse if I rest. It assumes that I am indispensable in a way that only God is. And it often hides something else: the need to be needed, the fear of being replaced, or the sense that my worth depends on my usefulness. The gospel speaks to all of those. You were accepted in Christ before you did any work for Him. Your standing with God does not rise and fall with your output.
Moses learned that even the greatest leader has limits:
And it came to pass, when Moses held up his hand, that Israel prevailed: and when he let down his hand, Amalek prevailed. But Moses’ hands were heavy; and they took a stone, and put it under him, and he sat thereon; and Aaron and Hur stayed up his hands, the one on the one side, and the other on the other side; and his hands were steady until the going down of the sun.
“Moses’ hands were heavy.” He was the man of God, holding up the rod of God, in a battle that depended on it. And his arms got tired. There was no rebuke for that, and no suggestion that more faith would have kept his arms in the air. Aaron and Hur found a stone for him to sit on and held up his hands, one on each side. Moses’ weakness became the occasion for others to share the work, and the victory belonged to all of them.
If you lead, let others hold up your hands. Build a team. Train associates. Share the preaching. And if you are a member of a church, consider whether you have been treating your pastor as though he should never get tired. Give your leaders permission to rest, and honour them when they do.
The honour of recovery
Paul wrote about one of his co-workers in a way that speaks to everyone who has worked themselves into illness:
Yet I supposed it necessary to send to you Epaphroditus, my brother, and companion in labour, and fellowsoldier, but your messenger, and he that ministered to my wants. For he longed after you all, and was full of heaviness, because that ye had heard that he had been sick. For indeed he was sick nigh unto death: but God had mercy on him; and not on him only, but on me also, lest I should have sorrow upon sorrow. I sent him therefore the more carefully, that, when ye see him again, ye may rejoice, and that I may be the less sorrowful. Receive him therefore in the Lord with all gladness; and hold such in reputation: Because for the work of Christ he was nigh unto death, not regarding his life, to supply your lack of service toward me.
Epaphroditus was a remarkable man. Paul calls him “my brother, and companion in labour, and fellowsoldier.” The church at Philippi had sent him to carry their gift to Paul in prison and to serve him there. Somewhere in that service, he became seriously ill. “For the work of Christ he was nigh unto death, not regarding his life.”
Look at how Paul responds. He does not hold Epaphroditus up as a model of how every worker should drive himself to the point of death. He sends him home. “I sent him therefore the more carefully, that, when ye see him again, ye may rejoice.” Paul wanted him to recover among the people who loved him. And he tells the church how to receive him: “Receive him therefore in the Lord with all gladness; and hold such in reputation.”
That instruction matters, because Epaphroditus may have worried that coming home early would look like failure. Paul anticipated that and gave the church a clear direction: honour him. His illness was not a disgrace. His return was not a retreat. His recovery was part of God’s mercy: “God had mercy on him; and not on him only, but on me also, lest I should have sorrow upon sorrow.”
There is something important here for churches. We tend to celebrate the people who keep going and quietly overlook the people who have to stop. Paul does the opposite. He honours the man who gave everything, and he honours the time he needs to heal. A church that understands this will not make its members feel ashamed of illness, of recovery after surgery or childbirth, or of the long months it can take to regain strength after bereavement or burnout.
Practising recovery
NuggetWhat does it look like, in practice, to receive the limits of your body honestly? Here are some places to begin.
Sleep. Treat sleep as part of your stewardship, not as wasted time. Most adults need far more than the four or five hours many of us survive on. If you find you cannot sleep well despite trying, speak to a doctor.
Take a weekly day of rest. Plan it, protect it and switch off your phone for at least part of it. If your work or ministry makes Sunday impossible, choose another day and guard it as faithfully. Pastors especially need a day that is not Sunday.
Take your leave. Annual leave is not a luxury or a sign of weak commitment. If you have not taken any in years, ask yourself honestly why not. Long-serving pastors and church workers may also benefit from an extended period of rest and renewal after many years of service, and wise church boards plan for it.
Recover properly after illness. When you have been sick, injured, had surgery or given birth, follow your doctor’s guidance about returning to work and ministry. Do not rush back to prove your dedication.
Notice warning signs. Falling asleep at the wheel, dozing in meetings, persistent exhaustion that sleep does not fix, frequent headaches, chest pain, or a constant sense of dread are signals to take seriously. If you are drowsy while driving, pull over somewhere safe and rest. Have your blood pressure checked regularly, and see a doctor about any persistent symptoms. Where tiredness has become low mood or you feel you cannot cope, speak to a doctor or a qualified counsellor as well as your pastor. Asking for help is wisdom, not weakness.
Grieve honestly. Grief is tiring. On the night of His arrest, Jesus found His disciples “sleeping for sorrow” (Luke 22:45). Luke, the physician, noticed that sorrow had exhausted them. If you are grieving, expect to need more rest, not less.
Let others carry some of the load. Delegate. Say no to some good things so that you can say yes to the best ones. Trust that the God who builds the house can use other people’s hands too.
Pastor Chigozie took the month. The first week, he told me, was miserable. He kept reaching for his phone. He felt guilty every time he slept past six. He imagined the church falling apart without him.
It did not fall apart. The associate pastor preached. The elders handled the counselling. The vigil went ahead under the leadership of a young deacon who, it turned out, had a real gift for it. The offering was slightly up.
By the third week, Chigozie was sleeping eight hours a night. He went for the medical check-up he had been postponing for years, and he has kept up with the doctor’s advice since. He took his children to the park. He and Uloma had long, unhurried conversations, and he discovered, with some embarrassment, how much of their family life he had missed.
When he came back, he preached on Mark 6:31. At the end of the sermon he made an announcement. From now on, he said, Monday would be his day of rest, and his phone would be off. Emergencies would go to the elder on duty. The Saturday deliverance meeting would become fortnightly and finish by ten. And every pastor and worker on the staff would be expected to take their annual leave.
Some people grumbled. Most were relieved. Several told him afterwards that they had felt guilty for resting for years because they had watched him never stop.
PunchlineUloma told me that the change she noticed most was small. “He sleeps now,” she said. “And when he sleeps, he is not afraid.”
Teaching Companion
For Reflection
- Have you ever felt that rest was a sign of weak commitment? Where did that belief come from?
- What does it mean to you that Jesus slept in the boat and grew tired at the well?
- How does Psalm 127 change the way you think about sleep?
- In your work or ministry, is availability being treated as the measure of devotion? How might that change?
- What warning signs in your own body or habits might God be asking you to take seriously?
This Week
This week, choose one specific day or half-day to rest, and plan it in advance as the disciples planned their boat trip. Switch off your phone for at least part of it. Each night, before you sleep, pray Psalm 3:5 aloud: “I laid me down and slept; I awaked; for the LORD sustained me.” If you have been ignoring signs of exhaustion or ill health, book a medical check-up before the week ends. If you lead others, find one way to give someone on your team the rest they need.
A Prayer
Lord Jesus, thank You that You know what it is to be tired. You slept in the boat and rested at the well, and You called Your disciples to come apart and rest. Forgive me for the times I have believed that everything depends on me, and for treating my body as though it had no limits. Teach me to trust You enough to sleep. Free me from Pharaoh’s voice that calls rest idleness. Help me to honour others who need recovery, and to let others hold up my hands. You are the Keeper who never slumbers, so I can lie down in peace. Amen.
Truth received brings freedom. Truth believed establishes the heart.
Scripture quotations are from the King James Version. · Illustrations using first names only are composites unless stated otherwise.