I am one of those people. You know the ones: they require every bit of the recommended 8 hours of sleep every night. If I get anywhere between 4-5 hours, I am mildly delirious, then dead a couple of hours later. If I get anywhere from 6-7 hours, I am completely dead and mildly irritable until I get to go to sleep (or get a Diet Coke). 8 hours is the golden zone. I wake up refreshed, happy, and ready to go!

The past few nights I have been between the delirious and dead zones. My 3 o’clock slump is sinking in pretty heavily as I write this, and things are not looking good for the rest of the day. Well, I guess they’re looking pretty good: I’ll probably be in my pajamas by 7. But seriously, I’m struggling with some severe sleepiness right about now.

But it’s worth it.

The past couple of days have been incredible. First, we had an incredibly fun episode of Late Night on Thursday night, which is always exciting! Then yesterday, TLN took off to the Butt-Erhman debate in Florence, Alabama. After a really late night traveling back, the TLN crew got up bright and early this morning and filmed a few more episodes of our favorite podcast, The Church on Trial. Needless to say, the incredibleness that was the weekend has led to a state of near exhaustion for this 8-hours-of-sleep girl.

I say allllll of those things for this reason: I know a few of you who read this, and I am very thankful for you. You are a hard-working, dedicated Christian who is bent on living a faithful life of service to the Lord. You always encourage me and help me, and really, I am so very thankful to God for you. Because of the ways you encourage me, I can tell that you get exhausted, too. I saw quite a few of you at the debate last night, and I know you had long trips back home. I know a couple who had an incredibly long weekend and are now driving 9 hours to head somewhere else to do the Lord’s work. You people are magnificent.

And it will be worth it one day.

It was worth the long drive and late night for me to go to the debate. It was worth the early morning to film a podcast about getting back to the church of the Bible. And if those things are worth it, how much more will heaven be worth it? When we see all that we did in life, we’ll be thankful that we dedicated the days, weeks, and early morning hours to the Lord instead of to a sporting event or movie craze. We’ll be thankful that we meditated on God’s word and spent our time in study and worship to Him, and we won’t wish we’d spent more time doing whatever recreational hobbies we enjoyed. We’ll be thankful that we spent our time working for the Lord, because that means we get to rest on the other side.

I’m not saying we can’t have hobbies or do things we enjoy, but we should use those moments and hobbies as work for the kingdom. We should evangelize and let our lights shine. We shouldn’t complain, and we should willingly take on as much as we can to be able to help as many people get to heaven as we can.

Thank YOU for working so hard for the Lord and for encouraging me to work. Thank YOU for giving me the example to drive as far as I need to or stay as late as it takes or rise as early as I need to…because if I do it for the Lord, it is not in vain. I am thankful for my brothers and sisters in Christ who constantly remind me that Christianity is supposed to be tiresome, because we’re supposed to be working hard! But we know…

“Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on.’” “Yes,” says the Spirit, “that they may rest from their labors, and their works follow them.”

Some weeks are exhausting. For the ones that aren’t, I pray I can find more to do for the Lord, because I want to work here and rest later, and not the other way around!