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Posts Tagged ‘levels’

When my son was a newborn, he was amazingly sleepy. He would sleep for three hour stints; I would have to wake him up to feed him, and he would immediately fall back asleep again. Although I’d read about sleep-training from Gary Ezzo’s book (“Babywise”), it really didn’t seem to be needed.

When my son hit the advanced age of one month, he became able to stay awake for a short time after feeding; he also started to wake up only 20 minutes after I’d put him down for a nap. I realized then that I really was going to have to sleep-train him. So I followed the Ezzo technique, and we soon settled into a comfortable routine of three hour naps. He started sleeping through the night by age 10 weeks, which was an incredibly wonderful blessing for his exhausted parents!

As he grew, he became more wakeful once again, and I would have to re-train him to sleep at this new level. Back to square one. Since I had already trained him once, I knew what to do. This happened over and over as he was growing: Every few weeks or month, he’d jump up a new developmental level and start waking after a very short nap. Then I’d re-train him to sleep, and we’d be good for the next little while.

The spiritual realm is very similar: as we jump up new spiritual levels, we find it more difficult and challenging, and must learn once again to rest in Him.

Todd Bentley once said: “New levels, new devils!” and I find it is true. This morning I asked God why I was struggling with feelings of inadequacy, anxiety and frustration, and He reminded me once again to rest in Him. It isn’t as easy now, but it is just as desperately needed, and I trust that very soon my beloved Papa God will have “rest-trained” me for this new spiritual level — at least, until we move up to the next one!