There’s a noise in the middle of the night, a non-descript half of a thud that jolts you wake, and you think, “Great! I am wide awake.” You look at the clock and it’s 3:15 am. If you are like me, your first response is probably frustration. I can’t believe I’m up, and I am completely up! Why?!

But God is sometimes up to something in those early hours. Sometimes He actually has something to say.

It was my Junior year. I was very busy… my Wednesday schedule was booked.

4:30 am  Wake-up
5:15 am Swim team practice
6:15 am Quiet Time
7:15 am-2:15 pm Class
3:30 pm Dance
6:30 pm Dinner
7:00 pm Churchill Girls’ Bible Study
10:30 pm Bed

I was like an efficient machine. My life was down to a science. Even my time with God was scheduled. But it was not during my designated “time with God” that He started showing up. It started on a Wednesday morning with a jolt at 3:15 am. Suddenly I was wide awake and completely miserable.

My initial frustration centered around my schedule. I was furious. Just one hour off and I knew that I would probably crash around 2:00 pm. My plans were foiled, and I was so sure that this early morning disturbance was from the pit of hell. In my fury, I pitched a fit to the Lord. I was married to my schedule. What could be more important than one more hour of sleep?

As angry tears streamed down my face I heard a still, small voice say, “When’s the last time you cried?” It was God. Something in the words could not have come from me. The words probed my heart and bore a truth that could not be ignored. I had purposely been too busy. I was too busy to feel, too busy to talk, too busy to cry, and He knew it. I knew it too.  In my life, outside of school, something was going on. Something I should have been praying about, something I needed to cry out to God about. I was purposely ignoring it. God cared enough to wake me up, frustrate me and make me cry. God knows what we need, He knows how to comfort us even if that means shaking us out of our daily routine to get our attention.

Henri Nouwen, in his book The Only Necessary Thing, tells us that “prayer makes us reach out to God, not on our own but on God’s terms, then prayer pulls us away from self-preoccupations, encourages us to leave familiar ground, and challenges us to enter into a new world which cannot be contained within the narrow boundaries of our mind or heart.”

Sometimes God knows that the best time to pray is at 3:15 am on a Wednesday morning.

God is awake for the watches of the night

There are four night watches described in the New Testament. Jesus and others not only referenced these watches of the night but woke, rose and insisted that others keep watch. In Matthew 26:36-44, Jesus returns to His sleeping disciples and asks, “You couldn’t watch with Me for one hour? Continue awake and praying. Then you will not sin. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.” During the most poignant hour before Jesus is arrested He pleads with His disciples to keep watch and pray. His desire was to involve the disciples even in the most bitter moment of God’s redemption narrative.

God wants to include you in what He is doing. He wants to share, to tell you something special and spend time with you. It is almost like your significant other waking you up in the middle of the night just to listen to you share your heart and to love you, to meet you at your very point of need. God is like that.

Before that fateful night in the garden “in the fourth watch of the night [Jesus] came to them, walking on the sea.” (Matthew 14:25, NIV) Loving Peter and desiring to encourage faith, Jesus urges the precocious disciple to come out and walk on the water with Him. What a tremendous, miraculous moment during the fourth watch of the night. Imagine if Peter and the other disciples rolled over and went back to sleep.

God counsels us in the night

If this young disciple had stayed asleep he would have missed the discovery of a firm foundation amidst waves. A vital lesson for the man who would one day be renamed “the rock.” Imagine if Jacob has refused to wrestle the Lord in the middle of the night. There would be no “Israel.” These lessons that come in the middle of the night are deeply personal, specific to the man or woman being stirred and strangely crucial to God’s redemptive purposes.

Isaiah tells us that, “The Sovereign LORD has given me a well-instructed tongue, to know the word that sustains the weary. He wakens me morning by morning, wakens my ear to listen like one being instructed.“ And Isaiah responds to these early morning calls saying, “I have not been rebellious, I have not turned away.” (Isaiah 50:4)

God gives us songs in the night

And finally, God wants to sing over you!

“By day the LORD commands His steadfast love, and at night His song is with me, a prayer to the God of my life.” (Psalm 42:8, ESV)

So if God wakes you up in the middle of the night don’t roll over – “Arise, cry out in the night, at the beginning of the night watches! Pour out your heart like water before the presence of the Lord!” (Lamentations 2:19)

Inquire of Him and He will sing over you, instruct you and include you in His work of redemption!

Marshall Brown, Albert Shim and Joe White explore the book of 1 Peter, a letter written to Christians whom Peter calls “elect exiles.” Peter writes to provide encouragement, hope and instruction to those struggling to live faithfully in a hostile world.