Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
Welcome to Flat Subject Podcast. Our mission at Vladimer Subject
Ministries is to reach the world globally and disciple them digitally.
Let's dive into this episode.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
If you keep waking up at three am, you might
be wondering is something wrong with me? Maybe it feels random,
or maybe just maybe.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
It's not random at all.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Today, actually I want to talk about what's really going on,
both spiritually and practically, if you're being awakened.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
At those early quiet hours. Now a little warning.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Sometimes we wake up at three am because of poor
sleeping habits.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
Let's be real.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
Sometimes it's too much caffeine, a blue light, or even
some blood sugar changes. God designed your body and you
gotta steward it. Well, here's the thing. Even in those moments,
God can still redeem your restlessness to meet with you.
Speaker 3 (01:06):
But here are my three.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
Reasons why I've experienced in my life where for a
season I would be awakened from three to four am.
The first one is that God wants to speak or
he wants undivided attention.
Speaker 3 (01:20):
See at three.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
Pm, your phone is buzzing, you're busy. By nine ten pm,
your brain is fried. But at three am, it's just
you and God, it's a perfect time to reconnect with
him for prayer, some journaling, tears and just listening. And
it's not that God is trying to be inconvenient. Actually
(01:41):
he's being intentional, and sometimes it may feel like an interruption,
when in reality it's actually God's invitation.
Speaker 3 (01:49):
Psalm sixty three, ver.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
Six, it says, when I remember you on my bed,
I meditate on you in the night watches see David
understood something powerful. God off and stirs people in the
middle of the night, not to mess with their sleep,
but to draw them closer. In Job chapter thirty three,
verses fourteen through fifteen, it says, for God speaks again
(02:11):
and again, he speaks in dreams, in visions of the night.
When deep sleep falls on people as they lie on
their beds, God might be speaking, warning, revealing, and you
got to respond, not just roll over. I remember when
this happened to me on my international trip.
Speaker 3 (02:31):
At first I perceived that.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
As a jet leg where I arrived it was a
total different time zone and I couldn't sleep. So around
three o'clock in the morning, you know, I went out.
It was a very tall building. I think I was
like on twentieth floor or something, and you know, I
was looking into the city and you know, everybody's sleep
and there's this quietness about it, and I just can't sleep.
(02:53):
And so I've had this happen before, and you know,
some people recommand take a little bit of melatonin to
help you fall asleep, and some people, you know, recommend this,
and some people recommend that. And I remember at that point,
instead of trying to find a way, how do I
go back to sleep as soon as possible, or how
do I try to beat this jet leg, I actually
(03:16):
tuned myself to the Holy Spirit and I started to
spend time with him. It wasn't very loud praying because
there was other people staying in the room. I started
to connect with the Holy Spirit. I remember this encounter
till this day because that day he told me to
walk away from my real estate. So I had a
(03:37):
little bit of real estate investment. And the Holy Spirit
pulled a scale over my eyes. He removed the veil,
and I saw that the reason why I was doing that,
this was me communicating with him was because of my
fear that if things don't work out with ministry or
this and that. And then he challenged me, he said,
I want you to give up that real estate. I
(03:59):
want you to sell the first property and give all
the proceeds away. And then the second year, sell the
second property and give the proceeds away as you and
your wife decide, but it has to be generous. And
then he said, on the third year, I will give
you an idea that's consistent with your calling, and it
will have some passive income, but it will have an
(04:21):
active impact on my kingdom and everyone around the world.
Now I first kind of brushed it off. Of course,
I wrote it down. I felt the presence of God.
I wept like a baby. And it was an encounter
around three o'clock in the morning. I could have excused
it and tried to roll back to sleep, but I
discerned at that moment not to be wasted. God doesn't
(04:44):
just speak when the sun comes up. He speaks also
when everything is dark, and he wants to speak to
your heart.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
So I went back home, talked to my wife.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
We got rid of the first property, we gave the
proceeds away, we got rid of the second propert pretty
I think we gave thirty percent of the proceeds away.
And then the year after that actually is where God
started to speak to me about writing a book. Now,
I never made the connection with like revenue or royalties,
because most of you know I give all my books
(05:15):
for free. But God been faithful and that marked my life.
You know today I don't do necessarily like rental properties,
but I do write books, and it's a calling of
communication that got really brought in my life. I wonder
what would have happened if that time, at three o'clock
in the morning, I would have just looked for, I
(05:37):
don't know, some kind of a pill or some kind
of a way to try to fall asleep or count
sheep or something else, instead of take advantage or press
into the Holy Spirit as He was drawing me out
to be with him. The second reason why God might
be waking you up at three o'clock in the morning
is he's calling you to intercession. Biblically, our day or
(06:00):
was broken into watches, and sometimes you read in the
Bible you will see like in a fourth watch. You
must understand is that the third watch of the night
is roughly from midnight twelve am to three am, and
then from three am to six am is the fourth watch.
(06:22):
Why is that important because Jesus spends time with the
Father at night, and around three am he begins to
walk towards his disciples on water. In the fourth Watch,
that three am is the end of the third Watch
and the beginning of the fourth one. I really believe
(06:47):
their spiritual breakthroughs that are pregnant at this hour. From
three am to six am, it's also a time where
many people will say that there's a heightened spiritual warfare.
Maybe God is waking you up for you to stand
in the gap to pray for someone to break something
(07:09):
in the spirit, to war with his prophecies and words,
to speak in tongues, and as you're praying in tongues,
he will give you an impression that you're interceding for
someone someone you know or someone you don't. And then
mark those moments, journal them, because you will see down
(07:30):
the road as you're going to meet people who will say, Hey,
I was going through very difficult things, almost end up
in a car accident that could have claimed my life
around this time, and they were in a different country.
And when they tell you that time, double check with
the time in your journal, and you will be surprised
to see how many times when you were awakened at
(07:53):
three o'clock, it was actually the Holy Spirit calling you
to stand in the gap because of what was happening
to someone. The third reason why you might be waking
up at three o'clock in the morning is you're in
the middle of transition. So not only the three o'clock
to four o'clock is the from third watch to the
(08:15):
fourth watch. But sometimes when you're in transition, you're experiencing
new season. A new season is marked with new stress,
and a new stress can lead to restlessness and actually
a loss of sleep. I've experienced this when I took
(08:37):
over the church as a pastor from a youth ministry
to becoming a lead pastor. First six months, I would
be waking up around three o'clock in the morning. Now,
sometimes it was to thirty, sometimes it was four or
three point thirty. But I would say that three o'clock
was that kind of sweet spot.
Speaker 3 (08:56):
But it was more regular.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
I wasn't being awakened because God was leading me too
intercession at the time, nor was it necessarily an invitation
to an encounter. I was being awakened because I was
overwhelmed what I stepped into. I felt like I had
no strength for the demand that was placed on me.
(09:19):
See the problem with stress sometimes you know, people treat
stress like anxiety, but it's a bit different. Stress is
the gap between the strength you have and the responsibility
that's placed on you. And sometimes you have a higher
responsibility than the current strength, and that causes stress. So
(09:42):
in those seasons, what I would do is, I remember vividly,
I would actually leave the house and go to church
at like three o'clock in the morning, and I would pray.
Now at this time, I wouldn't necessarily pray for an
encounter because I was overwhelmed. I prayed for God to
renew the strength. See I learned earlier that if you
(10:04):
always pray for God to remove the stress that comes
as a result of you stepping into a new season,
you might be praying away what God is about to
do in your life. But the Bible says in Isaiah forty,
verse thirty one, but those who wait upon the Lord
shall renew their strength. So instead of asking God to
(10:25):
remove the stress, wait on Him as you're awakened because
you're stressed out to renew your strength to meet the
demands of this new season. And one of the ways
that you can do is you can turn on some
soaking tracks, and I have plenty of them on my channel.
You can turn on some prayers and worship and just
(10:46):
because you probably can sleep and just be there in
His presence, allow the presence of the Holy Spirit to
strengthen you for the new demand that's been placed on you.
And your heart is waking up, your mind is waking
up at night because of so much stress, overwhelmness, restlessness
(11:08):
that's resting on you. If it goes longer than you know,
a short season, you should seek medical help or professional
counseling or ministry.
Speaker 3 (11:19):
But in some seasons, I've experienced.
Speaker 2 (11:22):
This at least twice or three times in my life
where either I had to transition someone from a ministry
that was very painful and I just kind of had
to process it, and my mind would be awake around
that time I would go to sleep and I would
wake up very early, or when I would step into
something new and just like there would be a lot
(11:44):
more overwhelmness, and at first, you know, of course I
would wake up, you know, and then you kind of
want to go rebuke the devil and everything. But a
lot of times it's not the devil. It's that the
weight has been placed on you. You stepped into something new,
but you're still operating on the previous strength. And God
doesn't want to remove the stress in this situation. He
wants to renew You're straight. So here are some practical
(12:07):
things what to do when you wake up at three am.
Number One, say this, speak Lord, your servant is listening.
Samuel did that at night when God woke him up.
Now we don't know if it was three o'clock in
the morning, but it was early enough that he should
have been sleeping. Secondly, keep a notepad by your bed
(12:29):
and write down what is God highlighting. It could be
on the phone, a journal, but write down what is
God saying, what is he asking or highlighting. Number Three,
when you prompted to pray for your family, your church,
or a missionary or someone that's hurting, do not hesitate
(12:54):
or try to go back to sleep. Pray for them
until the burden lifts, and usually you will be able
to go to sleep right away. Fourthly, if it's the
anxiety or maybe more stress that's keeping you awake, put
on some worship music instrumentals and just be in God's presence.
Sometimes he just wants to be with you. And lastly,
(13:19):
don't waste the wake up calls with Instagram reels or
TikTok scrolling or YouTube shorts. A lot of people to
put themselves back to sleep. They go back to a
numbing mechanism. Don't do that. Because God has waken you
up for the reason. Pay attention because he's trying to
(13:41):
speak to you. So, friend, if God is waking you
up at three o'clock, he's not trying to punish you.
He's probably positioning you. He's not trying to disrupt your sleep.
He's probably inviting you into something deeper. Don't be afraid
of those dark, quiet hours and what's going to happen
with my sleep. God will renew your strength and he'll
(14:02):
share his secrets with you. Proverbs eight seventeen says I
love those who love me, and those who seek me
early shall find me. If this resonated with you, I
want to hear from you. Let me know in the
comments below. Have you had that experience before waking up,
maybe around three o'clock and what happened? How did you
process that? Thank you God, bless you until next time.
(14:25):
I hope that this video helped you to grow in
your walk with God. Imagine multiplying that impact through the world.
Through this ministry. We've discipled over one hundred and sixty
thousand students through our online school, created over sixty reading
plans that over two million people have completed already, and
(14:47):
published resources in eighteen languages. But our heart is bigger
than content. We're feeding orphans, building homes, and partnering with
missionaries on the front lines of the gospel. Would you
consider becoming a monthly partner. Every dollar helps to reach, teach,
and care for more people. Click on the link below
(15:10):
to become a part of this movement.
Speaker 3 (15:13):
Thank you, Thank you.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
For listening to this episode. I hope you're encouraged, challenged,
and also blessed. As always, don't forget to subscribe as
well as to leave a review so that it could
help us to reach other people. And share this episode
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God puts on your heart to support this ministry, your
support will help us to reach more people.
Speaker 3 (15:37):
For Jesus.
Speaker 2 (15:39):
Go to my website and you can find out so
much more free resources from reading plans, blogs, e courses
and so much and all of my stuff is free
of charge, God bless you until next time.