When Christian leaders talk about their sleeping habits, the conversation usually revolves around how little sleep they get. Sometimes it’s a lament. More often, it’s a badge of honor.

Staying up late and waking at the crack of dawn to labor for the Lord sounds noble. After all, Scripture teaches us to make the most of our time (Ephesians 5:16). Yet sacrificing nightly rest — or trying to get by with the bare minimum — is unwise.

Pastoral work is important. We should labor faithfully and diligently in our callings. At the same time, we must recognize that the weariness we feel at the end of each day is a reminder that God wants us to rest.

God created sleep. It is part of His generous provision for us. Psalm 127:2 says of the Lord, “He grants sleep to those he loves.”

Embracing the gift of sleep yields benefits for our physical and mental health, spiritual well-being, and leadership effectiveness.

Physical and Mental Health

Majorities of U.S. adults experience sleep disruptions due to stress (74%), anxiety (68%), or depression (55%), according to the American Academy of Sleep Medicine.

In a 2024 survey of Assemblies of God ministers, 17.3% of respondents expressed an interest in receiving counseling or psychological support for sleep problems.

Poor sleep is a risk factor for a number of health problems, including cardiovascular disease, diabetes, obesity, and mental illness.

To steward our bodies well, we must maintain healthy sleep habits. Prioritizing sleep enables us to do good work, focus on ministry and relationships, and thrive during our waking hours.

Your family members, co-workers, and congregants need you to be well rested and healthy.

Spiritual Well-Being

Good sleep is spiritually enriching as well. Not only is it wise to sleep, but sleep can also lead us into greater wisdom. Cycles of rest both restore and remind us.

Consider three truths sleep teaches us about God.

1. God is gracious. Our need for sleep bears witness to a God who doesn’t demand constant productivity. He is a God of abundance and overflowing grace who invites us into rest.

Sleep — and its multitude of benefits — is a gift God provides, not a reward we earn. Everything we get from a good night’s sleep is received, not achieved.

As you sleep, let your heart grow in affection for God and gratitude for His goodness.

God created the rhythms of work and rest, waking and sleeping to be gloriously complementary and mutually beneficial.

2. God is sovereign. Prioritizing good sleep is a choice to cease striving, stop stressing, put away unfinished to-do lists, and relax in God’s sovereignty. It is an embodied act of faith. Sleep is a spiritual discipline that enacts our trust in God’s provision.

Choosing to stay up late, “toiling for food to eat” (Psalm 127:2), on the other hand, signals that we trust in our own provision more than God’s. Instead of receiving the rest God offers, we make the mistake of the Israelites who thought they needed to hoard manna (Exodus 16:19–20).

Going to sleep declares our full trust that God is in control. We can rest easy, knowing the Lord is always awake. We close our eyes with peaceful assurance that God keeps watch (Psalm 121:3–4).

3. God brings life from death. Have you ever thought about how our sleep-wake cycle is a faint image of the gospel itself? Sleep mimics death. It reminds us that we are mortal, bound for death, and unable to “wake” ourselves in our own efforts.

Every morning when the sun comes up and we arise from our slumber, we enact the hope of resurrection. Life after death.

This cycle also points us to the cross of Christ and the beautiful truth of atonement — not just life after death, but life from death. Indeed, the “death” of nightly sleep provides a new lease on life when we wake.

What a gift that God created a circadian rhythm with the power to remind us of gospel hope!

Leadership Effectiveness

Church leaders should prioritize sleep for their own physical and spiritual health, but they should also consider how their good sleep (or bad sleep) affects those they lead.

This plays out weekly on a practical level. Pastors and church leaders who are well rested tend to serve their people more effectively, with greater joy and energy for ministry.

Those who are weary because of not getting proper sleep are more likely to be short-tempered, combustible, prickly, and primed for burnout. How we steward sleep affects the quality of our lives, as well as the experiences of those around us.

Good sleep isn’t just a blessing for us. It’s a way we love others, including our families, co-workers, congregations, and neighbors.

Your sleep habits also communicate to those you lead. What church leaders model — in all aspects of their lives — often has as much discipleship power as what they preach.

For example, if you lead a sermon series on Sabbath and the value of rest but don’t practice in your own life what you preach from the pulpit, people will notice. If you preach about faith and trust in a sovereign God while projecting an anxious, sleep-deprived, restless presence, the message might come across as less than authentic.

Your life is a sermon. Consider what your daily habits and priorities are communicating.

Missional Opportunity

We live in an anxious age. People everywhere are frantic, fearful, and exhausted from the relentless pace of digital life. Technology never sleeps, our phones are seldom off, and the news cycle is 24/7. We are being conditioned to follow suit, and it’s leaving us depleted.

In this weary world, what would it look like for the local church to be a haven of stillness, quiet, calm, and rest? Because we believe in a gospel of rest, and worship the Lord of the Sabbath, we of all people should lead rested, non-anxious lives.

If we live this way, it will bear countercultural witness and provoke outsiders to wonder, What is it about these Jesus people that makes them so calm? How do they sleep so well at night and so readily embrace days of rest?

Of course, we don’t want to be known as lazy or people who sleep and rest too much. We should simultaneously be known as those who work the hardest and sleep the best — who go all in for the Lord in our waking and resting hours.

God created the rhythms of work and rest, waking and sleeping to be gloriously complementary and mutually beneficial. We flourish in finding the right balance between them.

As we embrace worship in both waking and sleeping, we live into our creational design — the wisdom of God in making night and day, sun and moon, evening and morning, sleeping and waking, resting and working.