This is a real story, and for me personally, it's one of the most
incredible testimonies I've ever heard.
In December 2023, I was speaking at an evangelistic meal and a
man came up to me and said, would you mind if I shared my
testimony with you? The guy, he was quite a big guy,
quite a tough guy. And I said, of course, I'd love
to hear it. Anyway, Dave told me that he was
one of these guys who had lived quite a a wildlife.
He was a a motorbiker and he travelled all around.
He'd been to Amsterdam, he'd done all kinds of things, got
himself into all kinds of trouble.
And he said during the lockdown in 2020, he was in his man cave
surrounded by his motorcycles, and he felt a certain dread, a
fear of God just fall on him. And he found himself just just
crying on the floor, just crying and, and and, you know, couldn't
get up. He just felt like he was
overwhelmed by by God. His wife came into the room at
that time and and saw him that what's wrong with you, Dave And
his all he knew is that God had met with him and he'd been
forgiven in some kind of way for for what he'd done all the wrong
things he'd done. That was Saturday night.
On Monday nights, okay, he didn't know which God it was who
had spoken to him, but he knew God had met with him.
Monday nights. At 16 minutes past three, Dave
is woken up, looks at his phone 16 minutes past three and tries
to go back to sleep. The next night, at 16 minutes
past three, again Dave is woken up and he looks at his phone.
The next night, again, he's woken up, looks at his phone.
What time is it? 16 minutes past three.
On the 4th night, he said. It's almost as if God was
saying, boy, this man is really, really slow.
He's not getting a hint. At 16 minutes past three, Dave
was woken up again and just decided to get up, go on his
computer and he typed in on his computer Bible 316.
And what verse did he find? John 316 For God so loved the
world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever
believes in him shall not perish, but have everlasting
life. It is incredible, isn't it, how
God can speak to us in the middle of the night.
And if you're an atheist and you're listening to this right
now, you explain to me that coincidence, how Dave was woken
up four nights on the trot at 16 minutes past three.
Now, if you just joined us and you've never seen one of these
videos before, my name is Jo Kirby and I've got another
channel called Off the Curb Ministries where I make sort of,
how can I put it, shall we say, out there content, you know, big
sort of content. The videos that you'll see on
Off the Curb are completely different to the videos you'll
see on this channel. It's almost as if two different
people are filming the videos. But on this channel, I just want
to go through the Bible with you, share a few thoughts of
you, and have a nice cup of Joe because my name is Joe.
So please do stop the video right now.
Get yourself a nice coffee, a cup of tea, whatever you want to
drink. And we're just going to slowly
go through the scriptures and think about this idea of when
God wakes us up in the middle of the night.
This is particularly on my mind at the moment because actually
last night God woke me up at 3:00 AM.
So, you know, last night I, I went to bed quite late.
I was very, very tired. I'd actually been walking for
four hours with my wife. It was her birthday.
We'd been up in the mountains walking and walking.
We didn't even have a baby carrier on for our for our
little baby. So we're carrying our baby.
We're taking it in turns on our arms.
We're exhausted. So I was really tired last
night. I stayed up watching Little
House on the Prairie because I like to live life on the wild
side. So we're up till midnight last
night, me and Emma, and I'm really tired.
And yeah, after all this tiredness, I got woken up at
3:00 AM in the morning. I've been praying about a
certain issue that's been going on.
I'm not going to go into details, but when I was woken
up, it was almost as if I got an answer to prayer on this
particular issue. It was almost as if God was
saying to me, Joe, this is a season of pruning.
This is a season where you just need to lay aside all of these
different things. And with much that is given,
much will be required. Now, other Christians, other
people, they might be able to do these things.
They might be able to have these situations in their life.
But I know in my life at the moment, where I am in the season
I'm in, I need to lay aside some of these things, cut them out,
and have this season of pruning. And I do believe there was no
accident that I could not get back to sleep at 3:00 AM this
morning. It was on my mind.
I was thinking all of these things through and I was praying
to the Lord God. And it is interesting because
God didn't make an accident when this happened.
So on Sunday now I was preaching at another church and it was
kind of a modern church and they were singing the, the, the song
You're a good, good father. Have you heard of that song
before? So we're singing that away and I
begin, I begin crying. I know I'm about to get up and
preach and I'm like, Joe, pull yourself together.
Stop, stop crying. And I thought that that song is
beautiful. It's a bit like that, you know,
yes, Jesus loves me for for adults.
So I decided to buy the CD now. Just let me know in the comments
section if you are old school like me and you still listen to
CDs. I'm not one of these who has it
all on their phone and connects it to the to the car through
Bluetooth. I listen to CDs still, so I
bought the CD and me and Emma are listening to it and I want
to quote some lyrics from the song.
It goes like this. But I've heard the tender
whisper of love in the dead of the night and you tell me that
you're pleased with me and that I'm never alone.
And I said to Emma, I wonder, is that theologically correct?
You know, we've got to be careful, haven't we, That, you
know, all these people who are saying, God told me this, God
told me this about this president or God told me this
about this month, or God told me that.
We've got to be careful, haven't we?
Because we do know that there have been false teachers in the
past who have said, you know, for instance, Joseph Smith said,
I prayed to God and I wanted to know which was the one true
denomination. And so God told me to create my
own, the Book of Mormon. And so I wrote out this book
that contradicts the Bible in many places.
And he also Joseph Smith, if you look at his life, he was also
said that God told him to leave his wife and marry another.
You see, people can say God told me this, God did this, and God
spoke to me in this way. But it's very hard to discern to
know whether this person has really heard the voice of the
Lord. Now, one thing you can be sure
of, God speaks to us through scripture.
But I'm not going to say that God doesn't speak to us
personally. You know, like Chris Tomlin says
in this song that we can't hear that whisper.
So I'm saying to Emma, should we even listen to this song?
Is it theologically correct? And then here I am the very next
night at three AMI get woken up and I really did feel like it
was the Lord saying to me just answering a prayer that wouldn't
necessarily have been answered if I was in the busyness of
daytime doing all the things that I'm doing.
So we know that nothing is by accident.
We know that God is sovereign. But I want to ask you a
question. Does God wake you up in the
early hours of the morning? Does he wake you up at midnight?
1:00 AM, Two AM, 3:00 AM, four AM, 5:00 AM.
Is it an accident or is the God who's sovereign over all things,
is he trying to say something? Sometimes, there's no doubt
about it. Sometimes we might have had too
many cups of Joe in the day and that's why we've been woken.
Sometimes we're just not a great sleeper.
Or maybe you, you sleep next to a railroad or a, you know, on a
train or a bus or a busy road and that wakes us up.
Or sometimes you might have a little baby and they don't let
you sleep. Do they?
It could be that, but sometimes, sometimes God does speak to us
in the night. You see, spiritual things happen
in the night. Watch.
That's something I want us to think about and I'm going to
give you some proof of it in the Scriptures now.
So please, if you've got a Bible, please would you just
turn to Genesis 32 verse 26 with me?
Genesis 32 verse 26 So here we have in the middle of the night,
Jacob is woken up by the Lord himself.
He sees the Lord and what does Jacob do?
He laid hold of him. He begins to wrestle with him.
The Bible says in in Genesis 32, verse 26 and he said, let me go
for the day breaks. This is the Lord.
Or some would say it's the Angel of the Lord.
I believe it's God himself, but he said I will not let you go
unless you bless me. So what's the lesson here?
Sometimes the Lord God can wake us up so that we might be
blessed in the night. Sometimes he might wake you up
in the middle of the night so that we might have a blessing
that we can tap into. We might be able to find
something great in scripture. There might be a time to just be
still and know that I am God. It's been a busy day, but just
know as I, I lie down on my bed, God is with me.
I'm saved, I'm washed in the blood of the Lamb.
I know that I'm forgiven and a blessing can come upon us.
Another example of something spiritual that happened in the
night is in Acts 12. You know the story well.
Peter is in prison and the Saints, they're worried about
him. Oh, we want you to be free,
Peter. So they decide to organise a
prayer meeting. They're, they're in the night
watch, they're praying. Lord, God, please free Peter.
What does the Lord do? He sends an Angel to come and
set Peter free. And Peter's amazed.
I've been set free. So he decides to go to the
brethren. And there he, he knocks on the
door and a young girl called Rhoda.
I love that name, Rhoda. If there's anyone called Rhoda
watching, just please let me know.
But Rhoda, Rhoda answers the door and she sees Peter, or she
looks through a hatch. I can't remember exactly.
Maybe someone will correct me. But she looks through and she
knows it's Peter. And instead of opening the door,
she leaves Peter outside. And she goes into the Saints and
says, Peter's here, he's been freed.
And what do the Saints do? The Christians start saying no,
no, no. Maybe it's a, a, a version of
Peter. Maybe it's Peter's Angel.
Or maybe it's, it can't be Peter.
There's no way he'll be freed from prison.
And yet they're praying for Peter to be freed.
In other words, they're lacking in faith for the very things
they're praying for. And eventually they do answer
the door. They do bring Peter in.
And the word in the Scripture, it says they are astonished
there Peter is. So what can we also have in the
middle of the night? Sometimes the Lord can free us
in the night. Sometimes there, there are
shackles there there are bonds, there are things that that hold
on to us. And the Lord might wake us up in
the night to pray about a particular sin, about a
particular thing that's got a hold of you, a grip of you.
And tonight you need to pray for that.
You need to pray. Set me free, God, let this not
hold me anymore. And who knows in the night
watch, that might be the very night that you've been set free
from this sin that's held you for so long.
You must forgive me. As you know, this is very
unscripted, these messages and I'm full of allergies at the
moment. So please forgive me for my my
blocked nose. But here's another example.
Joseph, which Joseph am I talking about?
Joseph who was married to Mary. Joseph was warned in a dream,
you need to take your child, the Lord Jesus Christ, and you need
to take him to Egypt because Herod has got a plan that he
wants Jesus. He does not want there to be
another king in town. He wants to be the only king and
he's coming for the Lord Jesus Christ.
And not only that, if you remember the wise men as well,
they also heard a dream in the middle of the night.
They were going to go back to Herod and, and tell Herod all
about this Kingdom where they could find him and, and where
Herod could come and worship. But Herod, again, he was being a
bit crafty because he wanted Jesus.
He wanted to take Jesus out and remove him from the scenes that
he would be the only king. So he was warned in the night.
And that could be exactly the same for us, that there may be a
warning for you and I that we are to be warned of something.
Maybe it is a person that doesn't have the best interest
for us. Or maybe we're just to wake up
and read the scriptures and remind ourselves of the coming
judgement and that we are to to tell as many people about the
gospel. I don't know what it is, but
sometimes God does wake us up to to warn us of something.
So just to recap your mind, sometimes the Lord wakes us up
to bless us in the night. Sometimes he wakes us up to free
us in the night from a particular sin.
Sometimes the Lord wakes us up to warners in the night.
What's the fourth thing he does? Sometimes the Lord wakes us up
to be persistent in the night. Jesus Christ tells a very
interesting parable that is a picture of why we should pray
and not give up. One day one of a neighbour in in
town, he's woken up in the middle of the night by another
neighbour who says, our old friends, please, please wake up,
please wake up. I've got a friend coming over to
stay and we've got no food in the house.
Could you just lend ME3 loaves of bread?
No, this neighbour, he's saying it's the middle of the night, my
children are sleeping, the doors locked, no, go away.
But this neighbour doesn't give up, he keeps knocking.
Does the man get out of bed just because he's his friend though?
He gets out of bed to give him the three loaves, just basically
to get rid of him. Because the man is so
persistent. And God is telling this picture
that even a nuisance of a neighbour, if that person will
get what he wants, will not the Lord God who's good in all of
his ways, if we are persistent in prayer, will he not give us
what we ask? Sometimes the answer's no, but
He will answer prayers if we're persistent.
And sometimes, sometimes, why might God wake you up?
The answer is he might wake you up.
So you have a bit of extra time to be persistent in prayer, a
bit of extra time to seek His face again because you've been
busy in the day. He wants that extra time for you
to lean into Him and let Him speak to you that that quietness
in the dead of the night. If you've got a Bible there,
please would you turn to Acts chapter 16, verse 25, because
I've got another one for you. Acts 16 verse 25 But at
midnight, Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to
God, and the prisoners were listening to them again.
We find 2 precious Saints, Paul and Silas.
They're in prison. And instead of being, you know,
down and and sad and thinking, woe is me God, why have you
allowed this to happen? We were just trying to be your
faithful servants. What are they doing in the
middle of the night? They're rejoicing.
They're singing hymns to the Lord God.
They're they're calling out the Lord's mighty name in the prison
and all the prisoners can hear, the prison guards can hear.
And what does the Lord God do? He shakes the ground and
suddenly their shackles are broken free.
The the prison door is open and Paul and Silas are free.
So why do you think? What do you think I'm going to
say next? Why does God wake us up in the
night? Sometimes He wakes us up so that
we might worship him. Can I ask you a question?
When was the last time you sang a song of joy to the Lord?
When was the last time you put on a worship song?
Or you sang one that you know of by heart and began singing a
hymn to the Lord God? And I'm not talking about when
you're at church, just you on your own, in private.
You see, we're commanded to be singing every day, and yet so
often we neglect this joy because it is a joy.
So maybe God might be waking you up in the middle of the night.
If you don't know what the reason is, maybe it's just
simply to get up, say a prayer, sing a hymn, and then maybe go
back to sleep. They do say as well, I have
heard this before that and you know, the, the professionals,
the experts, they say if you can't sleep, instead of just
laying there trying your best to fall back asleep, if it's, you
know, been 5-10 minutes, get out of bed for 20 minutes, just do
something and then go back to bed and you're more likely to
fall asleep. Well, could it be in those 20
minutes that you just read a few scriptures, sing a little hymn,
not too loud, so that you wake up the rest of your family and
then go back to bed? Maybe that's just a little
thought, a little tip for someone today who might struggle
with with sleeping. And then also, can we also just
flick a little bit further into the New Testament, into Matthew
13, please? Matthew 13, And we're going to
read verses 24 to 25, another parable he put forth to them
saying the Kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed
in his field, but while men slept, his enemy came and sowed
tares among the wheat and went his way.
Can you hear that? Does that make sense?
What is Jesus warning us of? He's warning us that sometimes
when we sleep, that's when the enemy comes.
That's when the enemy comes to to sow discord.
The adversary comes. And sometimes we might be woken
in the night because something bad has happened to us perhaps.
Or sometimes while we're sleeping, if we stayed up and
prayed, we could pray that we would be kept safe from the
wrongdoings of the evil one who is trying to take us out, who is
trying to to hurt our faith. So what might we be called to do
in the night? I say this very gently because I
do not know the situation you're going through, but some of us
might be called to to grieve in the night, whether it's the loss
of a job, the loss of a business, or perhaps the loss of
a loved one, someone we're dear and.
Dear and near to us who we miss greatly, perhaps God's calling
you to to just pray. Just pray and seek His face for
comfort after losing such a precious one to you.
So what am I trying to say here? The goal of this video is not to
turn everyone into, you know, night owls and to say you must
all stay up late and you must all, you know, never sleep
because the holy man of God, he's he never sleeps because we
know that's not true. The Scripture talks about sleep.
What a precious gift it is. The Bible says that God knows
our frame, that we're made of the dust, we're weak.
And if you believe that you do not need sleep, which some
people rather proudly do, there is a generation that's saying is
all we do is we work really, really hard.
We work so hard. We bring up our own success by,
you know, getting up early and staying up late.
Actually, you're being arrogant there and you're pretending that
you're like God, that you, you have endless reserves of energy.
But actually, no, the truth is we're made of dust.
We need to humble ourselves and we need sleep.
And actually one of the disciplines, I would argue, of a
godly man or woman is someone who goes to bed at a reasonable
time and rises early because they've had enough sleep before
midnight. As you know, that's not
something I manage to do often and it's something I long to do
is to just go to bed at 10:00 every night.
But very chaotic and and very disorganised at times.
I don't manage that. But the point is this, the Bible
says that He gives his beloved sleep.
So sleep is a precious gift from God and we ought to think that,
you know, we can build our own house.
You know, unless the Lord builds a house, the workers labour in
vain. So we must make sure that we
lean into Him and seek his face and get proper sleep.
So what am I trying to say? What I am saying is there are
times, there are seasons where God may, like my friend Dave at
the beginning, wake us up every night or just one night.
But he wakes us up for a very specific reason.
He wants to speak to us. So how should we react if we're
woken up in the middle of the night?
What is the biblical, the godly way to act?
Well, you're probably thinking, Joe, why have you not turned
here yet? Well turn with me to One Samuel
chapter 3 and we'll finish with this thought.
One Samuel chapter 3 and verse 10, verse 10.
Now the Lord came and stood and called other times, Samuel.
Samuel and Samuel answered, Speak for your servant he is.
You know the story. Well, Eli is an old priest, and
he's brought under his wing a young priest, a young prophet,
Samuel. And Samuel hears a voice in the
night saying Samuel, Samuel, and he thinks it's Eli calling him.
And so he keeps going into Eli. Eli, what do you want?
I'm here and Eli doesn't realise what's happening at first.
And as the night goes on, suddenly Eli realises it's the
Lord who's calling Samuel's name.
And he says, next time when the Lord calls Samuel, Samuel say
speak Lord, for your servant hears.
And that's what we are to do. If perhaps you can hear the
voice of the Lord, not saying audibly necessarily.
It wasn't audible for me last night.
I just had a sense that this was a real answer to prayer because
I've been so confused about this situation.
But when we sense that the Lord is speaking to us, let's just
say speak, Lord, for your servant hears.
Let's be quiet and think, what is the reason why God's woke me
up? Is it to bless me in the night?
Is it to free me from a sin? Is it to warn me?
Is it so that I might be persistent, have a little bit of
extra time in prayer? Is it so that I might worship in
the night? Is it so I might grieve?
Whatever it is, let's just have all of our ears open to hear the
voice of gods. So as, as you know, these
videos, they are unscripted. I just sort of talk from my
heart. I write a few notes that don't
take me very long versus the other videos that I make on Off
the Curb Ministries. But I hope you found it helpful.
And if you are new to the channel, I'd really appreciate
it if you did consider subscribing.
And I am hoping to try and get more and more of these videos
out. At the moment, we just do them
every two weeks. Today it's a little bit early.
It's come on a Wednesday, but normally we do it every other
Thursday at 4:00. I, I release a video on this
channel, but I'm hoping in the future we'll be able to go every
week, but we'll just see if the Lord grants time.
If I am disciplined with sleep so I can get up earlier, then
maybe we'll be able to do those things.
But thank you so much for listening and I really do
appreciate your fellowship. And if you'd like to see another
video where we sit down and have a nice cup of Joe, just click
here. God bless you all and thank you
for watching.