I am one person who sits on the internet daily as a result of my job as an online health content creator/producer and consultant.
One of the platforms on the internet I do not fail to visit each day is YouTube.
Some times, just about when I am near retiring to bed, I look for contents that will edify my spirit.
In one of such occasions, I opened my YouTube channel and I found that Dr. Paul Enenche was live. I checked the time and it was already late at night.
Commanding The Day
This was nearly one month ago.
The man of God was holding a live prayer session and I joined. That prayer session called, ‘MID-NIGHT PRAYER COMMANDING THE DAY’, ended around after 12 midnight. There were amazing testimonies that he read.
First, I thought it was just a one day prayer session. After that day, YouTube’s algorithm went to work and began serving me this prayer session every night.
Weeks passed and I began to wonder why the pastor could stay that late each night.
The one that made me begin to wonder was seeing him on a Saturday night. He was still live.
The next day was Sunday.
At this moment, I began to wonder if it was a programme that is just being played whereas it had happened at an earlier time.
But I guess I was wrong.
As a believer, one thing I did was pray that the grace of God will be sufficient for him.
But on another thought, I realised that a good sleep is a refreshing mechanism that was put together by God to help man refresh and stay strong for the next day.
After I saw the reaction of Dr. Enenche to Anyim Vera’s testimony, I began to wonder if the spur-of-the-moment was not a finger of stress.
Is there a relationship with quality of sleep and stress?
Sleep Deprivation
You see, people who study sleep patterns recommend that adults sleep between 7 and 9 hours a night (1).
They say that adults who sleep less than 7 hours a night may have more health issues than those who sleep 7 or more hours a night.
Well, those were experts talking.
But can this lack of sleep stress a man so much to the point that he could do things in spur-of-the-moment as the church described his action?
Let’s check more things about sleep deprivation and stress.
A study was carried out among adults with the aim of finding out if sleep deprivation or sleeping for few hours could shoot-up stress level.
According to the study, when these adults do not get enough sleep, 21% of them reported feeling more stressed (2).
Adults with higher reported stress levels (eight, nine or 10 on a 10-point scale) fare even worse — 45% feel even more stressed if they do not get enough sleep, the report said.
Also, another study says poor sleep quality could be significantly elevate levels of stress (3).
Sleep And Poor Cognitive Performance
Another one says Poor quality of sleep was significantly associated with elevated mental stress levels (4).
Furthermore, another study of doctors who were on night shift showed how stress can affect a person even further (5).
So, we move from sleep to stress and then from stress to physical actions now.
Also, that study shows deterioration in the physiological condition, mood and cognitive performance of doctors after a 24h on-call shift.
Now Pastor Enenche has stayed up awake at night for weeks holding midnight prayers.
Have You Read: Stress Management: Simple Techniques That Work
One of the things that happen to people who do so is not being able to make smart decisions. The woman’s eloquence is not enough to make the senior pastor condemn her. Would Jesus do that? The Paul Enenche we have seen often weigh issues critically before making decisions.
What you will call spur-of-the-moment could be a matter of stress.
For me, I strongly think that Pastor Enenche could be needing a break from late nights.
The older we get, the more sleep deprivation affects us. This is our opinion.