The request you bring touches on needs of the body, yet do not let the weight of these cares plunge your soul into a deeper slumber. You ask for restful sleep, but consider what sleep truly is. The present life itself is a sleep, full of dreams and phantasy; riches, health, and every earthly good are fleeting visions that soon recede from us. The man who sleeps sees not things that truly are, the spiritual, heavenly, abiding things, but fancies as real the things that are not. To shut the eyes of the soul through the sleep of wickedness is of our own choice, for it is in our power always to watch. Let us watch and be sober, for sobriety is the intensity of watchfulness. A drunkenness of the soul comes not only from wine, but from every vice, from the overmastering desire of wealth and the anxiety for provision. This is the true sleep to fear, for while the body rests, the soul can lie awake to pitiable and wretched purpose, anxiously thinking about money, raking up the smouldering embers of wrath.
As for protection, the word of Scripture is your shield: “He that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep.” Place your trust not in the shifting sands of circumstance, but in this unshaken fact. The suffering of being moved, the shaking of your peace, depends then on ourselves. If you will stand steadfast and unmoveable, you shall not be shaken. The calamities that press upon us are not so much miracles as those things which issue in our own deliverance. Just as the earthquake that loosed the bonds of the Apostle overwhelmed the jailer with awe, so the terrors that visit you are meant to startle your soul awake, compelling you to cry out in earnest, “What must I do to be saved?” When you are personally in danger, God uses these things for your conversion, not that you may gather fresh wounds, but that you may find healing in His spiritual surgery.
Concerning financial provision for your treatments and surgery, the Apostle commands us to make provision for the flesh, but not to fulfill its lusts. To care for the body for health is a duty, for did he not tell even the ailing Timothy to use a little wine for his stomach’s sake? But that provision ceases to be Godly when you light up the flame of desire, when you make the furnace more powerful by anxious fretting. Seek one thing only: to have your flesh in health. To this degree make provision, but spend all your industry on the care of spiritual things. For when you are not weighed down with these manifold desires, you will be able to rouse yourself from this murky sleep. Do not let the soul lie intoxicated with the lust for security, seeing visions of ruin. The life of virtue sees things in their true light. Furthermore, remember that what God entrusts to you, whether in money or in any other ability, is a talent to be used for the common advantage, and nothing is so pleasing to Him as to live for this. Yet even as you ask, do not let the heart be stifled within by excess of food or care, for such a soul soon recovers itself and is immediately wakeful to God’s presence. So then, let your prayer be not merely for deliverance from these passing shadows, but for the great fear of God to fall lightly upon you, granting true rest and composing your soul in an orderly state.