{"id":595,"date":"2009-03-02T08:37:46","date_gmt":"2009-03-02T08:37:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/gospelsoundcheck\/2009\/03\/billy-wilkins-responds-to-my-s.html"},"modified":"2009-03-02T08:37:46","modified_gmt":"2009-03-02T08:37:46","slug":"billy-wilkins-responds-to-my-s","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/gospelsoundcheck\/2009\/03\/billy-wilkins-responds-to-my-s.html","title":{"rendered":"Billy Wilkins Responds to My Snarky Post About Biblically Based Sleep Program"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>UPDATE 4\/14\/09: <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/gospelsoundcheck\/2009\/04\/wesley-sleep-program-puts-me-t.html\" target=\"_blank\">Wesley Sleep Program Puts Me To Sleep &#8211; That&#8217;s A Good Thing!<\/a><br \/>\nLast week, I did a post about a new <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/gospelsoundcheck\/2009\/02\/snark-alert-former-third-day-m.html\" target=\"_blank\">Biblically based sleep program developed by Billy Wilkins, <\/a>one of the original members of Third Day. I added a disclaimer in the post &#8211; &#8220;Snark Alert&#8221; &#8211; because I know some of you freak out when I get a little <a href=\"http:\/\/www.urbandictionary.com\/define.php?term=snark\" target=\"_blank\">snarky<\/a> in my posts.<br \/>\nI don&#8217;t have a problem using Christian products &#8211; I often play the audio Bible read by Alexander Scourby when my brain is wound up and I can&#8217;t sleep. But I think we&#8217;ve become a culture that relies on products instead of God, with Christian everything from books and music to energy drinks and sneakers. Or, as I said in my post, &#8220;Why, why, <em>why <\/em>are we constantly looking to other people to read the Bible for us, learn from it and then regurgitate it for us in tiny, digestible pieces?&#8221;<br \/>\nNo surprise, I heard from Billy Wilkins, who was obviously not happy that I&#8217;d used his product to launch a vent about Christian commerce. I completely understand, so we started chatting on email. He&#8217;s a good sport, and I found out that his sleep CD has been used by nurses in military trauma units to help soldiers find sleep relief.<br \/>\nAnyone who knows me even a little knows I bleed red, white and blue. My brother-in-law is in the military. I often write to the sons and daughters of friends serving overseas and I&#8217;ve told you a few times about the <a href=\"http:\/\/anysoldier.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Any Soldier website<\/a>, where you can write to soldiers who might not receive mail or care packages from home.<br \/>\nSo I decided to give Billy Wilkins a chance to tell you a little more about his Wesley Sleep program and how you can help provide sleep CDs to soldiers suffering from post traumatic stress disorder.<br \/>\n<strong>Here is a response to my post, from Billy Wilkins<\/strong> (you might want to<a href=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/gospelsoundcheck\/2009\/02\/snark-alert-former-third-day-m.html\" target=\"_blank\"> read the original post<\/a> first, so you know what he&#8217;s referring to):<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><br \/>\n<span class=\"mt-enclosure mt-enclosure-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"BillyWilkins.JPG\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/118\/import\/BillyWilkins.JPG\" width=\"225\" height=\"274\" class=\"mt-image-right\" style=\"float: right;margin: 0 0 20px 20px\" \/><\/span>Even though the Wesley Sleep Program and I have been the target of your recent &#8220;Snark Alert,&#8221; I appreciate your invitation to write this guest post. You are very fair.<br \/>\nTo confirm in my mind exactly why I was defending myself, I actually looked up the word &#8220;snark.&#8221; I&#8217;m now more confused than before. From the two definitions I found, I must be either a &#8220;threatening event&#8221; or a &#8220;mysterious, imaginary animal.&#8221; Hmm. I guess I&#8217;ll try to use this opportunity to let you and your readers decide if either I or the Wesley Sleep Program belongs in either category.<br \/>\nFrom your earliest post, I get the idea that you thought I had written a commentary on what the Bible says about the topic of rest so that lazy people wouldn&#8217;t have to do research themselves. I see how you would reach that conclusion from the briefly-worded press release. Not at all! Here&#8217;s the difference: I researched the Biblical topics of rest and sleep not to teach lazy people what it says. I did it so that I could utilize what I learned to design a &#8220;sleep-aid&#8221; for people who lie in bed for hours letting their minds chase random thoughts. I thought how beneficial it could be for those who may be struggling to find real rest&#8211;maybe because of hormones, life challenges, and worries about loved ones or financial concerns &#8212; to be able to end their day hearing the words of Jesus along with some dreamy sleep sounds. What better way to end a stressful day?<br \/>\nIronically, the accompanying Wesley Sleep Program booklet states virtually the same thing as your Snark Alert. These are exact words taken from my book:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;If you do become a Christian, I congratulate you. First, I encourage you to tell someone who is also a Christian. Then, I also wish to persuade you to get involved with a loving, Bible-based church&#8230;.It is my opinion that you should also begin studying the Bible, since it is like God&#8217;s love letter to you, His child&#8230;. You may find that the more you study, the more questions you may have. I say that&#8217;s a good thing. View your curiosity as a part of growing in your faith&#8230;Finally, know that as you share your excitement about your relationship with God, I almost guarantee you that you will be surrounded by skeptics and cynics who will challenge and try to discourage you. Just expect it, and if you&#8217;ve been studying, you can be prepared.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The Wesley Sleep Program seemingly parallels your &#8220;Snark Alert!&#8221;<br \/>\nFrom reading some of your previous posts, I see that you and I both agree that sadly, there may too many Christian music fans whose desire to hear about God is limited to their listening of song lyrics. At least I&#8217;m encouraging people to study while also trying to help them find peace.<br \/>\nSpeaking of helping people, I am receiving begging requests from nurses at War Transition Units  for people to send them more copies for our troops suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and other problems. I&#8217;m glad that brave men and women are finding peace with this CD.<br \/>\nSeeing that we agree on so much, I think the problem was a short press release with few details.<br \/>\nHere&#8217;s my new life&#8217;s desire: a future post by Joanne: &#8220;Snark Alert Canceled! Wesley Sleep Program Not &#8216;THAT&#8217; Bad after All!&#8221;<br \/>\nBilly Wilkins<br \/>\nBilly says copies of the CD can be donated directly to the military unit he mentions. Just go to Amazon to purchase the CD and have it shipped to:<br \/>\nKimberly Pfennigs, Case Manager<br \/>\nWTU, Bravo Company<br \/>\n1852 Irwin Drive, Building 1059<br \/>\nFt. Carson, CO 80913<br \/>\nIf you end up donating a copy, let me know.<br \/>\n<em>Get the <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/gospelsoundcheck\/\" target=\"_blank\">Gospel Soundcheck <\/a>headlines delivered daily to your email inbox. Just sign up for the RSS feed by going to the &#8220;Subscribe&#8221; box on the right hand side of this blog and entering your email address. <a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/joannebrokaw\" target=\"_blank\">Follow me on Twitter!<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>UPDATE 4\/14\/09: Wesley Sleep Program Puts Me To Sleep &#8211; That&#8217;s A Good Thing! Last week, I did a post about a new Biblically based sleep program developed by Billy Wilkins, one of the original members of Third Day. I added a disclaimer in the post &#8211; &#8220;Snark Alert&#8221; &#8211; because I know some of&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":132,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-595","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christian-music-guest-blogger"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Billy Wilkins Responds to My Snarky Post About Biblically Based Sleep Program - Gospel Soundcheck<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/gospelsoundcheck\/2009\/03\/billy-wilkins-responds-to-my-s.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Billy Wilkins Responds to My Snarky Post About Biblically Based Sleep Program - Gospel Soundcheck\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"UPDATE 4\/14\/09: Wesley Sleep Program Puts Me To Sleep &#8211; That&#8217;s A Good Thing! 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