My work periodically requires successive days of ludicrously long hours that far exceed the labor schedule authorized by the demented Pharaoh who once enslaved the Israelites. After the most recent string of such days, I staggered home to be greeted by my wife, Dale, who was dressed in a toga and proclaimed, "Let my people go!"

Fifteen years ago, it didn't really bother me to work three 16-hour days in a row. I could bound out of bed the next morning and be ready to hit the new day with vim and vigor.

These days, I don't so much bound out of bed as ooze from the mattress and leach slowly into my pants so I can claw at the new day with anti-vim and a massive dose of caffeine.

Although my boss has explicitly and repeatedly authorized me to take some time off after a brutal few days, I am cursed with a twisted Protestant work-ethic DNA that renders me genetically incapable of taking a day off unless I have contracted some kind of incapacitating medical condition, such as scurvy, rickets or the loss of a couple limbs.

So as I reached for the alarm one morning, my wife said: "If you even think about going into work this morning, I will have you hauled off to an institution for the clinically busy. You have worked more than 48 hours in the last three days, your eyes are bloodshot and you are drooling."

"But I'm not technically dead yet," I protested.

"That can be remedied," she said. "Get back in bed. Just because you don't show up at the office it does not mean that islands will plunge into the sea and thousands of little lambs will be lost in the wilderness."

I rolled my eyes to convey my disagreement.

"Well, perhaps I can take just the morning off," I said, as my 250-pound solid-granite head slammed back into the pillow and crushed all the feathers into tiny little puffs of goose-down dust.

It was not because of noise but due to my coffee-bloated bladder that I finally awoke and tottered into the bathroom. The act of standing up forced me to quickly conclude that my wife was right. I was in no shape to go to work.

But I couldn't quite manage to cut myself completely off from the office, so I snuck a quick peek at my BlackBerry. My wife calls it a "CrackBerry" because she says I am addicted to it. But for the record, I can often go two or even three minutes without looking at it.

The first e-mail sent chills down my groggy spine. My colleague had called in sick. The office was entirely unmanned.

This was a crisis of global proportions, cosmic even. In a horrifying moment, dozens of unread memos and unstapled documents passed before my bloodshot eyes. I could hear the islands gurgling in dismay as they sank into the watery abyss, and the lost little lambs were filing a class-action lawsuit against me for negligence.

I threw on my clothes and drove to work. Moments after I sent my first urgent e-mail, my boss called me from our main office 75 miles away.

"I got your e-mail. Why are you at work? Go home!"

Curiously, the earth didn't collide with the moon while I took a day off. Apparently, the only truly indispensable person is God, and He tells us to rest. Sometimes when we don't listen to Him, He tells us through our wives.

Dave Meurer is an award-winning humorist and the author of Mistake It Like a Man (Multnomah). This article was orginally in New Man eMagazine.

Men, we need to get serious about the prophet Elijah's key message: "If the Lord is God, follow Him!" If you don't know who Elijah was, let me introduce you. He was God's man—brave enough to stand alone before 450 men who opposed God and didn't believe Him. You can read his story in more detail in 1 Kings 18:20-39.

These men were prophets of Baal, a false god whose worship was forbidden in Israel. Elijah got in their collective face and threw down a challenge, the outcome of which would have national implications. The winner would determine if God would be served and feared throughout Israel.

Both parties were to call down fire from heaven to consume the sacrifice on the altar.

"You call on your man-made god and I'll call on the Lord," Elijah said to the 450. "You go first."

But he didn't just sit back and watch. He taunted them. It's a dangerous game to taunt people, especially 450 at a time, but it must have been what God put in his mind to do.

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The prophets of Baal really got into it. They danced, shouted and cut themselves. Elijah responded: "What? Your god doesn't answer? Maybe he's asleep. Shout louder, maybe you can wake him up.

"Maybe he's preoccupied, deep in thought!" (Some translators of this say Elijah was implying that their god was on the toilet.)

The prophets became hysterical. It was almost evening. They did everything they knew to do, but the Bible says simply, "There was no response" (1 Kin. 18:29, NIV). The god for whom they had deserted the Lord for wasn't there. How different from God who says, "'Call on me, I will answer'" (Ps. 91:15, NLT).

Now Elijah took his turn. First he rebuilt the altar, adding 12 stones for the 12 tribes of Israel. Then he called for four large jars of water to be poured onto the sacrifice. "Do it again," he said. "Now do it a third time." The sacrifice was soaked.

Elijah was quiet now, silent before God. It was time for prayer. "'Answer me so these people will know that you, O Lord, are God and that you have brought them back to yourself'" (1 Kin. 18:36-37).

There was no one-upmanship here, just quiet trust. This wasn't really a contest to see which prophet was greatest. Elijah called on God to bring the people's hearts back to Himself. If we were looking at this in the Hebrew, we would read, "Turn their backward hearts back again."

And then it happened. Fire came from heaven and consumed the sacrifice. Everything! The people screamed, "‘The Lord is God!’" They fell on their faces in utter abandonment of their stubbornness.

Elijah had a strong sermon for the people then and it is a message for people now. How long will you go hobbling, limping, wavering between two opinions? "'If the Lord is God, follow him!'" (1 Kin. 18:21). Get off the fence! There are still a lot of men who are wavering, hobbling along full of pride, sitting on the fence saying, "I have my own views of religion."

Elijah didn't face unbelievers. He confronted men who wanted to believe their own way. They were religious but wrong. God's men must say to their friends, lovingly but clearly, "It's time to get off the fence. If the Lord is God, follow Him."

Roger C. Palms is the former editor of Billy Graham's Decision magazine and author of 15 books and hundreds of magazine and newspaper articles.This article was originally published in New Man e-Magazine.