I Am Exhausted!

According to the World Health Organization, if you find yourself 'exhausted' a good percentage of the time, you are tracking towards burnout, and it is time to re-calibrate your life. Gallop identifies burnout as 'one of the most pressing issues facing the global workforce.'

If we, as believers and ministers, reside in that 'exhaustion' zone, we are missing the promise of Jesus to give us 'life more abundant.'

Why do we become 'weary in well doing?' The Fuller De Pree Centre lists several contributing factors and a few positive recommendations.

The main problem centres on IDENTITY.

Whether we are willing to admit it or not, in a production-based economy, we are tempted to centre our identity in our work and productivity. The ego boosts that come with promotions, production, and approval are integral to maintaining that convoluted tandem. If those stimulants are absent or disrupted, our sense of identity is threatened. The response is to push harder and faster. "Too often we wear our exhaustion like badges of honour, using them to inflate our egos and remind others of our importance."

Rest

Along with a capitalistic culture comes the process of dehumanization of the individual. Remember when Joe, the corner grocery guy, really cared about you and your family? Remember when it was okay to drop in unannounced at the neighbour's house for tea and cookies? Remember when the economy stopped dead in its tracks on Sunday, and the whole community took a fresh breath of life centred around the 'faith community'? The desire to be successful within the definition of culture compels us to resist rest and push relentlessly forward. "Capitalism has done its job so well that we glorify work over rest." Terms for this insanity include 'hustle culture' – the idea that more is better – but more is never enough. Hustle culture flies in the face of the words of Jesus, who says, "I will give you rest" (Matthew 11:28). Rest is a lost art, and wise leaders understand that long-haul ministry needs to be re-captured. We are not merely fodder for production, and our success cannot be measured on an Excel spreadsheet.

Jesus patterns the healthy work and rest cycle for us. After an extensive ministry tour, every encounter demanding the expenditure of physical and emotional energy, Jesus says to His disciples in Mark 6, "Let's go off by ourselves to a quiet place and rest awhile."

If we have no deliberate and intentional resting place and plan in our ministry, we will eventually collapse under the weight of our responsibilities. Remember that there is no appointment we keep or conversation we ever have that does not require an appreciable expenditure of energy.

We must come to the realization and acceptance that the 'hustle culture' is not normal. We must then, intentionally and without any sense of guilt or apology, carve out a regular resting time and place. As a Type A personality with HD tendencies, this has been a real struggle for me, but learning and employing it in life and ministry has also kept me in the game.

As long as we attach our worth to our accomplishments, Jesus' kind of rest will be elusive. As long as the profit-loss model drives us, we will not have correctly understood our call to ministry, which is first of all to His heart and then to His assignment.

Intentionality In Rest

The counsel that I am offering here is lifegiving. However, even if we take the time to peruse articles such as this, for the most part, they become only informative, theoretical ideals never absorbed into practicality. We are like the proverbial person who looks into the mirror and is convicted by what he/she sees but is swiftly caught back in the vortex of life, forgetting the distortion the mirror revealed.

I recall the days when ministers bragged about the fact that they had not taken a vacation for years. Such folly! Not only had they deprived themselves and their families of needed love and interaction in a relaxed setting, but they had misconstrued and violated the scripture they had pledged to uphold as the final authority in all matters of life.

No one can make this intentional decision for us when the chips are down. It is a personal and individual discipline. We ignore it to our own detriment.

While rest includes isolation from activity such as Sabbath rest and vacation time, it is not reserved for one day per week or three weeks per year.

Resistance against the tyranny of the hustle culture and the drive for identity in productivity must be understood in the context of each day. One of the ingredients of quiet rest was captured by the hymn-writer when he penned the words, 'And He walks with me, and He talks with me, and He tells me I am His own' (Austin Miles, 1912). Rest is the continual awareness that Jesus is walking with us and living through us regardless of the circumstances facing us.

Shortly after the bombing of Ukraine initiated the devastation of many homes, a YouTube video circulated of a precious Ukrainian family standing in the ruins of their house, having lost all but their lives. They were holding hands and singing with confidence: 'He will hold me fast, He will hold me fast, for my Saviour loves me so. He will hold me fast. Raised with Him to endless life, He will hold me fast. 'Til our faith is turned to sight. When He comes at last' (Matthew Sherman Merker lyrics – Sung by Selah and the Gettys).

Rest is living daily at a pace that does not outpace the awareness of His presence in our lives.

When Paul commands us to 'pray without ceasing' (1 Thess. 5:16), he simply means to remain in a natural, ongoing, non-ending conversation with Christ, not forcing Him to struggle for our attention in the middle of our toil.

Dream Again

When was the last time you dared to dream? We are meant to be dreamers of what could be, not simply assembly line workers of what 'is.'

All of the giants of scripture were dreamers and open to divine dreams – Joseph, Daniel, Mary, Joseph, the stepfather of Jesus.

In a civil rights rally of the 1960s, Martin Luther King was addressing the crowd. Suddenly, the voice of the great black singer Mahalia Jackson rose above his speech and called out. 'Tell them about the dream, Martin.' With that encouragement, he wrote one of the classic speeches of all time, 'I have a dream.'

I have had the opportunity to walk alongside many who have ignored the symptoms of exhaustion and have pushed themselves into a 'burnout' condition. In every case, the 'dream' has either died or become a mental impossibility.

Rest allows your mind to move past the issues of the day, as intense as they may be, to see that 'all things work together for good if we love the Lord and are called to His purpose' (Romans 8:28). Rest centres in the words of the Tony Campolo's resurrection message, It's Friday, but Sunday is Coming.'

Frantic living eliminates the possibility of dreaming. Without a vision of hope and purpose, we perish.

Rest allows us to participate in the reality of the verse that states, 'He is able to do exceedingly abundantly beyond what we think or even imagine.'

Carl McColman writes these words, 'In the imagination – that dimension of our hearts/minds where divine thought and divine generativity weave together – we can access the infinite possibilities of the mind of God and visualize how those possibilities might manifest in creative ways in our lives.'

Place your identity firmly in the Christ who purchased your 'Kingdom of God Citizenship.' He is not impressed by the quantity of your work, nor does He measure by the world's standards of success. Then, listen to the counsel of the prophets, the words of the Apostle Paul, and the teachings of Jesus Himself. Translate them into unashamed, guilt-free, ongoing rhythms of rest. There is no glory in burnout, no badge of honour for exhaustion. Declare it today, 'I am in Christ. That is enough. I can rest.'

Immeasurably, more fruit will be harvested for the Kingdom of God out of our rest than out of our frenzied exhaustion.

Further Reading: Fuller De Pree Center

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