Dealing with Spiritual Burnout

It's nice to see everyone. It's been, I know, a busy week. I had a totally different sermon prepared for all of you. I gave a sermon at the feast this year in Gatlinburg, and I've had a number of people here and a number of people that were there in Murfreesboro that said, would you please give that same sermon in Nashville and Murfreesboro?

So I was going to do that today. I've been having some computer problems. I had a guy work on it all week. I thought it was fixed. And this sermon requires PowerPoint, and I went to download the PowerPoint, and it crashed. So you're not getting that sermon today. But actually, what I was thinking through some things, I went and looked at a list that I keep of sermon ideas and things I've been working on. And I was looking at all the ideas that you have given to me, and people in Murfreesboro and Jackson have.

And then I've also looked at a couple of ideas of sermons I gave years ago, here, maybe eight years ago. And I thought a couple of those that I put on a list that maybe I would give. And one of them that I gave in the past, I thought, I am going to give it again. This was about eight years ago, simply because I think it's an important subject we need to think about.

You know, we go to the Feast of Tabernacles, and we come home, and everybody's on the spiritual high. You know, we're just happy that we were there. It's exciting. It's just something special, spiritually, happens to us at the Feast of Tabernacles. And we come home. And over time, that begins to wane. And then, over time, we're sort of back in the routine. And sometimes, over time, we're back into discouragement. We're back into hopelessness. Our relationship with God isn't right. And we've all gone through that. And it's interesting, if you look at life, we do that at different levels.

In the business world, they have a term for it. And that is, a person who comes to work, they love their job, they're there for years. They just love going to work and doing that job. It's what they want to accomplish. But things change over time. New people come in and out. They're given different responsibilities. The structure changes. Maybe they get a new boss. And, you know, throughout a period of time, maybe five, ten years, the person doesn't want to go to work in the morning.

They hate it. When they go to work, they almost don't accomplish anything. Instead of accomplishing things, they just sort of go through the day, almost like they're in some kind of autopilot. They call it burnout. All this energy, all this time, all this dedication, and you get to the place where you just give up.

And you go through the motions. And that happens in a lot of different areas of life. You mothers know what it's like to absolutely love a child, and love two children, and love three children. And there are days you think, why do I get out of bed in the morning? Because I'm doing the same thing every day. I'm changing diapers. I'm putting food in people's mouths. I'm telling them what to do. I'm telling... I'm teaching them. I'm cooking for them. And you're just going through all this work, and not too many three-year-olds give you a lot of affirmation for that.

They just expect it, right? And mothers can feel a great deal of burnout. It happens quite often, especially with mothers who have a newborn, and after a few months, it can be terrible because of just this... I'm doing everything I can. I sacrificed my Bible or my body, my Bible, my body for this person, and what's happening? We can do it sometimes in marriages, where we just give up. It's just not worth it. And we burn out, and we'll say, I just have nothing left to give.

That's what you'll hear. I just have nothing left to give. People can do it in the church, where you've given and served, maybe for years, doing all kinds of service, and no one seems to ever thank you. You just do it, but who really cares? And you get to the place, and then why do it? If no one seems to thank me for it, why do it? And you burn out. And sometimes I've seen people just stop serving. So burnout can happen at all kinds of levels of life, and I want to talk today about spiritual burnout.

The world we live in puts enough stress, and pressure, and influence on us that all of us, from time to time, are going to suffer from spiritual burnout. We're going to talk about the symptoms, and we're going to talk about how to deal with it, because we must learn to deal with it. Or our lives become negative. We give up.

We drift away from God. We have less and less of a personal relation with God. All kinds of things happen. Sometimes it's because of evil. Sometimes it's because of the way people treat us. Sometimes it's just because we're tired, and we've worked ourselves into exhaustion. And does it really matter? Does it really matter?

So let's look at some symptoms, spiritual symptoms of spiritual burnout. And when I give you these symptoms, we're going to see that they don't, you know, they start small, and they get bigger and bigger and bigger. And as it grows, you drift.

Most spiritual burnout isn't from an event. Now we're going to look at a case in the Bible where an event caused spiritual burnout in a person. Most of the time it doesn't happen that way. What happens is it's a drift. We drift, and we drift, and we drift. And there's reasons for the drift. Most of them are emotional. Emotional reasons for it. And we drift and drift and drift until we end up in a very bad spiritual place. And it was interesting that, like I said, I had a totally different sermon prepared, and I'm just going to confess here. I looked at this old sermon and thought, huh, I'm sort of suffering from some spiritual burnout. So I'm going to pass it on to everybody, you know.

So that's why we're going here today. Symptoms. The first one is, you begin to lose zeal. Your zeal for Christianity is a way of life. Oh, you come to church, you do your Bible reading, you do certain things, but there's no joy in it. There's no zeal in it anymore. You go through the motions. Just like you could go to a job for years and go through the motions. You should go through the motions. You know, you go into a... If you go to a new place to work, and you're all excited, you're there, you'll always find someone that's chugging along. They've been there for years, and they just look at you and say, yeah, just bear here long enough and you'll figure it out, you know. Because there's no joy left. Well, spiritually, we begin to drift. At first, you don't know it. At first, you're still doing things. At first, you're still, you know, praying to God, but you're drifting. You're drifting in this relationship with God. And it can come because of family pressures, money pressures, job pressures. It's coming from all over the place at you, right? That's causing this drift. Your time is being gobbled up and eaten up and other things, and you're drifting. The second, then, is you begin to lose an intense desire for Bible study and prayer. Oh, you pray. Get on your knees and, you know, say a prayer real quick before you go to bed or something. You pray in the morning when you get up. But there's no intensity to it. There's no spontaneous prayer. That prayer that comes just because you're someplace doing something, and you think of God, and you're sort of praying. You're not on your knees. You know, you might be in public or something or driving the cars, and you're saying a prayer. And Bible study is, okay, I do my daily Bible study reading. I get it, and I do it, and I read it. But seldom do you go away experiencing that something has happened to you. Something has changed in you. The Scripture is interacting with you. And so you begin to drift away from that. The third thing is you begin to withdraw from church fellowship and activities.

You just start to withdraw. You might be at church most of the time. When you're there, you know, you take some notes on the sermon. You say hi to a few people you know, and you go home.

And then you can remember a time when you wanted to be at church services. Because you knew people. You loved people. There was a relationship with other people. There was something that happened. And so we begin to withdraw from those relationships. Now you look around and think, oh no, there's... I always make up a name, and then I... Oh yeah, there's somebody here with that name. There's Xerxes, okay?

I was getting my Friday smoothie yesterday, you know, with all the vitamins for a whole week in it, you know, or whatever it is. And what's a good name for that? Right? Because they always ask you when they... What's a good name for that? And I always want to say Spartacus. But I don't. Or Xerxes or something, you know. Ezekiel. How's that? But I don't. Now I'm getting off someplace. But you look at old Xerxes over here, and you say, oh man, you know, he's going to come up to us again, and he's going to tell us about all the sicknesses he has.

So it's like, oh man, I only want to go to church and talk to him.

Or it's, oh, I don't want to talk to this person because she's just... All she does is gossip about other people. Or I don't want to do this. I want to interact with that person. So you see everybody is negative. Pretty soon, especially if you've been in a congregation for a long time, you know each other's faults, basically. At least the surface ones, right? And because you know them, you will make decisions on why it's not as exciting to come to church. Or you can even say, oh, let me look and see who's speaking today. Now we have a lot of speakers here. This is... We're a blessed congregation. That is not normal. But you can look and say, you know what? I'm tired today. So and so giving the split sermon or the sermonette or the sermon. And I don't... I would rather not be there today and you stay home. You're pulling away from the relationships that happen in the family of God. And you've forgotten about that. This is the family of God. It's just a bunch of people. And a lot of them are in pain, right?

And so we begin to drift.

The fourth is we become more and more just chronically depressed with life's problems. And believe me, there's enough in this life to make us depressed, right? The world around us doesn't work. Half the time our lives aren't working. And so we become chronically depressed in that. Instead of drawing towards God to develop in us the fruits of the spirit. Oh, we all know about the fruits of the spirit. Most of you could rattle them off, right? But you know, in spiritual burnout, you can rattle them off, but they have no meaning. We lose their meaning because we're not in the power of that. Spiritual burnout, the light's going out. That doesn't mean we've lost God's spirit. But the power that's in us, the fire that's in us is going out. It's banked down. You know what it is? Go camping and bank a fire so you can stir it up later. We're banking down God's spirit. And as that happens, the drift is going on. And in it is an inner struggle with almost emotional chaos. We enter into spiritual emotional chaos, which, by the way, is the world. We're not careful. We're headed into this chaos. Then we become more cynical and negative, number five. With that, we start to have a loss of purpose in God's calling. We no longer see ourselves as called by God to be the light in the world because we're not even think we have a light or we don't feel like we have a light. There's no fire in us. We're burned out. And you say, wow, am I lost? Am I lost? Understand, every one of you has experienced spiritual burnout. Every single one of you. If you haven't, you're either incredibly spiritual or you haven't really become self-aware enough to know what's happening because it happens to all of us.

We head down that road.

Then we lose the desire to serve and help others. Why should we? No one cares anyways. Right? No one's thanked me. I mean, I've picked up the songbooks for 30 years and no one even notices. And you know what? That may be true. No one notices.

And then it comes down to you pick up the songbooks for the joy of picking up the songbooks. That's why you do it. You do it because the service itself is a joy and that's all that matters. A service to people, a service to God, is the reward of itself. But see, in burnout, you just feel like nobody cares.

The last stage, the eighth stage, is where this really becomes dangerous. And too many times we find ourselves here, in this stage, when we're really in trouble. And that is we become complacent about personal sin and attitudes. We just become complacent. We start allowing sin into our lives and we start having approaches to life that are not what we're supposed to have as the children of God, as disciples of Jesus Christ.

So it's a reality that every Christian faces. When you look at the scripture, there's case after case after case where the people of God, men and women, faced spiritual burnout. It's all through the Bible. Why don't you understand what it is? It's there. It's like, oh, I understand what that person's going through. I'm going to go through a classic case of spiritual burnout.

And it's a different sort of one because it sort of happened all at once. But when you see what led up to it, you'll understand why it happened. But I want to look at how God dealt with it. Okay, so, oh, three steps to dealing with spiritual burnout. Spend an hour a day praying and studying. Wait a minute. That's part of the problem. You're not drawing the prepare to study right now. And when you do, you don't accomplish anything. See, I could give you behavior, but this, the behavior has to be based in something else that's happening. And it has to do with a relationship with God.

Because it's easy for me to tell you what behavior to do. It's easy for me to go to Scripture and explain, here's step one, two, and three. Here's the behaviors.

The problem is, when you're spiritually burned out, you're burned out. You don't have the spiritual energy to do anything. So what do you do? Okay, our example. Let's go to 1 Kings 18.

So we'll spend some real time here in 1 Kings today. 1 Kings 18. 1 Kings 18.

Verse 1 says, And it came to pass after many days that the word of the Lord came to Elijah, the third year, saying, Go, present yourself to Ahab, and I will send rain on the earth. Now, to give us some background here, God had stopped rain on Israel because of their rebellion against him. So they were in the midst of a terrible drought, and guys like Elijah are going around saying, this is because God's mad at you, upset with you. Now, not having rain is going to cause people great stress and all kinds of problems. A guy coming around and telling you it's not raining because it's your fault is going to be a very unliked man.

But this is the fearlessness of Elijah. Okay? He just says, hey, this is why it's happening.

Verse 7.

I love this story. Now, as Obadiah was on his way, now this is what was one of the prophets of God, suddenly Elijah met him and he recognized him and he fell on his face and said, is that you, my Lord Elijah? He answered and said, it is I. Go tell your master Elijah is here. When I read through this, I just think one of those old westerns in a gunfight. You know, go tell Bart I'm coming. Okay. Elijah's coming. Because he knows Ahab is a despicable evil ruler. The only one worse was his wife, Jezebel. She made him look like a wimp. Okay. So you've got people who are despotic and kill people at the drop of a hat. And Obadiah says, what? Because Obadiah was one of the prophets that would go to the king. And he said, you go to the tell the king, I'm coming. And so in verse 9, he says, how have I sinned? Okay, this is Obadiah. What have I done to offend God? That you are delivering your servant into the hand of Ahab to kill me. As the Lord your God lives, there is no nation or kingdom where my masters not sent someone to hunt for you. And when they said he is not here, he took an oath from that kingdom or nation that they could not find you. Now understand what he's saying is he's not only looked through all the land to find you so he can kill you. He has sent emissaries to all the kingdoms around and said, are you hiding Elijah?

No, no, he's not here. Then you swear to it. In other words, that's basically or we're going to have a war. I'm invading your country if he's there. No, no, we swear he's not here. Now that gives you a little bit insight into Ahab. And why Obadiah didn't necessarily want to run and do this. In verse 11, and now you say, go tell your master, Elijah is here, and it shall come to pass as soon as I am gone from you, that the Spirit of the Lord will carry you to a place I do not know. So when I go and tell Ahab and he cannot find you, he will kill me. But I, your servant, have feared the Lord for my youth. He says, I will make God all my youth. Now this is another, by the way. Remember a few weeks ago, we went through what happened to Enoch and Elijah, and Elijah was taken away in a fiery chariot. This is another one of those places in the Bible where people seem to have disappeared. And Elijah, multiple times, was taken from one place to another. It just wasn't in a fiery chariot. I don't know how he did it, but people would go over and knock on the door and go in, and Elijah was gone. And Obadiah says, that's what's going to happen. I'm going to tell him you're here. He's going to go down to where he thinks you're staying, send in troops. They're going to go in and you'll be gone because God will take you someplace. Now what am I supposed to do? He'll kill me.

Verse 13, was it not reported to my Lord? What I did when Jezebel killed the prophets of the Lord, how he had 100 men of the Lord's prophets, 50 to a cave and fed them with bread and water. And now you say, go tell your master Elijah is here and he will kill me. He said, you know, Jezebel tried to kill all the prophets of God. I've been the one that's hiding them. I've been the one that's feeding them. Guess what if he finds out? Jezebel's going to kill me. And you want me to go into that lion's den and say Elijah is coming.

Then Elijah said, As the Lord of hosts lives before whom I stand, I will surely present myself to him today. So, Omidiah went to meet Ahab and told him, and Ahab went to meet Elijah. So Ahab comes out to meet him. Then it happened when Ahab saw Elijah and Ahab, that Ahab said to him, is that you, O troubler of Israel. So the king cries out, now he didn't go by himself. He is an entourage. He is a lot of armed soldiers with him. And they come out to meet this prophet. And he cries out, Oh, here's the big troublemaker that makes trouble over my whole country. What Elijah says, this takes a lot of faith.

And he answered, I have not troubled Israel, but you and your father's house have, and that you have forsaken the commandments of the Lord and have followed the bales.

Oh, I'm not the troubler of your nation. You are. Now, Elijah has no army behind him. He's just there, knowing that God was with him. God had sent him. And then he tells him, now here's what you are to do. I want you to gather up all the priests of your religion to Baal and bring him to this location. And there were 450 of them. So now it's like the gunslinger, or the good guy rides in the town on his horse, you know, with his six gun, and the bad guy goes and gets his entire gang, which is 450 men. The showdown has changed dramatically now. Anybody that's ever watched old westerns have seen. Every once in a while, not very often, I'll go watch an old western. The good guys and the bad guys always is a nice thing, you know. But so here they are. 450, and it says people came from all over Israel. There's this huge crowd watching to see what's going to happen. And Elijah says, here's what we're going to do. We are going to give a sacrifice, you to Baal and me to the God of Israel. So he had them build an altar, put an animal on it, sacrifice an animal. And then he said, okay, call out the Baal. Okay, call out the Baal and bring down fire from him.

Shouldn't be hard. The 450 of them prayed, chanted, sang, danced. They ended up actually cutting themselves and screaming. And Elijah keeps yelling out a little louder, maybe he's asleep.

And then Elijah says, okay, build an altar. They did. They put a bull on it, killed it, butchered it, put it on there. It's on the wood, ready to go. Instead of lighting, he says, soak it in water. They soaked the animal, the wood, the stone, and they build a ditch around it and filled it with water.

And then when the 450 priests of Baal, nothing could happen, nothing happened, and they couldn't bring down fire from heaven, he gives a short little prayer. He's so close to God, he gives this short little prayer, about 30 seconds. Fire comes down from heaven, burns up the sacrifice, burns up the wood, burns up the stone, and burns up all the water. There's nothing there, but sort of a hole in the sand.

And then Elijah says to the people of Israel, we're going to kill them. And he did. They killed all 450 of them.

You couldn't make that up. Either that's true, or it's one of the greatest fanciful myths in history.

This actually happened. God worked with this man, and this man did this, as God was showing what he was doing in that stage of salvation history.

So you think, okay, okay, that's pretty amazing. Elijah's going to be on a spiritual high, right? I'm sure he is.

Also sure he's stressed. He probably has high blood pressure at this point. I mean, he is in a... physically. There's a great stress he's going through. So what happens next is just as bizarre.

Verse 41.

Verse 41, Elijah tells Ahab, you need to go get some food, okay? You need to go eat something. So Ahab went up to eat and drink, and Elijah went up to the top of Carmel, then he bowed down into the ground to put his face between his knees. And so what he does is he says, God, you said you were going to stop this drought. I told him you were going to. Now what am I supposed to do? I have no power here. I have nothing. What am I supposed to do? And he keeps praying and praying and praying, and he looks out over the sea, and this little cloud appears. And he goes down and he tells Ahab, get in your chariot and get back as fast as you can to Jerusalem. Go! And it says at that point, they look behind, and there's this huge, boiling, black storm coming. And so Ahab is riding that chariot, driving, trying to get back to Jerusalem. But here's what's really interesting. Elijah's on foot! And it says, he outran the chariot to Jerusalem. Now, in my quirky head, as most of you know by now, that I'm a little eccentric, okay? This is what I visualize. One of those cartoons where the guys were running, and you could just see his feet moving like... And he goes by him. You know, now that's not what happened. But that's all I visualize. He runs miles faster than a human being can run without their heart exploding. And gets to where he's supposed to be, and Ahab shows up. And it's like, well, I left you back there. Yeah, well, God does things in special ways. And there he was. It didn't say he was transported. It says he ran. He had a physical experience. And it rained. Now, these are real stories. These things really happened. And Elijah was a real person. And at this point, Elijah has to be almost ecstatic. Look what God is doing, and I get to be part of this. And then something happens. Chapter 19, verse 1. And Ahab told Jezebel all that Elijah had done, also how he had executed all the prophets with the sword. Then Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah saying, Go tell the... So let the gods do to me, and more also, if I don't make your life as the life of one of them by tomorrow about this time.

So Jezebel, now says, find him and tell him, okay, he faced off against, you know, my husband, and he faced off against the 450 men of Baal. But he has never faced me and tell him I'm coming. Now, you think at this point, Elijah would say, Come on, I'll just go pray. God will take care of this. But after all that he had been through, but after all that he had been through, and there's reasons for this, he had run out of spiritual fuel.

It just wasn't anything left to burn. There was not one more thing he could face.

He just couldn't do it, because it says, verse three, and when he saw that, he rose and ran for his life. The king and 450 men didn't scare him half as bad as this one woman. He ran for his life and went to Beersheba, which belongs to Judah, and left his servant there. They himself went a day's journey into the wilderness, came and sat down under a broom tree, and he prayed that he might die, and said, It is enough now, my Lord, take my life, for I am no better than my father's. I'm no better than the men who served you and died before. Just let me die.

Now, that is a bit illogical, just looking at everything he'd been through. But remember, burnout doesn't leave us thinking logically. It puts us into emotional confusion.

And so, he looked at this, and he says, God, it's enough. There's nothing left. I can't do this anymore. It's not possible for me to do this anymore. So, just let me die here, so that Jezebel doesn't show up and have about 100 soldiers hack me to death, and then drag my body through the streets. I'd rather just die out here, out in the wilderness, and no one even find me.

All the great faith, all the great zeal, all the great courage, everything that had been in Elijah seems to be gone. It is not. But from a human viewpoint, it was all the father he could go. And this is where you and I have to face burnout. It's when, humanly, we can't go any farther.

That's why we'll always get there. Because in this life, we will be in situations with God's Spirit that we will get to points where we can't do it.

And we'll say, I'm burned out. There's nothing here to burn. There's no fuel. I'm empty. I'm just on empty. This is all there is. And God will say, yes.

Somebody just kill me now. No.

What's interesting here is how he deals with this. This is one of the greatest examples of burnout in the Bible, because it happened so quickly. And it happened because he was on this high where God was doing miracles that have happened very few times in history. You know, Moses standing there in the Red Sea opens. Moses didn't do it, but he participated in it. And he had to be thinking, God, why do you let me be in this? This is amazing. Elijah just knew just what God's going to do. I'm going to do it. He did it. He did it. He did it until there was nothing left.

God in us is greater than us. Just God being in us can wear us out.

And that's where we have to start to understand how small we are.

How small we are. Our will just drive ourselves into spiritual burnout.

And once we do, that's a bad place to be, unless God does what God does here. And that's what we have to realize. God will help us. So now what happens? Okay, verse five. He's out in the wilderness waiting for God to kill him. And he falls asleep. He's exhausted. I don't know. You know, I used to run a couple of miles a day, and then would walk five miles a day. Now I walk, you know, 200 yards, and I'm exhausted. Not quite that bad, but it's getting her.

He's exhausted. I've never run against a chariot.

And he looked, verse five. Then he lay and slept under a broom tree. Suddenly an angel touched him and said, arise and eat. Now it's amazing. An angel doesn't appear and say, you man of little faith. Look what God has done. And he has sent me to tell you, you're no better. Ahab.

An angel shows up and says, here, you need to eat something.

Because spiritual burnout also involves physical burnout. We get tired. We wear out.

And he was physically burned out. You know, basically he was quitting his job. I can't do this anymore. I can't work for you. God is my boss. I just quit. Just let me die.

And he shows up and he gives him something to eat. And he arose and ate and drank. Well, it says, then he goes back to sleep. Verse six, he goes back to sleep and the angel of the Lord then came back the second time and touched him and said, arise and eat, because the journey is too far for you. He says, okay, you've got to do this again. I guarantee you, whatever food he gave him was not, you know, Oreos and Coke. Okay?

Some of the times these things all come together, were physically burned out, emotionally burned out, and spiritually burned out, and they can be connected. He needed physical help to face the spiritual thing was coming back. And what he needed was sleep and food that nourished him. That's what he needed. That's what God gives him.

He gives him some days off and he sleeps and eats good food and tries to recover. I mean, just the emotional mental shock of what he had seen. You're praying that this starts raining? It starts raining? And then they had the biggest thunderstorm in Israel for 100 years?

And that's got to wear you out, because you're not doing it, but you're participating in what God is doing.

And so physically, he had to slow down. He had to step back.

Part of the problem we have is that we are so overly stimulated by everything that goes on around us. I always think when I see people, no matter where they are, they're looking at their phone, right? Yesterday I went to get a haircut, and I'm sitting there, and I'm working on my phone. And I hear, Gary, which was the hairdresser, or whatever you call him, we used to call him barbers, but I don't think you call women barbers. And I knew, and I stood up, I'm walking down between all the barbers, and I walked right by her. And she stopped and said, here I am. I looked at her, and I said, oh, I'm sorry. I heard someone call out my name, and I'm just walking towards the light. I don't know what happened here. I'm just wandering around.

Yeah, they all laughed. But we're so overstimulated by everything, right?

You know how hard it is? I used to sit and read a book. You know what I do now? I read five books at the same time.

Pieces of them. Processing. Processing. That's not good. That's not what we're supposed to do. You just have to think about what you read, right?

We're so overstimulated that we're wearing ourselves out. We're not taking care of ourselves. We don't get enough sleep. One of the first signs of physical and mental and emotional burnout is you don't sleep at night because your brain works the whole time. You wake up in the middle of the night and it's just thinking about other things. I don't know. Maybe you don't have that problem. Every once in a while I do and I have to start saying, No, don't do that. Think about something else.

And a half hour later I'll wake up and it's still going on. No, stop that. You literally have to stop it from happening because it's driving you. Your whole, your body, your brain, everything is out of control and that will create burnout in you until you have nothing left to burn. Nothing. Or you start drinking a six-pack of beer every night to go to sleep.

And now you're to level eight. Remember, we went through the eight. You're compromising with sin. You're now compromising with sin to solve the burnout issue. Everything around us is physically, mentally, spiritually unhealthy. And we're trying to be healthy, spiritually healthy, in the midst of all this.

So there are times we just need more rest. There are times we need a time away from things. A little time, you know, a few hours a day, whatever. A day off to just break away.

And there's times we need every day, even when we're working, doing other things, to separate from all the stuff that's attacking our brain all the time. We have to have that time.

Think of a small child. You've all seen a small child that's exhausted.

And you say, come on, we're going to take a nap. And this suddenly, this wonderful, loving, most perfect child that's ever lived is punching you, kicking you, and screaming, I'm not going to take a nap. I'm not tired. And you look at him, and you think, man, you look like something out of a horror movie. You know, they're just going nuts!

Physically, that's what happens to us as adults, too. We just don't show it that much. And when we do, we're going to start spinning off. Now, we can bring it back and control it. That's what we have to do. We do it long enough, and we break down. We literally start to break down.

So, he takes care of him physically. Then verse 8, verse 9, And he went into a cave. So, he sends him out for 40 days to get someplace. So now, okay, he's moving farther and farther away from the experiences of burnout. He takes him away from it. He takes him out, away from the burnout, into time where he has to think. He has to meditate. He has to reason through what's happened to him, because this next thing is really interesting. And he goes into a cave and spent the night in that place. And behold, the word of the Lord came to him and said to him, now, you think, what would God say? You know, Elijah, what's wrong with you? You know, Elijah, how could you have this crisis of faith when I did all these things for you? You know, Elijah, why did you run away? Why are you so afraid of Jezebel? I mean, all the questions he could have asked him. And the question he asked him is, what are you doing here?

Now, he could have said, could you send me here? But that's not what's really happening here. He's had him think through this, and now he's in a place to confront God. God's talking to him. God's confronting him, and he's not mad.

He's just saying, what are you doing out here in the middle of nowhere in a cave? And now the real issue comes out. Verse 10, so he said, I have been zealous for the Lord God of hosts, for the children of Israel, haven forsaken your covenant, torn down your altars and killed your prophets with the sword. I alone am left, and they seek my life.

He said, I've done this all alone, and I'm alone. My people hate me. There's no one that follows you but me. I am lonely, and I give up, and I'm in a cave out here in the middle of nowhere because this is the best life gets. Can you see where he is?

This is it. Being in a cave is the best this life gets.

And God still didn't get angry with me. And God had to bring him back into a spiritual mindset. He was not thinking spiritually because emotionally he's in chaos.

Mentally he's in chaos. Not only because... think of the danger... I can't imagine looking at 450 men and saying, now watch what happens here, and believe it enough, and it happens. You know, is there just a little doubt? What if God doesn't do this? What if God doesn't bring rain? No! No! He stayed absolutely focused until he had nothing left because he was human.

There was nothing left. And in your life, there will be times when it feels like there's nothing left. That's going to happen. If it hasn't happened yet, just wait. And in that moment, God put you in a cave. Says, get something to eat, take some rest, spend some time thinking, detox from this. Get this... start thinking differently. Open up your heart and mind, and I'll come ask you, hey, what's going on?

Verse 11. Then God says to Elijah, go out and stand on the mountain before the Lord. The old the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind tore into the mountains and broke the rocks in pieces before the Lord. But the Lord was not in the wind. And after the wind, there was an earthquake. But the Lord was not in the earthquake. He says, I want you to stand out here on this ledge and watch what happens. The mountains are shaking, rocks are falling. There's an earthquake, there's wind. It's like he's watching a hurricane and an earthquake happen at the same time. And he just stand there watching all this. But God's not in any of this. He's just causing it. And after the earthquake, a fire. But the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire, a still small voice.

You think God would have yelled at him? Elijah wasn't being rebellious. Elijah had no fire left. And God just reminded him, guess where the fire comes from?

That's where we have to go when we're in spiritual trouble. There's a point where we have to get physically able to get energy back. We have to emotionally remove as much as we can that's keeping us distracted from God. And then we have to go let God talk to us, which is going to happen in the scripture. And what we find is, instead of yelling at us, he's saying, I'm here.

I'm here. I'm here.

So it was when Elijah heard it, verse 13, that he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood in the entrance of the cave. And suddenly a voice came into him and said, okay, Elijah, so why are you here?

I'm here. You can see what I do. So why are you here? And Elijah tells him, I'm all that's left. I'm so alone. And now we're getting into where he was and all the spiritual things that God was doing through him. He still felt alone. There was a loneliness to it.

And in that loneliness, he believed life just, I'm just alone. And God said, did you know there's 7,000 people in Israel that follow me? He says, they still follow me. You're not alone. But you do have a special job.

Elijah realized he wasn't alone. He thought he was the only person on the earth that was following God. He wasn't.

And now the real issue came out. You're not alone. I'm with you. And there's other people who actually look at you and follow you.

And Elijah changed.

So you know what he did next? You think he would have said, you know, Elijah, the best thing for you to do now is just retire. I know you've been through a lot.

Now, after Elijah got it, I'm not alone. God's with me. I'm afraid of Jezebel. And he just shows up and there's earthquakes and windstorms and fire and explosions. And then he just calmly says, so are you here? He never told him why he was there. He just kept asking him. And then he said, now here's what I want you to do. Over in Syria, they have a king that needs to be ordained. And I want people to know that I accept him as king. So you're to go to Syria, an enemy of Judah in Israel, and you are to ordain their king. Now, you talk about stepping back into the lion's den. The truth is, he was probably more honored in Syria than he was in Israel because he was famous throughout the Middle East as a man of God. And he went to Syria and they welcomed him to ordain their king. And he said, now go do something. Which keeps us something else here. When God works this through with us, in this renewal, when we're done, when he brings us back, the fire is relit, and we're getting spiritual focus. You know what he says? Now go do something. Now, it may not be as active as we were. It may not be in the same way because sometimes when you go through burnout, you change your priorities. But he says, go do something. You can't now just do nothing. Just because you've been through this crisis and now God's worked with you and you're back with the spiritual focus, oh good, I can spend the rest of my life, you know, just hanging out. Hanging out. Now I'm sending you to Syria to ordain a king.

And Elijah went. He couldn't have done that a few weeks earlier. If he would have said, once Jezebel put out a contract on him, he would have said, I'll go over to Syria and ordain this king, he could have gone. Because what did he do? He ran as far as away as he could, got out in the wilderness, sat down and begged God to kill him. He couldn't do anything God asked him to do at that point. And God never got upset with him. Why are you here? What's your purpose?

And once that came back in focus, Elijah went on to do things that God told him to do. It's not because he was sinning. It was because in this human state we burn out. We only have so much physical energy. We only have so much mental energy. We only have so much emotional energy. We only have so much spiritual energy. And we burn it all up. I mean, we burn up our emotional energy with so many negative thoughts that sometimes we exhaust ourselves into absolute collapse. And it's all in our heads.

I don't mean we're making up things. I mean, bad things happen. But we get so caught up in the bad things that happen that it destroys us. It just eats away at us. We do it mentally. And spiritually, we run out of fuel. Remember who the fire comes from. Remember who the fire comes from. Spiritual fire isn't something you and I light within ourselves. Spiritual fire comes from the Holy Spirit of God. That's where it comes from.

And we drift. And we sort of hang out at the edges of Christianity. Hang out at the edges of church. We hang out at the edges of everything.

Why? That's not the way we used to be.

Because this world will burn us out, that's why. Only God can keep us from going. Nobody here has enough strength, character, brain power to do this. God does it. And if we forget that, we get in real trouble. That's one reason we have Sabbath services. God tells us to come together and rest, spiritual rest. We're to do physical rest, and we're to do spiritual rest.

And part of it is coming together as a holy assembly.

So sometimes when we say, oh, I'd just rather stay home and watch it online because I'm tired, you're missing part of the rest. There's a physical rest that comes to this day. And there's a spiritual rest. And you can stay home and say, well, let's see, who's speaking today? Yeah, I don't like him. I'm not going to show up today. We can do those things and get a certain physical rest out of this day, but you will not receive the spiritual rest that comes in this day.

And that drifting is beginning to happen.

Seems like nothing at the beginning, but over time, we drift farther and farther away. God wants us to stay focused. And this is going to be, as this world collapses more and more into chaos, staying focused between work issues and family issues and money issues and church issues and all the other stuff that goes on in life, staying focused on God and what he does and committing to that is going to get harder and harder to do.

But when we do, what we discover is what Elijah finally got. You're on a road, Elijah. All these events are along this journey. And at the end of this journey, God says, I take care of everything. Just stay on the journey.

Jessupel's not going to kill you. Stay on the journey.

I know you can't do anything right now. That's okay. Here, have something to eat. God, can you imagine God saying, here, have something to eat. And maybe take a nap. I wonder how long he slept. He might have slept for days. He was so exhausted.

Now let's work through this. Why are you here? Let's work through all the mental processes, the emotional processes, and get you back to where you're supposed to be. No, you're not alone. I'm with you. And there's thousands of people who are going through exactly what you go through. Not to the extent, because God wasn't doing those miracles, but they were following God, and it was a price they were paying to follow God. He says there's thousands of them. And you, in this case, you're supposed to be a leader in this. Yeah, there's a lot more required of you. So why are you here? Why are you in a cave?

Let's conclude in Colossians 3.

Sometimes you're going to find yourselves in a cave.

And God's going to say, why are you here?

This isn't where you're supposed to be, but this is a stop along the journey here.

Here Paul wants to emphasize to the Colossians that we always have to remember what the end of the journey is. What the end of the journey is. That we never give up on God, although sometimes we have nothing left. We never give up on so many things that he tells us to do that's important in our lives. Why don't we give up? Because he helps us. And every time we burn out and don't have him help us, we fail. It's just, it's every time.

Spiritually, every one of us will fail when we don't have him like the fire. We just will.

And he knows that. And he always can go to Elijah and say, wow, God was pretty gentle with him. Yeah. Because the fire went out and he hadn't sinned. He just spiritually could not do what God had asked him to do over a period of time. Here Paul says, verse 1, if then you were raised with Christ, you were baptized, you received God's Spirit, you came out of that water, you went through a symbolic journey, he says, if you went through that, then remember this, seek those things which are above where Christ is sitting at the right hand of God. He says, keep that as your focal point. That doesn't mean we're not supposed to like our physical lives. This is a blessing from God. There's a lot of good in this life. Sometimes we miss it.

There's a lot of things God gives us in this life. And sometimes we miss it because of all the confusion, all the junk that's flying at us all the time.

Set your mind on the things above, not on things of the earth. So it's nice to have some things. It's nice to have a nice car.

But every one of you probably had the experience of having a nice car, a new, either new car, I always get to use car, but it's new to me. And they sprayed that stuff in. It makes it smell like new car smell, right? And it's great until the alternator goes. And then I have to buy the tires. And then when the doors get squeaked to it, and you know, right? Then you get a chip in the windshield and you got to pay for that. Then you go in and say, oh, you need a new radiator. Oh, okay. It's like, wow, I don't feel so excited about this car. There's no fire in me for this car anymore. But boy, there was a time you drive it down the road the first time. Okay, that's physical life. But spiritual life, we can't do that. We can't lose the fire. God has to keep relating it in us. Set your mind on things above, not on things of the earth. For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.

It's like you're in Him. We are connected with Him. Waiting the resurrection. Now think about that. He's already planned to resurrect us. You can disconnect from Him and lose your salvation. But in the mind of Christ, you're connected. He's waiting for you to be resurrected in Him. That's His anticipation. He just doesn't take away our free will. He says, for when Christ, who is our life, appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory. Therefore, put to death your members, which are on the earth, fornication and cleanness, passion, envy, desire, evil desire, covetousness, which is idolatry. Because of these things, the wrath of God is coming upon the sons of disobedience. He said, okay, this isn't burnout. No, it's not. But it's where it can lead us to. And where it leads us.

So much in time in life, we're looking at the symptoms. Sin many times are the symptoms. Where is it coming from? Like I said, I'm giving this sermon because, from time to time in life, I've suffered from spiritual burnout. I can't do this anymore.

And I always have to come back here. So when I got my sermon where I couldn't do it, I thought I'd give a sermon to me.

So sorry, you have to listen to it.

He says, But now, verse 8, you yourselves are to put off all these things, anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy language out of your mouth. Do not lie one to another, since you have put off the old man with his deeds, and have put on the new man who's renewed in knowledge according to the image of him who created him. You're renewed. You must be renewed all the time. Every one of us must be renewed all the time. This isn't static. It's not, I've arrived. No one has arrived.

But we're going to arrive. Once you remember that, the journey gets a little easier. I haven't arrived yet. Forgive me, Father. I haven't arrived yet. Help me, Father. I haven't arrived yet.

But you'll get me there.

Why are you in this cave? Ask yourself that every once in a while. Is God asking me, so why are you in this cave?

Why did I lead you here? Tell me why you think. It's interesting with Elijah, it's because I'm alone. But you're not. God had to convince him he wasn't. Once he did, off he went to, ordained the king of Syria. He would have walked into the palace of Syria, the enemies of Israel, and said, tell them Elijah is here.

And they would have said, oh, the God of Israel has sent someone to ordain our king. And they let him come in and do that, and probably honored him, and then was happy when he left.

But go tell your master Elijah is here. That happened again. Only a totally different circumstance, and a different country.

When you begin to suffer spiritual burnout, and you'll know it, and you go through those symptoms, when you start to having two or three of those symptoms at the same time, and they start to get longer, you're in spiritual burnout. You're headed down a bad journey. But all of us go down that route from time to time.

So it's not like, oh, I'm the worst of the group. No, you're just one of the group.

So I just wanted the group. But we have to recognize what's happening. When that happens, first of all, get some physical, good food, and some rest. Take some time to deal with the physical part. Low your blood pressure or something, okay? Take care of the physical part. Then get some emotional rest. You have to get it out of your mind. All the clutter, all the stuff, all the emotional stress and hurt that just happens, because in life, life is hurtful. And it's a terrible load everybody carries. You think your load is different than everybody else's. Some are worse. Everybody has some load.

Everybody has some load.

And so what we have to do, is let the load go enough that we find ourselves in the cave.

And then, when that happens, God shows up and tells you, you're not alone.

He's with you. We're not alone.

And then he says, now go do something important for me. Now he's not going to ask any of us to go out and ordain the King of Syria, okay?

But he's going to send you out to do something. He's going to bring somebody into your life or something into your life, where you serve and you do something for God. That's what's going to happen. And we think of service as big things. Service, sometimes it's the smallest thing. And that's where God works. We think he always works just in the big things. No, he works in the little things. And there's little things that he wants you to do every day that's in service to him, either directly to him or with another person.

And remember this Sabbath, every Sabbath day is a time of physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual rest. And we have to work at it. We have to get all the clutter gone so that we can answer him when he asks us, why are you here?