Spiritual Burnout

So the sermon I looked at was, I took some sermons a while back that I gave 2016, 2017, 2018, and pulled a couple of them out and said, you know, I'm going to redo that sermon and give it again. And so I was last night, I thought, okay, the sermon I prepared, I'm not going to be able to give. So I looked back and I found this sermon that I had on the list, and I thought, this is something we need as we now move farther and farther away from the Feast of Tabernacles. We all come back from the Feast of Tabernacles, you know, on a spiritual high. We've had this great, usually a great experience every once in a while. You know, you get sick or something, and it's not a great experience. But most of the time we come home and there's a...we have this spiritual energy. And we'll watch that spiritual energy just sort of wane as the weeks go by and the months go by, and life just brings its crisis upon us. And we can, between Feast to, you know, Feast of Tabernacles until Passover time, we can actually go through spiritual burnout. Now, spiritual burnout happens over a long period of time, and we can have a sort of a little bit of spiritual burnout. But when I look at the congregation, I look at my life, I realize all of us, if we're not careful, because of the world we live in and the stresses we're under, we can spiritually burn out. You know, what's that mean? Have you ever had a job that you just loved? You love that job. And you went to it every day just thinking, wow, I love my job. And as time went on, you got better and better at it, and so they gave you more and more responsibility. And you did that, and you got better at that. And then they gave you more. And then new people came in that you didn't get along with, like the people that were there when you first, you know, first started to work there. And then there reaches this point. Did you've been there maybe 20 years? And you just hate going to work. You hate getting up in the morning and going to work. You know, you tell your wife, I just don't like the people I work with. Well, you used to love your work. Yeah, well, that's what I used to do, but now they've added all these new responsibilities. It's not what I do anymore.

And I just don't like it. And you lose your zeal for the work that you used to love.

Mothers.

Every mother here has had the experience where you love that child. You love the whole concept of being a mother.

You do everything. I mean, you change the diapers. You feed. You take care. They get older and they get older. And you take care of them. And you're just, you're like, expending all your energy doing that.

And then one day your husband says, you don't seem too happy anymore. And she says, you have no idea what I deal with every day.

Because the workload and the things that are happening pile up and pile up, and you lose your zeal for it. It's not that you don't love the children. It's just, it is hard to keep doing what you're doing.

Maybe you're someone who has had a, you know, had a good marriage, but over the years it's sort of deteriorated.

And it's not as good a marriage as it used to be. And then it gets to the place you don't talk anymore and you don't solve any problems.

And one day you just say, I'm fed up with this. I don't have the energy anymore to do it.

Or I'm just depressed and I can't do anything anymore. This is it.

I've seen people in the church serve and serve and serve and serve until their entire identity is in whatever they're doing.

Picking up the songbooks is their identity. So, you know, they see a little kid helping picking up the songbooks and you can't do that. That's mine.

And they become burned out. Nobody appreciates me. And then one day they just say, you know what? I don't want to serve anymore.

Burnout can lead to depression and it can lead to very illogical decisions. That's in regular life.

You and I can experience, especially in the world we live in, because we are trying to live by God's way in a world that does not.

We can suffer from spiritual burnout where we lose our zeal and our love for the way of God and it becomes a burden. We grind through it.

So I'm going to look at spiritual burnout. I'm going to first talk about some symptoms. Now everyone, as they go through this, they say, oh, I have that symptom.

But if you have three of these symptoms, you're already on the road. You're already on the road and need to understand what's happening.

And spiritual burnout begins to first appear emotionally. You still do the things you're doing, but it begins to have an emotional effect until your emotions become very, very negative.

And then you start to drift. So understand, you're becoming emotionally negative. You're still spiritually seen to be doing what you were doing, but you become very, very negative and then you start the spiritual drift.

You don't even realize you're doing it because you're still going through the motions. Here's some of the symptoms. First of all, you begin to lack zeal. You lose your zeal for Christianity as a way of life.

Oh, you get up and come to Sabbath services, but you're not looking forward to it. Oh, it's the same old people. And so and so, I'm going to have to hear him tell me about all these health problems.

Or so and so, she's going to come up and start gossiping. Or, this is going to happen, or that's going to happen. You know, okay, I have to go, I guess because God commands me.

Or, I'm too tired. I think I'll just stay home today. The drift starts because of an emotional state and there's a spiritual drift.

Or, you know, I really like it when so and so and so and so and so and so is speaking, but when this guy is speaking, he's giving the split sermon or the sermon to the sermon. I'm just going to stay home.

Now, is he teaching heresy? No, but I just don't like it. Okay, that's a drift. That's a drift that's happening.

So, we start to lose our zeal. We're always looking for reasons not to do something, then instead of why, when it comes to our relationship with God.

We begin to have a lack of desire for prayer and Bible study. You still do it, but not like you used to. Or you forget to do it sometimes.

Or when you do it, you think, what am I doing this for? Your mind wanders and moves all over the place. You're drifting. You're still doing things, but you're drifting.

And this is where burnout is beginning to happen. You start to withdraw from church fellowship and activities. You literally start to withdraw from relationships.

And that's what happens in marriage. You begin to withdraw from the relationship. You become chronically depressed over life's problems.

And I know some of you are dealing with enormous burdens of life's problems. And that doesn't mean if you feel depressed you're sinning.

What I'm saying is, it's a chronic thing. You can never break loose. You can never break loose from a chronic negative state.

You become cynical and negative. You know, everything's cynical. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No good's going to come from anything, right?

You have a loss of purpose in life, in relationship to your calling. You no longer see what your calling is. That you've been called by God to be converted into His eternal child.

And that's why you live.

Is in relationship to this God. That calling becomes sort of murky. I'm a member of the church. Okay. But what is the church? Right? The group of called out ones.

What do they call out to do? To become the children of God.

So you lose your sense of calling. You begin to have a loss of desire to serve and help others. Nobody appreciates me anyways.

And here's where it ends up. Here's where the drift and the burnout reaches its critical mass.

As you begin to become complacent about personal sin and attitudes.

You just become complacent about sin and attitudes.

You just sort of accept certain things that are wrong.

So I'm going to give you a classic example of spiritual burnout in the Bible.

And then we'll discuss what God does in this situation and how this is how we have to understand this is when this is happening.

We have to know these symptoms. Okay. We're going to look at a man that burned out just like that.

Usually it's a drift. It's a time. He didn't. He just burned out all at one time. And how did God deal with that?

So let's go to 1 Kings 18.

And verse 1.

And it came to pass after many days that the word of the Lord came to Elijah in the third year saying, Go, present yourself to Ahab, and I will send rain on the earth.

So what's happened here is that God has brought a curse on the nation because they won't obey him.

They're a rebellion against him. And so there was no rain. For a period of time there was no rain.

And the whole nation was in crisis. And God tells Elijah, Go tell the king that I'm going to bring rain to show that I want them to repent.

That if you repent, good things will happen. So this is a motivational thing that God's doing.

And Elijah, Elijah's filled with faith. He's fearless. I mean, Elijah's an amazing person.

And God was involved in his life like very few people throughout the Scripture, and what he did with him and how he interacted with him.

So verse 7.

Now Obadiah was on his way, and suddenly Elijah met him, and he recognized him and fell on his face and said, Is that you, my Lord Elijah? No. Obadiah was one of the prophets.

There was a whole group of prophets, and he was one of them.

And he answered him, It is I. Go tell your master Elijah, It is here.

You go tell the king, I'm coming.

Now that's a pretty bold thing to do, right?

Ahab's not a good guy, right?

And you go tell him, I'm coming. And he knows who I am. Sounds like something out of an old western movie, right?

And he said, How have I sinned?

This is what Obadiah says.

What have I done to receive this curse?

Have I sinned that you are delivering me to your servant into the hand of Ahab to kill me?

He says, If I show up and say that, you know he will kill me. As the Lord your God lives, there is no nation or kingdom where my master has not sent someone to hunt for you.

And when they said he's not here, he took an oath from the kingdom or nation that they could not find him.

In other words, Ahab was sending out people not only throughout Israel, he was sending people to other nations demanding.

Is he here? And I want an oath that he's not there. Because if you're lying to me, we're going to have war.

I'm going to hunt this guy down and kill him. And now I'm supposed to go and say, Elijah's coming.

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 tell Ahab that he cannot find you, he will kill me.

But I, your servant, have feared the Lord for my youth.

Was it not reported to you, my Lord, what I said when Jezebel killed the prophets of the Lord?

How I hid 100 men of the Lord's prophets, 50 to a cave, and fed them with bread and water.

Don't you know it's not because I'm a coward here.

When he was going around killing all the prophets, I'm the one, because he was obviously a prophet to the court. He says, I'm the one who saved prophets. I'm the one who hid them.

I'm the one at the price of losing my own life, fed them and took care of them.

Can't you see what I've done?

And once again, you're saying, go tell him.

And you know what's going to happen, because this happens with you, Elijah.

Every time they say he's there and people show up, you're gone.

God takes you someplace else. So, you know, I'll go tell him that, and he'll send some soldiers to where you are, and you won't be there, because God will move you, and guess who's going to take his anger out on me?

You can understand Obadiah's approach here.

And Elijah said, As the Lord of hosts lives, behold whom I stand, I will surely present myself to him today.

So Obadiah went to Ahab and told him, and Ahab went to meet Elijah. And it happened when Ahab saw Elijah, that Ahab said to him, Is that you, O troubleor of Israel?

Is that you that just the man that just causes my life to be miserable?

And he answered, Now this shows you the boldness of Elijah.

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.

Whoa! Then he goes on and just says, And your wife, she's even worse than you are.

So Obadiah went in, probably went off and into the corner. What's going to happen next?

Elijah shows up, and Elijah says, You are the reason for all the troubles that's happening in this nation.

There were soldiers all over the place. Elijah's fearless. He has faith. He's focused.

I mean, this man has energy, right? Spiritual energy from the Spirit of God.

It is the Spirit of God that's motivating him to do this.

And so if you go down to verse 20, So Ahab sent for all the children of Israel, and gathered the prophets together at Mount Carmel.

Now he gathers together all the pagan priests.

Okay, you want to showdown.

You know, once again it's like the old western.

You're going to go call the guy out in the street, and he brings, in this case, 450 men with him.

He brings the entire gang. So now you've got to face the gang, right?

And so they meet, and Elijah says in verse 21, He came to all the people, so now a huge amount of people gather around to see this.

So people sort of travel from all over Israel to see what's going to happen here.

The big showdown between Elijah and all these prophets.

And Elijah came to all the people and said, How long will you falter between two opinions?

If the Lord is God, follow him. But if Baal, follow him.

But the people answered not a word.

And so we know the story.

He told them, Build an altar, and put an animal on it, and called down Baal to bring fire from heaven to light your sacrifice to him.

And so they did.

They built an altar, they put an animal on it, and put it on it, and they prayed.

And they danced.

And they chanted.

And they screamed.

Eventually they were actually taking knives and cutting themselves.

And this pleading for Baal to do it.

And of course, Elijah kept egging them on.

Now remember, it's one against 450.

Elijah says, Maybe you need to scream louder.

Maybe he's asleep.

Finally he says, Build an altar. They did.

They slaughtered a bull and put it on there.

And he says, By the way, let's just soak all this in water.

They soaked the meat.

They soaked the wood.

They soaked the stone altar.

And there was a little ditch around it until the ditch was full of water.

And then he gave this short little prayer.

Fire came down from heaven and not only burned up the sacrifice, but all the stones, the water, everything was just... it was gone.

And he turns around and looks at the 450 men, and he tells the people of Israel, Now you know who God is.

Kill him.

The showdown ended up where the 450 went down.

This is an incredible story, and it's true.

Here's a man with all this... I mean, what God did in him was absolutely obvious.

The whole nation saw it.

In fact, if you read in chapter 19...

or the rest of chapter 18, I'm sorry, he says, Now go tell the king the drought's going to end, and tell him to go fast.

And there's not a cloud in the sky. And Elijah prays and prays, and he sees this little cloud form.

And he tells Ahab, you better get on your chariot and get home, because it's going to rain.

And so, he gets in his chariot, and he's trying to get back home because it's going to rain, because now they see this huge black storm coming.

And I don't know if... I just have a wacko vision of this, okay?

The way my mind works. Elijah runs by him and gets there first.

I think of these cartoons where you see where their legs are just whirling around, he goes by, he's in a horse, and he's got these horses, and he's got a whip, and he's trying to move along, and zoom!

There he is, and he's waiting for him on the other end.

That's real! That actually happened.

Now, none of us have experienced that. In all of the biblical history, some of these are the most incredible miracles God ever did on earth.

And Elijah was used by God to do these things.

He outran a chariot.

And he gets there first.

He's done all these things.

He's expended all this energy.

He has had to deal with his own fear.

I mean, he knew what if God doesn't protect me in all this.

He had to deal with all these things, and he did it.

And then, chapter 19.

And Ahab told Jezebel, Jezebel was a whole lot worse than Ahab.

She's one of the worst monarchs in all of the Bible.

All that Elijah had done, and how he had executed all the prophets with the sword.

And Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah, saying, So let the gods do to me, and more also, If I don't make your life, Is the life of one of them by tomorrow about this time.

Now he's got another gunfight on his hands.

You've got 24 hours to get out of town, and I'm coming after you.

But this is Jezebel, and she makes Ahab look like a wimp.

And when she said that, he arose and ran for his life with the Beersheba, which belongs to Judah, left his sermon there.

See, he goes to another country. Israel and Judah aren't the same country.

He goes to another country. But he hid himself, he went a day's journey into the wilderness, and came and sat down under a broom tree, and I'm not sure what a broom tree is, and he prayed that he might die, and said, It is enough now, Lord, take my life, for I am no better than my father's.

I have nothing left.

He went to God and said, Please, just let me die.

There's nothing left in here. There's no fuel left to burn.

Physically, I'm exhausted. Emotionally, I'm exhausted. Spiritually, I'm exhausted. There is nothing left.

And there wasn't anything left. God had done these things through him.

He wasn't capable of doing these things.

And he had reached the point. This is it.

Just kill me. I don't want to do this anymore.

This is too much.

Now, once again, we can do that with jobs, we can do that with children, with children we can do that with serving the children, we can do that with anything.

The thing is, he was doing this with God. He had literally had spiritual burnout.

His happened real quick.

Usually when we were spiritually burned out, it's all a period of time.

We drift and we drift. He didn't drift. There was just nothing left.

And we drift and drift and drift.

Till one day we say, there's nothing left. And there isn't.

What did God do to him? God say, you know what? You're a problem, Elijah. You just don't have enough faith.

You know you're a problem, Elijah. You're just not spiritual enough.

What did God do with him?

Now, he hasn't drifted towards sin yet, because this isn't a drift.

It's a boom. He's there.

How does God deal with it? Because it's very important.

Verse 5. So he lays under this tree, and an angel touches him and says to him, here, I've got some food for you.

Now, this is going to tell us something.

God first dealt with the physical exhaustion he had.

God let him sleep, and I guarantee you he didn't feed him Twinkies and a Coke. He fed him what his body needed.

Sometimes we actually can have spiritual burnout because we burned ourselves out physically.

We're not sleeping right. We're not taking care of ourselves. We're eating junk. You know, yeah, we have a cookie once in a while, but I mean, sometimes we're just eating way too much sugar and junk, and we're not taking care of ourselves. And then we're all burned out because we're actually physically... there's no fuel left inside. We can do that to ourselves.

And the first thing he says is, get some sleep, and here, eat some good food.

He dealt with the fact that Elijah is physical.

When you and I are suffering from spiritual burnout, we have to remember, wait a minute, I'm still physical, and we have to disengage from the physical things that may be actually driving our exhaustion.

We have to step back. Here's what he did. Get some sleep, eat some food.

And he looked, and there at his head was a cake baked on coals and a jar of water. So he ate and he drank, and he laid down again.

And the angel of the Lord came back a second time, touched him, and said, here, eat something, because God wants you to go someplace. This is going to be a long walk before you have food next.

So he rose and ate, and he went in the strength of that food for forty days and forty nights as far as Horeb, the mountain of God. Now, if you ever find something you can eat and make sure you keep going for forty days, please let me know. I don't care how much it cost. So you're seeing God perform a miracle, but the miracle is physical. Recognize, Elijah, you're not God. You're just a man. So let's deal with these issues first. And so what he does is he gives him physical rest, and he gives him food.

And that's part of the problem we have. We live in a society that is so stimulating. Right?

I mean, I have a hard time sometimes. I try not to. But I'll be looking at my phone, because I see other people doing it, and he says, they're like addicted. Boy, I wonder why... And then I realize I'm doing it. I went to get my haircut yesterday. And I'm sitting there doing that, and I hear this voice. This woman yells out, Gary! No, this is my turn to get my haircut.

And I stood up, and I'm walking, and I'm finishing up what I'm doing. And I walked right by her, and she said, I'm here! And I said, oh, I'm sorry. I just heard my name called, and I was following the light. I wasn't sure what was happening. And they all laughed. But we get so locked into the stimulation.

People get addicted to TikTok, to YouTube, to, you know, television, to movies. We all get addicted to things. We have to check our email every day. I hate that, but I have to do it. But I limit the amount of time I spend on email, which means I always don't answer all my emails. Sometimes I don't get to everybody, and I'm sorry. But sometimes I say, two hours a day is all I'm going to spend on email today.

Unless it's an emergency. I'll look if it's an emergency. You say, well, that's not being efficient. The other choice is, is to spend so much time on email that I become burned out. I do. And I can't do that. So we have to realize the physical world we live in. Okay, think of a child. You know when a child is exhausted and fighting sleep, and they are very unpleasant, and they don't know why.

You could say, you need a nap, and they'll just scream, no, I don't. They're not processing anything. They're just physically out of control. Well, we get that way as adults. And sometimes God says, yeah, you've got some problems here. You're treating your neighbor poorly because you're not physically taking care of yourself. So you need to take and physically step back and physically analyze what you're doing in your life. You say, oh, spiritual, burnout, why would you start here? Because that's where God started with Elijah. He understood, man, I've worked through this man, and he's burned up inside because of what God had done with him, and he needed time to recover from that.

So then, verse 8, let's see. Okay, verse 9. Let's go for verse 9. And he went to a cave there in Horeb, and spent the night in that place, and told the word of the Lord came to him and said, what are you doing here, Elijah? Now, I find this interesting. God takes him off, you know, out into the wilderness. He goes into a cave. He's got all this energy, physical energy, because he's sleeping, and this special food God gave to him.

And then God asked him, okay, why are you here? What are you doing here in this cave? The second step in dealing with our spiritual burnout, after physically getting ourselves able to respond to God, is to deal with the emotional state you're in. When you are spiritually burned out, you're usually either numb and lethargic, or you're angry, or you're just upset all the time, you can't process things, and God says, okay, you're alone now. Take a big breath, and what are you doing here?

And his answer is what God is really getting at, okay? His answer could have been, I don't know, you told me to come here. That's not his answer. So verse 10. So he said, I have been very zealous. Look at the energy. Look at the power. Look, I've sacrificed my whole life for you.

I am very zealous for the Lord God of hosts. For the children of Israel have forsaken your covenant, torn down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword. And I alone am left, and they seek to take my life. This is not fair. I've done all I can in serving you, and my life is living in a cave, waiting for Jezebel to send somebody to kill me, and no one even listens to me when I preach to him anyways.

Oh, I've had those thoughts. No. But you understand where he is. Emotionally, he can't even respond to God. He's basically telling God, hey, I've served you, and I'm alone. So what good is this? So now God's part of the problem. Now, interesting enough, at this point, God doesn't punish him. He just takes him to this quiet place where now he's physically rested, he's physically back in health, and he lets him say this, and then he shows up. And it's interesting, God didn't show up before this point. Elijah had to be physically restored, he had to be sort of emotionally restored.

He now told God what his real problem was. It was God. He is spiritually drifted to the real problem is you. It's all the people and you. That's the real problem, my life. God shows up and talks to him, and says, by the way, you're not the only one. Look what I've done in you. You know there's 7,000 other people in Israel that still obey me, that are my children. You're not the only one, Elijah. His burnout had left him to feel alone. That's what happens with burnout. You feel alone. Because you've pulled away from other people, almost always, except people who listen to you gripe.

In other words, you'll find other people that are as negative as you are, and that's the people you associate with. So you pull away from other people, and you've pulled away from God. You're drifting, drifting, drifting away from God, and now there's nothing left to burn. You know, God's Spirit's in you, which is called a fire, but it's not burning anything.

It's just there. And you're struggling. Everybody goes through this at some point in their lives. It's what it is to be human. And I find it interesting because God hasn't worked in any of us the way He worked in Elijah, and yet Elijah suffered it. I'm alone. I don't know what I'm doing, and I'm lost, and nobody listens to me anyways. I can't do what you've asked me to do. It's always been a failure. And God tells him, basically, No. You and me are okay. I'm paraphrasing. We're okay, Elijah. Think about it.

You feel better now, okay? Your health has come back. Emotionally, you've been alone. You've thought this through, and now you've told me what you actually feel, and it's not my fault. It's yours. But I understand. You and I are okay.

And Elijah is now okay.

If he would have stayed on that burnout, he would have turned against God. But look what God did to him, to help him through it. He understood his issues. He understood who he was. He understood his weaknesses. And God never punished him for his burnout. He just said, you can't stay this way, and I'm with you. And now, God's spirit was starting to burn again. God's spirit was starting to burn again. We struggle, we can struggle in that drift.

But you know, this day is one of the gifts that God has given to us to pull us back. This is why the keeping of this day is so important. This is why we have to be careful what we do on this day. You know, we think, well, I can't do that on this day, because God just doesn't want me to be happy. I think it was a little house on the prairie. The way they kept Sunday was, they went to church, and then the whole rest of the day, they said to sit on these hard chairs with the Bible on their lap, praying and reading for hours and hours. That's not what this is either. This is a time to physically, emotionally, and spiritually reconnect with God. This is a time to shut down all the stuff that is making us drift. It's hard not to talk and think about work on the Sabbath, isn't it? Yeah. Put it aside. It's hard not to talk about all your trials, and sometimes we have to share our trials. I'm not saying you shouldn't, but it's hard not to concentrate on that. Put it away. It's hard not to concentrate on all the problem I'm having with this person, or the problem I'm having with my marriage, or the problem I'm having with this person at work. It's put it aside. Those aren't the most important things in your life. Zero in on what God is doing, and when you get the proper rest, and your health is at least some better, you're taking care of yourself more, and you now emotionally are calmer, you'll hear God talk. The problem is God could have showed up shouting at Him at one point, and Elijah probably wouldn't have listened to Him. He had Him stuck in a cave out in the middle of nowhere, and then said, are you ready now? Can we talk? This is God talking to Him. He knew who He was talking to. Well, God talks to us through His Spirit, and sometimes we don't hear it. We don't hear it. There's too much other clutter in our minds all the time, and we're not listening to God. And He said, okay, remember, Friday night, don't do all this other stuff. Friday night, forget about all the negatives, and listen. Get out your Bible, talk about God, talk about His way, talk about Jesus Christ, and listen. And we may find that He's actually communicating. We'll find something in the Scripture that will say, wow, that helps me. I think as we get closer to what we call the time of the end, it's going to become more and more common for us to face spiritual burnout. The pressure's on us. It's going to cause us to drift, and it's going to cause us to lose that contact with God. When we go through the motions, we go to the Feast of Tabernacles. We do some Bible reading, you know. Yeah, every day I get up my Bible reading program and I read some. But the heart, the core, the fire is burning out. And it has to be rekindled. And that fire has to be rekindled from time to time.

Isaiah 40. Isaiah 40. Oh, by the way, you know what he did with Elijah after Elijah had some time in the cave and God talked to him? He said, well, now I have a king in another country that needs to be ordained, and I want you to go ordain him. He didn't say, you know, oh, I'd Elijah, I understand. Just spend the rest of your life in the cave. Once Elijah was reestablished physically, emotionally, and spiritually, and now he knew God was with him, well, God had been with him when he ran a chariot. But now he remembers God's with him personally. On a personal level, God is with him. He gave him something to do. Once we get rested, doesn't mean now we stay rested in terms of activity. God wants us to do things. Spiritual burnout leads us to a point where God's fire is burning in us again, and we start to do. We start to do what is right. Now, sometimes burnout will cause you to reevaluate your priorities, how you spend your time. It will cause you to reprioritize how you spend your energy, right? But it's still go back to now living the way God wants you to live, doing what God wants you to do, serving him, serving others, doing good at your job. He wants you to do that. Being a good husband and wife, he wants you to do that. He wants all these things, but those become symptoms sometimes of a greater burnout, which is spiritual. A spiritual burnout, and we're drifting from God. So you now had him go do something. The lethargy was gone. I've got something I want you to do now, Elijah. So he had to go, who knows how many days or weeks, to travel to another country, go in and say, I'm Elijah, and I'm here. And I'm here to ordain you king, because God has sent me. And they said, good. You know, the God of Israel was known throughout the Middle East. So he went there and he laid hands on that king and said, the God of Israel accepts you as king. And everybody there was in awe because Elijah just showed up. The man who a few weeks earlier was saying, just kill me. I can't do this. There's nothing left. He'd forgotten where the power comes from. The more you and I try to do this ourselves, the more we fail. The power comes from God. The energy comes from God. That's where it comes from. We remember that, and we remember we're physical, and we remember we're still struggling with our own carnal human nature. We remember those things. We always end up, what? In the cave saying, God, I don't know what I'm supposed to do. I'm alone. And God says, no you're not. In fact, there's lots of people out there in the same boat you are. He told him, no, no, no, there's 7,000 people in Israel alone. And they're all following me. They're the same place you are. In Isaiah, I forgot to go there, Isaiah 40 and verse 25. There's a big introduction here to a statement that is made by God. So I'm going to read some of the introduction so we understand why he gets to this point. Let's start in verse 25.

To whom then will you liken me? It's interesting. He didn't say that to Elijah. He just said, Elijah, so explain to me again why you're here in the cave. Explain to me why you are where you are. How did you get here? Like I said, he could have said, because you sent me here, but he didn't. He said, I'm here because I'm alone and I'm abandoned and they're out to kill me and serving you hasn't worked out as good as I thought it would.

Okay, yeah, that's why you're here. So let's talk. Here, though, Isaiah's message starts with God making some definitive statements. To whom then will you liken me? Or to whom shall I be equal, says the Holy One? Lift up your eyes on high and see who has created these things, who brings out their hosts by numbers. He calls them all by name. By his greatness of his might and the strength of his power, not one thing is missing. He says, look at every part of creation in the sky, in the world around you, everything.

And what we know now, scientifically, about how creation works, he says, you know how that works? I made it. I made all this. Remember that. Remember that. And then he skips down, because he talks about this then, about how his understanding is unsearchable. His greatness is beyond our imagination. Remember who he is. And then verse 30, he talks about even the youth faint and weary in this world that we live in. Verse 31, but those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings like eagles.

They shall run and not be weary. They shall walk and not faint. When we are suffering from burnout, we have to stop and wait on the Lord. And when you're emotionally worn out, physically worn out, spiritually, you can't even seem to connect to God because you're worn out, the last thing you want to do is wait. I want a pill that will fix me. We wait, and that's what he had him do. Sleep for a while under this tree. Let me feed you. Now walk for days. End up in a cave in the middle of nowhere. I'm waiting for you, Lord.

Good. Feel better? Of course he felt better at this point. Now tell me what the real issue is. And it's amazing Elijah told him what the issue was. He went to now saying what he felt like he needed to say to God. And he said, this is the issue. And God said, no it's not. That's not the issue at all. The issue is, you need me. That's the issue. That was the issue. You need me. And Elijah got it. And Elijah left and went, traveled to another country to ordain a king, where he was hailed as some important guy.

In his own country, they have a contract out on him, basically. He goes to another country and he's hailed as a man of God. So is the life of Elijah. You talk about contradictions and difficulties. And then he says, then you shall renew your strength. The renewal comes on waiting for God. It's traveling towards God. It's stopping and saying, I'm moving toward... I'm waiting here. You move me to where I need to go. You know, what cave do I have to go to?

Where do I have to go for you to do this in me? Because I cannot. Oh, I can take an energy drink and have more physical energy for a couple hours. But that's not the core of the problem. I mean, if it's just energy problem, physical energy, okay. Eat some peanut butter. That's what I do for energy. I eat a little bit of organic peanut butter.

Put a little honey in it. Slice up a banana. I can go three hours on that. Doesn't help with spiritual burnout. It just gives you a little more physical energy for a while, right? Eventually you'll burn out. This is difficult at any age. Sometimes as you get older and have more and more physical issues, it even gets harder because you can't totally physically recover because of your age. But you can't spiritually recover because God can do it. Hebrews 6. Hebrews 6.

Verse 9.

Here's what we have to remember. But beloved, Paul writes here, we are confident of better things concerning you. Yes, things that accompany salvation that we speak in this manner. For God has not unjust to forget your work and labor of love, which you have shown towards His name, and that you have ministered to the saints and do minister.

So he's talking here to people serving in the church that were feeling burned out like Elijah was. And we desire that each one of you show the same diligence to the full assurance of hope until the end, that you do not become sluggish, lethargic, but imitate those who through faith and patience inherit the promises.

We always have to remember we're on a road and we know what's at the end of the road. It's greater than what we can imagine, but we must believe that road goes to a point where we are with God.

We must believe that. And that then keeps us focused as we feel like, I have nothing left to burn. I have nothing left to give. There's nothing inside left. And when you're there, here it says, look at the end of the road and then ask God, take me to my cave, take me where I have to be, so that you can rekindle what I need.

Once again, when you go through this, many times you begin to reevaluate actually what's in your life. What have you allowed to encroach so much into your life that you're actually on this spiritual drift? Sometimes it's not until we're involved in sin. We all sin and we struggle with sin, but I mean blatant, serious sin that we begin to realize. Or you wake up one day and realize you've become so negative that you actually hate people. You despise them. Or you wake up one morning and realize, you know, I am jealous all the time because God lets you know. Oh, I do have a sin.

Well, how long has that been developing? How long have I been doing that? And where am I going with this? Let's conclude in Colossians 3. And this is, I usually don't read, this is a long passage, but I'm going to read this because this summarizes then where we must go. That in the end, spiritual burnout has spiritual reasons and spiritual conclusions. Yes, there's a physical element. We can't escape that. And there is always an emotional element. We can't escape that. But in the end, it's realizing the goal of what we're going through. It's realizing this too has a purpose. What Elijah went through had a purpose in Elijah's life, and he actually got to talk to God.

Think about that. But look what he had to go through to talk to God. God's going to be involved. And sometimes it's only when we go through really tough times that we realize how involved he is. Colossians 3 verse 1, if then you were raised with Christ, in other words, you were baptized and you came out of that watery grave and you have God's Spirit, you've been redeemed, you've been forgiven, you've been justified. Seek those things which are above where Christ is sitting at the right hand of God.

Always remember, no matter what's happening in life, we should be looking upward first all the time. We're looking at God, what God wants, what he's doing in our lives. Set your mind on things above, not on things of the earth. Now once again, that doesn't mean, okay, I can't have a nice house, I can't have a nice car, I can't have a nice job. If you have those things wonderful, unless they become idols, some people don't have anything, some people have a lot, and they're both equal Christians, right?

Poverty isn't a proof that you're not a Christian, and being rich isn't a proof that you are a Christian. And yet in the church, there's people all ends of that scale. But setting your mind on things that are above, that's what's so important. I've seen poor people come into money, and it ruined them spiritually. And I've seen rich people lose their money, and it loses it, they ruined them spiritually, right?

But if your mind is set on above, then you weathered those things. I'm not saying they're easy, but you weathered them. For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ and God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, who is our life, we don't have eternal life without Him, who is our life, appears that you also will appear with Him in glory. Therefore put to death your members, which are on this earth, fornication and cleanliness, passion, evil desire, covetousness, which is idolatry. Because of these things, the wrath of God is coming upon the sons of disobedience, in which you yourself once walked when you lived in them.

But now you yourselves are to put off all these anger and wrath and malice and blasphemy, filthy language out of your mouth. Do not lie to one another, since you have put off the old man with his deeds, and have put on the new man who is renewed in knowledge according to the image of him who created him.

When you suffer from spiritual burnout, which you will from time to time, and in doing so you're going to find yourself drifting, drifting, you're going to find yourself in a sort of a spiritual emptiness, struggling. It's going to happen. You're physical. It's going to happen. When it does, remember Elijah. The first thing God did say was, here, eat some good food and get some rest. Step out of the immediate, all the problems that are going on. Step out of all of them. Let yourself have time to do this. Two, have some emotional rest.

Get out of your mind all the oppressive things that just cloud us. One of the things about burnout, physical burnout, is that the people don't sleep. They're awake all the time because their mind is just rushing all the time. And in our world, that's easy. I find I do that. My mind is rushing constantly. I wake up in the middle of the night and thinking, why am I even thinking about this? I should be asleep. But it's just going on. I have to make it go away. Make it go away. Put it out and say, I'll deal with this tomorrow when I'm awake.

Spiritual rejuvenation happens then because we enter into letting God restore His relationship with us. And as that is restored, the fire is lit again because the fire comes from Him. And then you go back to meaningful activity. Sometimes you realize, I just have too much activity. Sometimes I have activities that aren't important. I need to take out of my life. But what happens when you are restored is you now return to activity. Some activity. You don't still say, well, I'm just going to sit around and do nothing for the next two years. That's not what happens. You are restored to some meaningful activity. And don't forget, this weekly Sabbath is part of God's plan to combat physical exhaustion, emotional exhaustion, and spiritual exhaustion. That's why this is so important. As long as we are physical, we need this day.

We need to keep this day so that God can heal us and give us the strength to continue to be His children and not suffer from burnout, but be vital children that He's working in our lives now and He's preparing us for the future.