♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ male announcer: "In Touch," the
teaching ministry of Dr. Charles Stanley, reaching the world with
the gospel of Jesus Christ. Next on "In Touch,"
"When We Feel Burned Out." Dr. Charles Stanley: All of us
experience, at times in our life, fatigue and weariness and
being a little bit worn out. But, when that fatigue or that
weariness develops into a spirit of being discouraged because you can't ever seem to get over it, being--having the feelings of
being exhausted and spent and somehow drained emotionally
as well as physically or spiritually, and somehow you
just want to walk away or just forget it all, and it doesn't go
away and somehow it just keep on continuing no matter what, maybe
what you're experiencing is not just simply fatigue but maybe
you are experiencing burn out, that sense of being absolutely
drained and spent in life. It can happen to saints and
sinners alike and it can happen to those who love God with all
of their heart and those who don't love Him at all. And it can happen in your job. It can happen in relationships. It can happen in your schooling. It can happen in your
spiritual life and your relationship to God. And that's what I want to talk
about in this message entitled: "The Source of Our Strength
When Feeling Burned Out." And I want you to
turn, if you will, to Isaiah chapter 40,
beginning in verse 27. Isaiah chapter 40,
beginning in verse 27. He says, "Why do
you say, O Jacob, and assert, O Israel, 'My
way is hidden from the LORD, and the justice due me
escapes the notice of my God'? Do you not know?
And have you not heard? The Everlasting God, the LORD,
the Creator of the ends of the earth, He does not grow
weary or become tired. His understanding
is inscrutable. He gives strength to the
weary, and to him who lacks might, He increases power. Though young men shall
grow weary and tired, and vigorous young
men stumble badly, Yet those who wait for the
LORD will gain new strength; they will mount up
with wings like eagles, they will run and not get
tired, and they will walk and not become weary." The people of God
were asking the Lord, "Now Lord, why it is--You
don't seem to care for us? We don't seem to be
getting what is coming to us. You're not
keeping Your promise." And so, His answer to them
is He does keep His promise, He does give what is needed. And here He's speaking of
strength and might and power, which was their desire, their
request, and their need. When you and I think in terms
of feeling--being burned out, that can happen, as we
said, to most anybody. It can happen to a
mother who is raising three, four, or five children and she
has all the responsibilities during the day of keeping
everything in order and preparing for her husband and
keeping the house clean and all the rest and no break, oftentimes, for a
long period of time. Or it can happen to
the president of a corporation or a pastor. In fact, there are
literally, not hundreds, but thousands and thousands of
pastors every year who just walk away from the ministry
because they get burned out. Doing the work of God,
they get burned out. There are thousands of people
who are not pastors but who are engaged in some type of
the Lord's work, and they be--get burned out in their
ministry and they walk away. There are always people
coming into the ministry and always people going. Many of those who leave, leave
because they get burned out, so fatigued, so weary,
so worn, so much stress, so many challenges
they can't handle it all. And so, they just walk away. Now, at first you may say, "Well, they ought to be
stronger than that." Well, that's true but, you know,
if you don't know the truth about some things,
some things can be very, very, very
destructive in your life. And I can look back at
my own life and see when I suffered the
same experience. Back in the seventies when I was
preaching on Sunday morning just like I do now, but during
the week I was doing two other thirty-minute programs. It takes a lot more energy, a
lot more power of concentration, a lot more of everything to look
down a cold tube and there's nobody there but the man
behind the camera in a private room somewhere and speak. It was extremely draining to me. Plus, all the responsibilities
of being a pastor. And so, I kept this
up for about a year. I went to the
hospital three times. Each time I went, I said
to the doctor, "I'm not sick. I'm just tired." So, they give me all these tests
and they check my heart and check this and check that and
check the other and finally conclude that what
I said was true. They said, "Well, why
don't you stop doing so much?" I said, "Well, I am." I came back, tried to
decide what to stop. Everything was important,
everything was a priority, everything was essential, and
they couldn't do without me. So, what did I do? I convinced myself
I couldn't stop. So, I just kept on
doing what I was doing. Go back to the
hospital again, same story. Told the doctor the same story. Same conclusion, same
exam, same everything. Third time this happened, it
happened a little differently. One of my dearest
friends, Dr. Stephen Olford, was visiting us and we
had a missions conference, and so, he and his wife, my
wife, and I went to the same restaurant we'd gone to
three years before. And three years before, he
sat there and said to me, he said, "Let me tell you
what I've been going through." He'd been through a
terrible time in his life. Couldn't preach for over a year
and told me all the things that he'd gone through
which were just terrible. And I remember saying
to myself, "Brother, I'm not going to let
that happen to me." Three years later, I'm
sitting in this same restaurant, and he said to me, said,
"Well, how have you been doing? I said, "I've been doing fine." My wife said,
"Tell him the truth." So I told him how I felt. He said, "Well, you need to
go to the hospital tonight." I said, "There's no way." I said, "You know, you're
going to speak tomorrow," and I said, "No,
I can't do that." He says, "Tonight."
I said, "No." They take me to the
hospital, check me in. The next morning he preaches,
calls a deacon's meeting and tells them if they want me
alive, to give me three months or six months or I'd be dead. He'd already been where I was. And he was observing me from a
lot of wisdom and knowing that, at some point, I
was going to run out. But I thought I could keep going
forever as long as I had God living on the inside
of me, which I did. The only problem is, it doesn't
make any difference how much you love God and how much you want
to serve Him if you're burning out doing what God doesn't want
you to do or going about things in the wrong way or whatever
it might be in your life. It isn't going to work. It didn't work for me and it
took a year to get over that. Even after that, I noticed that
things would drain me quickly. And I'm saying all that to say
that God has worked in my life in so many wonderful ways and
especially in this past year that God has taught me something
that I am so delighted to be able to share because I have
more responsibility today than I did then, more going on
by far than I did then, more responsibility here
and all over the world, and yet I don't feel
exhausted, I don't feel tired, I don't feel pressure. And I have enough things on
me to pressure most men and to have destroyed many. God has taught me something and
is in the process of teaching me something, how to
live in the midst of it, to walk above it, and to draw my
energy and my strength not from my own self but from Him. And what I want to do is, I want
to share with you what God is in the process of teaching me
because I'm telling you, it is one of the most exciting
things I have ever learned in all of my almost fifty
years of being a Christian. I wouldn't take anything in
the world for the troubles, the heartaches, the burdens. And I want to say this: if
you'll recall in Romans chapter 8, he says that we are
more than conquerors through Christ within us. Now, to be more than a conqueror
means that you come out of the battle with more
than you took into it. When he says we are
overwhelmingly conquerors, that means you come
out of the battle with more than you carried into it. And I can tell you that I have
been blessed more in the past months than I've ever
been blessed in my life, that I'm learning more about
God, I'm learning His ways. You think, "Well, you've been
this pastor here for twenty five years and you're just
learning some things?" Correct, absolutely correct,
and you know what? Twenty-five years from now,
you'll be learning some things and you'll be asking
the same question. You'll think, "Well, I
should have learned that a long time before." Should have.
But what happens? Some things we learn
and we have to recycle. It's amazing what
we forget isn't it? You and I learn some
things and we forget them. But then there are those
areas of our life where, whereas, we may learn
it, He gives us what? He gives us a deeper
insight, a greater insight, and then He puts us and
allows us in situations and circumstances to be
tested to the very ultimate. And that's when what we
believe becomes a living, immovable, unchangeable,
unalterable, foundational reality in our life that
absolutely cannot be shaken by anything. And so, what I'd like to do
in this message is to sort of confine this to
our spiritual life, if I might, but it relates
to every aspect of our life, but about our
spiritual, primarily. And ask the question here from
this chapter, and that is, when he said here that He will
provide the strength, that young men shall grow weary and
worn and stumble and fall. The question is, why
do these things happen? Now, why do we get burnt out? Well now, I want you to
listen very carefully. And if you'll listen carefully,
this'll save you from a whole lot of grief, a
whole lot of heartache, a whole lot of mistakes, and
sometimes a whole lot of loss. Listen very carefully. One of the primary reasons we
suffer spiritual burn out is, we have a wrong
view of the gospel. Now, the gospel is the
Lord Jesus Christ coming into our life. And we would say that the gospel
is believing in the Lord Jesus Christ as our personal Savior
and trusting Him as our Savior. And so, a person trusts the Lord
Jesus Christ as their personal Savior, and they believe in Him. They believe that His death at
Calvary atoned for their sins. So, they're saved. But, their idea of the gospel
is: not only do you trust the Lord Jesus Christ
as your Savior, but then you join
a local church, which is New
Testament, of course, and you get baptized and then
you get involved in that church. And here's what happens. Before long, in that church,
you begin to realize that that church or that denomination has
certain rules and regulations, and there are certain things
you are to do and certain things you are not to do. And before long, you realize,
after you've been in that church, that everybody in that
church doesn't agree that--that you should always do
this and shouldn't do that. And they don't always
agree on what you can do and what you can't do. So, before long, you realize
that there is a conflict of what is permissible and
what's not permissible. And so, what happens
is, people join a church, and they discover that the
Christian life is a formula, and this formula has
certain rules and regulations. The problem is they
ought--when they got saved, they already had
enough problems already, enough things they
were having to deal with. Now they've got these rules and
the regulations and these do's and don'ts and musts
and oughts and shoulds. "Well, you must do this,
and you must come to that, and you should
do that and you should witness and you
should read the Bible. You should pray.
You should give. You should, ought,
must, all these things. Shouldn't do this.
Shouldn't go to that place. Shouldn't participate in that." And so, what happens is the
image is that the Christian life is a formula of things
we do and we do not do. Now, that is absolutely
foreign to the New Testament. What happened when you
and I were born again is that we received God's life. The new birth is to receive a
life we did not possess before our experience of
receiving Jesus Christ as our personal Savior. Because--so now every single
believer has God's life living and abiding on the inside
of us so that the Christian life--listen carefully, the
Christian life is not a formula whereby we follow this
and therefore we are saved and the--we follow
these instructions, these rules and regulations. The Christian life
is a relationship, a relationship whereby God, who
in all of His lovingkindness and forgiveness, reaches
down and reconciles us, gets us and reconciles us back
to Himself and forgives us of our sin, makes us holy
in His sight, and does what relates to us. He says like a
vine and a branch. He says, "I have placed you, as
the branch, into the vine so that the sap that runs in
the vine runs in the branch. And the sap that runs in the
branch runs in the stem and produces delicious,
luscious, and beautiful grapes." So, what is it
that has the life? It is the vine that has life and
Jesus says, "I am the vine." A branch disconnected
from the vine? Lay it on a table and
it withers and dies. He says we are branches. We've been placed
into Christ Jesus. We have the life of God
coursing through our very being. Every single child of God is
possessed by the very life of God that indwelt the very
person of Jesus Christ Himself. Now, remember He says
here in this passage, He says, now, even the finest
young men who've been trained as athletes, they grow
weary, they grow tired and they stumble and they fall. But, He says, there is a
way to so live our lives we don't have to get exhausted. We don't have to be drained. We don't have to come to the
place where either spiritually, mentally, physically, or any
other way we get to the place of being burned out. And if you'll notice, he says in
that passage they can still run but they won't be weary. They can still walk
through difficulty and hardship, but they won't
faint and lose heart. It doesn't mean
life gets easier. It doesn't mean that
things all--things change. It means that now we are living
out of a source that we did not live out of before. And so, he says in
this passage that we have, for example, a
source that is available. Now, first of all, we said,
the primary problem is a wrong view of the gospel. A second problem is a wrong
view of spiritual maturity. If I should ask you,
"What is spiritual maturity?" More than likely, if we
were real realistic about it, we'd say, "Well, spiritual
maturity is coming to the place where you read the Bible every
day and you pray every day and you tithe and give more than
a tithe every Sunday. And there--the things that used
to bother you don't-- no longer bother you. The things that used to
tempt you don't tempt you. The things that used to get you
frustrated and cause you to lose your temper, that
doesn't happen anymore." And what it sounds like is this:
it sounds like that spiritual maturity is coming to the
place where you have the flesh under control. You've got your
flesh under control. You say it's been crucified. All these things
that were popping up, you're able to juggle
all the balls easily now. All these things
that trouble you, you've got them all in order. Everything is in order and
you're just sort of living your life, and you've been able
to control those things. Nothing could be
further from the truth. And here's the reason why. If you and I had
the power to control, suppress, keep
everything in order, get the old flesh crucified--and
the flesh is that part, listen to this now, the flesh
is that part of you and me that absolutely insists on acting independently of
the will of God. And all of us have one
because all of us have the capacity to sin,
all of us are tempted at times in our life for by--
about different things. And so, we all have to
deal with these things. Now--so if a person could get
to the place in their life, spiritually mature, where none
of those things bothered any more, you know
what that means? That means I wouldn't need God! If I can get them all under
control, then I don't need Him! Listen, I hate to
have to tell you this, but did you realize that you're
just as good today as you were the day you were saved and
you're not a bit better? "Aw, now wait a
minute," you say, "but you don't know what I
was like when I was saved." Doesn't make any difference
what you were like because all I have
to do is take God out of your life and you
know what you'll do? You'll act just
like you used to act. Now, don't you have to admit,
all of us have to admit that every once in a while, we
act like we used to anyway. Amen? So--which says that you
must not be any better. Because if you'd
have gotten better, you wouldn't act that way. And so, you see, what I
want you to realize is this: there's not a single
verse in the scripture says that you and I can
change ourselves. You can't change yourself. The Christian life
isn't altering my behavior. The Christian life
isn't changing my conduct. The Christian life isn't
saying, "Here are the rules. Here are the regulations. This is the way I'm
going to conduct myself. This I'm going to
admit--I'm going to omit." That's not the Christian--that's
not what maturity is all about. Maturity is this. Maturity is coming to the place
in my life of recognizing that I am a natural human being. I have God living
on the inside of me. I can't change my flesh. I can't change this old--this
something inside of me that wants to act
independently of God. It's been there
all of these years. It's acting just like
it was when I was a kid. Age has nothing to do
with it whatsoever. And so, I can't change that. Can't change the flesh,
can't keep everything down and suppressed. Maturity says that I've come to
the place in life that I realize I can't change myself but that
my responsibility is to rely upon Him and depend upon
Him every day for everything, realizing it is not within
myself to become or to do or to be better or to become better
or to make myself better or to change my conduct, to
change my behavior, live up to regulations,
live up to rules, be a better person. My responsibility is to trust
Him to do through me what He knows I cannot do. That's what
spiritual maturity is. You know what that means? That means every single solitary
one of us has the privilege and the capacity, if
we're a believer, to be spiritually mature. And you see, a spiritually
mature person isn't a person who is eighty years of age and lives
at home somewhere and never watches TV, never
listens to the radio, never watches television,
never reads a magazine, and therefore,
absolutely cannot be tempted. That's not what
spiritual maturity is all about! Because He never intended
for us to change ourselves and improve ourselves. He came, He says, to give us
God life in order that God in us would elevate us and make
it possible for us to live in and through and above
these things we face in life, not in our own
strength and energy. Because He knew it
was going to run out. How do I know that? He wouldn't have put that
passage in the Bible if it were not true. He says, "Listen, I'm telling
you, even the finest of young men, they're going to get
weary and tired and worn out." He says the finest
trained athletes are going to stumble and fall,
you know why? God never made
these human bodies, these minds, these spirits of
ours to function and to face life as God knows it's going to
be in our own strength because He knew our strength was going
to run out and we would stumble and fall badly
and get burned out. Now, how do we avoid this
whole idea of being burnt out? Well, if you'll
notice, he says here, he says, "Yet those
who wait for the LORD, they'll gain new strength;
mount up with wings like eagles, run and not get tired, and they will walk and not become weary." Well, listen to this promise. He says He will do these things. "They'll gain new strength." They'll be able to
do the same work, but they won't get
tired, run at the same speed, even faster, and
somehow they won't run out. Now, what is the
solution according to what he's saying here? Well, one thing I love about
this passage is this: this passage just being in
the Bible says to me, "God knows I'm weak." He knows we are weak. He knows we are frail and He
knows that you and I will never, listen, listen to this,
we'll never learn enough. We'll never get old enough. We'll never get strong enough,
we'll never get smart enough that our energy and all that
we need for life won't run out. He didn't make us to be
sufficient within ourselves. He made us to be
sufficient within Himself. And so, he says in this passage,
He says even the finest and strongest of young men, He
says it's going to run out. But He says,
"Here's what I will do." He said, "You will
gain new strength." Now, I want you to
look at two words here. If you'll notice,
first of all, he says, "Will gain new strength." That word gain, look at that. Gain, the word here is exchange. And you can write in the
fly leaf of your Bible, exchange our
weakness for His strength. That's what that means. He says they will exchange their
weakness and gain new strength. "They will mount up
with wings like an eagle, run and not get tired. They will walk," He says, "and
not weary--and not be weary." Now, another thing I
want you to notice here. When He says they
that wait upon the Lord, that word wait means to
pause for further instruction, but here's what it--the word
literally means in Hebrew. Here's what it means.
It means to braid something. Because you see, braiding means
two things become one or three or four things become one. When you and I are
braided with God, when He--when we received
the Lord Jesus Christ as our personal Savior, we
became one with Him. We have the life
of God within us. He says those who wait,
those who are braided together, those who pause for
further instruction, those who are one
with Him, he says, they are the ones who will
mount up with wings as eagles. They're the ones who'll
have the strength and the energy that is tireless. Now, listen to what he said. He said, concerning God up here in verse 28: "Do you not know? And have you not heard? The Everlasting God, the LORD,
the Creator of the ends of the earth doesn't
become weary or tired." Now, watch this. If I have the life of God within
me and I am not to get burned out doing the work of God or
living the Christian life or carrying on, whatever it may be. Then, if the source
of my strength is God, then if He ever gives out,
then I'm going to give out. And what he's saying is this:
when you and I tap into His inexhaustible resource of
His divine life within us, we're not going to ever
give out because He's not going to give out. This is an inexhaustible source
of energy and strength and wisdom and knowledge
and understanding. It's inexhaustible
because it is God. And as we said in
the very beginning, it is a quality of life that is
the very life of God Himself. And therefore, if
it is God's life, we are walking in His will and
tapping into that energy and that strength and that resource,
we will never give out. It is flowing in us
and flowing through us. And so, when we
think about the causes, why we get weary
and tired and worn, it can be--because it can be
sin, it can be our work, it can be relationships,
whatever it might be. But something causes it, and
whatever it might be that causes it, what we have
to ask is, "God, what are You saying to me?" And let me just say this:
sometimes to be burned out can be the doorway into
life's greatest lessons. And I can tell you I've
learned so many wonderful, exciting things that's
so blessing my heart. And I just came back from
being away about three weeks, a few days to see my
grandchildren and my daughter and her husband in Portland,
and then on the cruise. And while I was on the cruise,
something wonderful happened. And the Lord must have known I
was--I've been thinking about this for quite some time, and
for a number of months I've been feelings this sense of freedom
and liberty and awesome sense of God's divine power and strength
and presence in my life, which I've known for years. But somehow, it's just
become more and more real to me personally. Well, one of my friends and
I, who is a member of our fellowship, one of our
deacons, he was on the cruise. And so, we slipped up to
an area in Ketchikan to watch these eagles. And there was one area
there that we could get real close to them. So, we observed them
for quite some time and, looking through a long lens,
you can see them up close. And so, I watched this
eagle put this--he was huge. And sitting up there,
just in a perfect place for me to
get a shot of him. And so, I kept
watching him, and then, all of a sudden, I watched Him
just lift his wings like that and sort of step
off, as if it were. Just pull his feet up behind
him and just begin to soar. And I thought now, "He just
sailed off into the air." And I watched him and
shot him a few times. For you folks who
are nature lovers, I mean with a camera. And I noticed he just opened, he
just opened his--the feathers on his wings, and he just sail. Now, I--here's
what he didn't do. He wasn't flopping and beating
the air trying to go anywhere. And you know what happened? He just sailed,
soared, and he just went up, up, up, up, up, up, up,
up, up, up, up, up. And I thought
about this passage, and I thought, "Oh dear
God, how is that eagle flying? He's not batting his wings." You know what he did? He just launched out into an air
current and the air current just took him up, up, up. And he just moved from one
air current to the other, up, up, up, up, up. And he was soaring over
all of us and everything that was going on. Almost like it was energy-less. All he did was just
lift his wings out there and he was just soaring. And he'd swoop down and
he'd soar and he'd sail. I thought, "Lord,
there's the key." God doesn't want us
batting life like this. What does He want us to do? He, He says He is our energy. He's like the wind
under your wings and mine and He wants us to soar on what? On His strength, on His
energy, on His power. Without the wind, he'd just
be--have to beating the air. And he's just up there soaring
around, enjoying his life. He says, young men
shall stumble badly, but those who
wait upon the Lord, linked in with Him, those who
rely upon Him and recognize they're absolutely,
totally dependent upon Him for everything, those
who, by faith, just say, "Lord, I can't handle this. This is Yours." He is delighted to provide
everything I need at that moment to take care of it. ♪♪♪
