Avoiding Burnout

SERMON: 2014-09-07--is40b14--avoiding-burnout-part-2 SOURCE DURATION: 00:36:20.000 PROPOSED CUTS: 1 CONFIDENCE: 0.95 APPROVED: false REASON: Candidate 14 completes the final thought of the sermon/benediction ('of God for his people.'), immediately preceding candidate 15, which is explicitly labeled as [Music] and marks the transition out of the sermon material. ACOUSTIC EVIDENCE: available ACOUSTIC MUSIC INTERVALS: none ACOUSTIC SPEECH OVERLAP: no ACOUSTIC BOUNDARIES APPLIED: none Inline CUT markers identify each proposed audio boundary after the relevant word. --- ORIGINAL TRANSCRIPT WITH PROPOSED CUTS MARKED --- Well, I pointed out last week that these verses that we've read together from Isaiah chapter 40 are a study in contrasts, and the contrast is between the strength that we have in the natural and the strength that we have in the supernatural, the strength that we have by virtue of our birth, education, and training versus the strength that comes through the Holy Spirit of God. Listen again to the contrast as it's described for us here by Isaiah, "Even youths grow tired and weary, young men stumble and fall, but those who hope or who wait on the Lord will renew their strength, they will soar on wings like eagles, they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint." And the contrast there, as I pointed out, is between the strength of youth and the strength that comes to us by virtue of waiting upon the Lord. And as I also pointed out last week, there will come a time in your life and in my life, no matter how strong we are, how gifted we are, how talented we are, where we run out of energy that we can bring to the table. And at that point, what can only keep us going is the strength that comes from God and our relationship with Him. Those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength, they will soar on wings like eagles, they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not faint. The reason for our confidence in God is that He is not only the everlasting God who created heaven and earth, but He is also Yahweh, the covenant God of Israel, who through faith in Jesus has entered into covenant with us and has promised to help us attain to wherever it is that He wants us to get. He is not tired, He does not grow weary, there is nothing bigger than He is. And so, last week we saw then, and this is as far as we got, that the first step in avoiding burnout is knowing who God is. Not just intellectually, but in the deepest places of our hearts. And I love the prayer the apostle Paul prays in Ephesians chapter 1, the verses 17 to 21, he says this, he says, "I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know Him better." Spirit of wisdom, spirit of revelation, so we can know Him better. And then he goes on to spell that out, "I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, in order that you may know the hope to which He has called you, the riches of His glorious inheritance in the saints and His incomparably great power for us who believe." That power is like the working of His mighty strength, which He exerted in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given not only in the present age, but also in the one to come. And I want to suggest to you this morning that if ever you find yourself in a situation where God does not seem real, where the promises of God do not seem real, where it feels like you're just on your own plodding along, make this prayer your prayer. Pray for a spirit of wisdom and revelation, for an understanding of who God is, what God has done for you in Christ, and as God gives you revelation, it will change your life. This is not something you think your way into. This is not something you argue your way into. It comes by revelation. I remember years ago, this prayer was a part of my prayer every day, as I recall, for the better part of two years, because only God can open our eyes to show us who He is, because the clearer we see who God is, and how much He loves us, and how big His power is towards us, the less there is to fear. "What can man do to me," said the psalmist, "if God is for me?" And so all the fear we face and all the insecurity we face is often a function of not truly understanding the greatness and the grandeur of our God and His commitment toward us in Christ Jesus our Lord. That make sense? I always like it when you have a little zest behind your yeses, because it's got to come from within. All right, that's where we pick it up this morning, and if the first stage of avoiding burnout is to know who God is and what He has committed Himself to, then I would say the second stage to avoiding burnout is this, we need to yield to God's priorities for our lives. We need to yield to God's priorities for our lives. Hebrews 10, 9, these are the words of Jesus. He said, "Here I am, I have come to do your will." In another place He says, "I have come not to do my own will, but the will of my Father who sent me." And one of the fruits of being joined to Jesus and becoming part of His kingdom is that the will of God must become our priority. God is building a kingdom, and the prayer of Jesus is that God's will be done on earth as it is in heaven. And doing that will starts with you and it starts with me. I love Ephesians 2, 10, you've often heard us quoted here, Ephesians 2, 10, we are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus to do good works which God prepared in advance for us to do. And I believe that when by faith we're joined to Jesus and God calls us into a relationship with Himself, there is a particular calling that He has in each of our lives, a calling for which He has uniquely gifted us by virtue of our birth, a calling for which He uniquely gifts us by the anointing of the Holy Spirit, a race that we are to run that nobody else can run, not always easy to find that. It's often a progressive kind of a thing, but it starts by yielding to God's priorities in our lives. And I don't know about you, but it's been my experience that if I focus on what I believe and know sometimes what it is that God wants me to do with my time, talent, and treasure, then God doesn't overwork His children, you know that? He knows how much we can handle, sometimes that's a lot more than we think we can handle, but He gives us grace and strength for what we need. We have a sign in our bathroom that I see virtually every morning, a little plaque, the will of God will never lead you where the grace of God cannot keep you. And I suppose the reverse is true too, the grace of God will not keep you where the will of God has not led you. And of course that's where our problem lies sometimes, isn't it? Jesus may say, "My sheep hear my voice and they follow me," but the fact of the matter is there's a lot of other voices that you and I hear and will sometimes listen to. Sometimes it's the voice of our own hearts. We know God wants us to go to this this way, but we don't always like what it is that He wants us to do and we got a mind of our own. And so, thank you Lord, but no thank you. I want this relationship, I want this possession, I want this purchase, I want this career, I don't want to listen to you. Sometimes the voice comes from people that surround us, family, friends, spouse, kids, people that have their own idea of who it is that we are and what it is that they want us to do and sometimes we feel torn asunder because we feel the call of God in our lives pulling us in this direction, living a certain way, espousing certain values and that alienates us from family or from friends and then we're caught in between and a lot of us we sit with one foot in the kingdom and one foot in the world hoping that somehow or another we can keep the peace with everybody. And sometimes for some of us it's just situations and circumstances, temptation and opportunity. It's sometimes hard to distinguish between the two of them and a temptation will pull us in this direction, sometimes an opportunity will lead us in this direction. I remember years ago after Steve and Deborah had first come to know the Lord and were growing in relationship with Him and being part of this community, what's the first thing that happened was a job opportunity in another place and sometimes a job opportunity in another place is an opportunity that God gives you and you need to step into it but other times it can also be a temptation to take you away from what it is that He's doing in your life. One of the keys to stability, one of the keys to preventing burnout, I think, is to try to focus on the values and the priorities that God has for our lives and that is not easy in this day and age when society as a whole is incredibly busy with the interconnectedness that we have in this day and age. We have so many opportunities to be so busy with so many things, Joanne I think referred to it clearly in terms of their four boys, what outside extracurricular activities are we going to engage in so that we're not going crazy running all over the map trying to pursue all kinds of things and I said last week on vacation we, Michelle and I stopped in at Lancaster, Pennsylvania because we wanted to see the sight and sound production of Moses and they're not paying me to do this but I'll put a plug in for them anyway because if you've never been there and can make the time and you know have the finances to do it I suggest you do because they put on huge biblical productions virtually, I mean just virtually around the clock five days a week, the production this year is Moses and it is as you can imagine spectacular. But I mention this because Lancaster if you know anything about Pennsylvania is Amish country and old order Amish at that and those are the folks who avoid modern technology and they are most recognized by the horse and buggy that they drive around in and poop all over the pavement I might add as we were walking the streets there. The Amish are an Anabaptist offshoot they originated in Switzerland many years ago they're related to the Mennonites but the groups have split off from each other but looking in on the Amish and their lifestyle from the outside they not only appear to be very legalistic but they appear to be very inconsistent. Give you a couple of examples for example they will not allow you to have a telephone in your house but you are allowed to have a telephone at the end of your driveway and if you run a business you cannot have it in your office but you can have it outside of your office. They will not allow you to hook up to the electrical grid in fact if you buy property and it's connected to the electrical grid you either take down the wires or you take out the meter. At the same time they use 12 volt batteries extensively and in more recent years have begun to use electric converters to convert that to 110 which is really quite an interesting thing. They're not allowed to use tractors on the field but they are allowed to use tractors as stand-alone power engines to drive equipment on the farm. They're not allowed to drive those on the road hence they have metal wheels and not rubber wheels and the list goes on in that particular fashion they cannot own or drive cars but they can take a taxi and you can easily hire somebody who has a vehicle and get him to do the running for you. They cannot own bicycles but they can own manual scooters and they're a scooter that I've never seen before it's like almost the size of a bicycle with a board on it and you scoot along and you go where you're going and you and I we look at that and and most English people as they would describe everybody looks at that and they said that's very inconsistent but it's not because within their own framework it makes perfectly good sense because you see their values are values of community their values are values of relationship hard work and separation from the world and so all the advances of technology get weighed in their value system and then get decided accordingly. So for example in the early days of the telephone a number of enterprising people hooked their houses up to each other with telephone wires but then they discovered a bunch of the women were gossiping on the telephone line and they said that's bad for community no telephone in your house if you want to make a phone call to somebody else's business you go down the the road and and use that phone but you're not going to use that as a substitute for face-to-face conversation in your house that's not necessarily a bad decision by the way for those who spend a lot of time in telephones. The electrical grid is the same kind of thing why are they not allowed to hook up to the electrical grid well because that brings with it all the modern conveniences which work at odds with your values and they're always thinking in terms of the next generation why can their tractors not have rubber tires everything about that one because if you can start taking your tractor to the store down the road the next generation is going to say why can't we own an automobile and go down the road you can take a train by the way but you can't take an airplane and you can't own a bicycle because you travel too far and I'm not saying that to criticize the folks because in fact they're doing very well they're growing faster than most ethnic groups they hold on would you believe they hold on to 85 percent of their kids which is better than what most Christians manage in a strong counterculture my point is this however not that we should be homage but that we need to think about our values what are we after what are we looking for and what are we doing to make sure that our daily activities line up with our value system does that make sense if we want to avoid burnout we need to focus on what we believe God is calling us to do and that will mean making decisions that exclude certain other things not because they're necessarily bad but because they get the urgent gets in the way of the important all right number three we need to find activities that replenish us we need to find activities that are replenishing I've talked about this before it bears repeating out of the Middle East there are as you know two bodies of water they are both fed by the Jordan River one teams with life the other is so dead virtually nothing except maybe a few bacteria can live in it and I'm referring to the Sea of Galilee and the Dead Sea they are both well below sea level the Sea of Galilee is some 700 feet below sea level the Dead Sea the deepest lake if you will or sea on earth 1400 feet below sea level what accounts for the difference between these two is very obvious all you have to do is look at the map the Sea of Galilee has both an input and an output water flows in water flows out it stays fresh and it teams with life and it has served as a source of fish and other aquatic life for for many many hundreds thousands of years by now the Dead Sea has water flowing into it but it has no outlet because it is so deep into the ground and so the result is water evaporates it gets more and more salty and its salt level stands somewheres at 30 to 34 percent or almost 10 times saltier than ocean water and there's a powerful physical analogy there because to remain fresh we need to not only have an output we also need an input do you know that surveys consistently demonstrate that people who are the happiest the most well adjusted and who find the most significance in life are people who live beyond themselves they live for a cause greater than themselves they they invest themselves in people or situations they are givers because we're made in the image of God and God is the ultimate giver but we can only give what we have and if we don't have something coming in to replenish us then eventually we end up burning not the wax of the candle but the wick and then you get depression you get burned out and pretty soon we collapse one of the reasons we have so much brokenness in life is that people are burning themselves out because they are not sufficiently getting replenished and we've already seen that one way to replenish is to have a relationship with God another way to replenish is to make sure that you don't take more hay on your fork than what you are called or equipped to handle but a third way is to make sure that we engage in replenishing activities things that fill us up rather than drain us for some people interestingly enough that's work there are things you do that charge you up for other people it's it's a hobby or a physical activity it depends on in part whether you're an extrovert or an introvert an extrovert draws life from the outside and likes to hang out with other people and just gets recharged by those kinds of situations or by extreme sports or activities an introvert on the other hand gets drained being around people and and gets replenished by curling up on the couch with a book or going for a walk in the park or disappearing into you know their own private space and I've shared with you before many many years in my own ministry what recharged me after a busy weekend in those days I would I would preach three times a Sunday we travel miles and miles in between I would disappear into my man cave and and just do the kind of hobby kind of things that replenished me and it enabled me to get back up and keep on moving and the danger is that we think more highly of ourselves than we want to that but somehow or another we can push ourselves and we can push ourselves and we can push ourselves and we can keep on bouncing back I'll tell you the older you get or the more stresses you experience in life the more you discover what your limitations are and if the battery gets down too low it takes a long time to recharge sometimes you cannot recharge it at all and Christians are not automatically immune to this quite to the contrary because as we've seen before because we have a commitment to serve the Lord and to push away our feelings sometimes in order to do what we believe the Lord wants us to do we're not immune to the laws of nature I listened to a pastor's wife once her talk was entitled I died to self and self almost died and I've always remembered that title because I can just picture how in her position living for the approval and the pleasure of people in her congregation brought her to a point where she lost her true identity that's wrong and we need to allow people to be themselves even in the context of Christian community lots more that I could say about that I want to go on to the final point and that is this to avoid burda number one we need to focus on our relationship with the Lord number two we need to make his priorities for our lives ours and that means being determined to say yes and no in all the right and wrong places number three we need to find things that that we enjoy it is not sinful to enjoy doing things sometimes people of Calvinist persuasion and really committed Christians tend to think that if it feels good it's gotta necessarily be wrong well there's lots of things that we do that feel good that are wrong but God is not adverse to us being replenished by enjoying things we do if you don't have them find them because you're not good to anybody else if you burn out and don't have what they need for you to give but number four and that ties in closely to that we need to cultivate healthy and meaningful relationships don't know how many of you here subscribe to McLean's magazine it had a cover story about a month or so ago the August 18th edition and titled stop ignoring your neighbors how increasingly closed off lives are now poisoning our politics and endangering our health got a great picture to go with the article on page 22 I don't know if you can see that there you see the the walls just zoom in on that a little bit Kyle that's how a lot of people live relative over against their neighbors the point of the article is this lack of relationships lack of face-to-face relationships not only rob you of positive benefits but will actually shorten your life the article quotes interesting research that says among other things that people who are regularly surrounded by a close-knit group of friends now get this leave an average of 15 years longer than people who are loners 15 years how come well when you have those kind of relationships your immune system is stronger your hormones work better and the chances of surviving a debilitating illness are significantly higher interestingly enough also this past week I ran across a survey result entitled love is all you need insights from the longest longitudinal study on men ever conducted a longitudinal study is a study where they follow a particular person or group of persons down the years through history this particular study was begun in 1938 and they started to study 268 university sophomores at Harvard Medical School and they have followed this same group of people however many of them survive all the way to the present and the purpose of that was to try to find out what patterns can we determine as to being key components to a productive and a happy life the results I think are fascinating let me read you just one or two paragraphs and then we'll wind this up very quickly let me see where I can pick this up the author of this study look back over the men's personal history to figure out what factors present earlier in their lives most predicted their score and their score was their score of well-being when he crunched the numbers he discovered no significant relationship between a man's level of flourishing and his IQ that's comforting to know his body type or the income and educational levels of his parents the factors that did loom large and collectively predicted all ten of the events that they were measuring had one thing in common and that is relationship and this rubric included a warm support of childhood a mature coping style being able to roll with the punches being patient with others keeping a sense of humor in the face of setbacks the laid gratification and so on overall soundness as evaluated during college years being resilient a warm personality having significant social skills and warm adult relationship between the ages of thirty seven to forty seven having close friends maintaining contact with family being active in social organizations he found that the men who had the best scores in these areas during their youth in midlife were the happiest most successful and best adjusted in their latter years this is the finding of the grand study that has emerged most prominently and it's summed up in this way it was the capacity for intimate relationships that predicted flourishing in all aspect of these men's lives who your friends are how well you relate to your friends how much of your heart you can share is incredibly important in terms of bouncing back and preventing burnout and doing life and that of course is why in Christian community we value the importance of family it's also why in Christian community we value the importance of community it's not always easy it takes hard work and it can just be superficial but I want to end with the words of Psalm 133 this morning because I think scripture has been preaching this for generations these words from Psalm 133 how good and pleasant it is when brothers live together in unity it is like precious oil poured on the head running down on the beard running down on Aaron's beard down upon the collar of his robes it is as if the dew of Herman were falling on Mount Zion for there the Lord bestows his blessing even life forevermore and the picture there is Mount Herman it's in north eastern on the far northeastern end of the border of Israel and Syria and Lebanon the highest mountain peak in that area covered with snow in the winter it's one of the headwaters of the Jordan River but more than that that snow evaporates gets carried by high altitude winds and descends upon the hills of Jerusalem and it creates life in a very dry and arid place and the picture here is that of our heavenly high priest the Lord Jesus if we are connected to him share his life live by his values obey his word know how to replenish ourselves and know how to be part of replenishing relationships God's desire is that those who wait upon the Lord will renew their strength they will run and not be weary they will walk and not faint and my prayer for myself my prayer for each one of us is that as we launch off into a new church season where demands will be made on us in time talent and treasure that we can be more than sprinters we want to be marathon runners we want to be able to hear the words of the Apostle Paul when he said that he had run the race and henceforth there is laid up for him the crown of righteousness the words of Jesus well done good and faithful servant you've been faithful over little I will set you over much that is the promise of God for his people. 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