When We Feel Burned Out – Dr. Charles Stanley

Are you stressed out and overwhelmed with responsibility? Find the keys to dealing with burnout, which are learning to trust God and putting the burden of your responsibilities into His capable hands.

Our man who sent this studying the scriptures to find out if this is true, if that’s true, he can miss the whole point.
When a man is studying the word of god and being sustained by as a disciple, he moves to a point of obedience.
A true disciple is searching the word of god for the principles of god to make application in his life that he might become more like god.
In touch, the teaching ministry of Doctor Charles Stanley, reaching the world with the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Next on in touch, when we feel burned out.
All of us experienced at times in our life, fatigue, and weirdness, and there’ll be a little bit of worn out.
But when that fatigue of that awareness develops into a spirit of being discouraged because you can never 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 wanna walk away or just forget it all.
And it doesn’t go away and somehow it just keeps on continuing no matter what.
Maybe what you’re experiencing is not just simply a pig, but maybe you are experiencing burnout.
That sense of being absolutely drained and spent in life.
It can happen to saints and symbols alike, and it can happen to those who love god with all of our 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.
That’s what I wanna 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, oh, Jacob, in asserto Israel?
My way is hidden from the lord, and the justice do 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 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 is it you you don’t seem to care for us?
We don’t seem to be getting what 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 mother, who is raising 3, 4 or 5 children, and she has all the responsibilities during the day of keeping everything in order and preparing for a 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 president or corporation or a pastor.
In fact, there are literally not 100, but 1000 and 1000 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.
Now thousands of people who not passed us, but who are engaged in some type of the lord’s work, and they 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 in my own life and see when I suffer 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 2 other 30 minute programs.
It takes a lot more energy, a lot more power 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 went to the the hospital 3 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.
Finally concluded 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. Tell 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, Doctor Stephen Alfred, was visiting us, and we had a admissions conference.
And so uh, he and his wife, my wife and I went to the same restaurant.
We’ve gone to 3 years before.
And 3 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 he had gone through with which were just terrible.
And I remember saying to myself, bro, I’m not gonna let that happen to me.
3 years later, I’m sitting in this same restaurant. He said to me, so Well, 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 gonna 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 the Dickens meeting, and, uh, tells them that they want me alive to give me 3 months or 6 months, so 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 gonna 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 isn’t making him as how much you love god and how much you wanna serve him.
If you’re burning out doing what god doesn’t want you to do or going about things in the wrong way, whatever it might be in your life, it isn’t gonna work.
It didn’t work for me, and it took me a year to get over that.
And 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 into a 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 wanna do is I wanna share with you what god is in the process of teaching me because I’m telling it.
It is one of the most exciting things I have ever learned in all of my almost 50 years of being a Christian I wouldn’t take anything in the world for the troubles, the heartaches, the burdens.
And I wanna say this, if you 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 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 25 years. You’re just learning some things.
Correct. Absolutely correct. And you know what?
25 years from now, you’ll be learning some things, and you’ll be asking the same question you’ll think.
Well, I should’ve learned that long time before. You 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 the the 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 it relates to every aspect of our life, but about our spiritual life primarily and asked the question here, uh, from this chapter.
And that is when he said here, uh, that, uh, he will provide the strength that, uh, young men shall grow weary and warn and stumble and fall.
The question is why do these things happen now? Why do we get burnout?
Well, I want you to listen very carefully.
And if you listen carefully, this will 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 burnout 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 the lord Jesus Christ is our personal savior, trusting him as our savior.
And so a person trust the lord Jesus Christ is our personal savior, and they believe in him.
They believe that his death is at calvary atoned for their sins, so they’re saved.
But their idea of the gospel is not only you trust the lord Jesus Christ as you save you, but then you join a local church, which is no 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 of that denominations has certain rules and regulations.
And there’s certain things you are to do and certain things you are not to do.
And before long, you realize how you’ve been in that church that everybody in that church doesn’t agree that everything that you should always do this and shouldn’t do that, and they don’t always agree on what you can do, which you can’t do.
So before long, you realize that there’s a conflict of what is permissible, what’s not permissible.
And so what happens is people join a church, and they discovered the Christian life uh, is a is a formula, and, uh, this formula has certain rules and regulations.
The problem is they all when they got saved.
They already had enough problems already and other things they were having to deal with.
Now they’ve got these rules and these regulations and these do’s and don’ts and must and alts and shoulds.
Well, you must do this and you must come to that. You should do that.
You should witness and you should read the Bible. You should pray. You should give.
You should all must all these things. Shouldn’t do this. It shouldn’t go to that place.
You shouldn’t participate in that. And so what happens is the images of 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 on mount, 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 a a formula whereby we follow this, and therefore, we are saved in the we follow these instructions, these rules, and regulations.
The Christian life is a relationship.
A relationship whereby god who in all of his loving kindness and forgiveness reaches down and reconciles us gets us and reconciles us back to himself and forgives us of our sin, makes us hold in his sight and does what relates to us.
He says like a like like a vine in the 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 van branch runs in the stem and produces delicious, luscious, beautiful grapes.
So what is it that has the life?
It is the vine that has life in Jesus as I am the vine.
A branch disconnected from the vine laid on table and it withers and dies. He says, we’re branches.
We’ve been placed into Christ Jesus. We now have the life of god coursing through our buried bee.
Every single child of god is possessed by the buried life of god that entwel the very person of Jesus Christ himself.
Now remember he says here in this passage, he says now, even the finest young man 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 spiritual and mentally, physically, or any other way, we get to the place of being burned out.
And if you notice he says in that passage, they can still run, but they won’t be weary.
They can still walk through difficulty in 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 uh, for example, a source that is available.
Now first of all, we said the primary problem is the wrong view of the gospel.
A second problem is the 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 of the tab, uh, tab every Sunday, And, uh, the things that used to bother you don’t long 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 is, uh, come to the place where you have the flesh under control.
You’ve got your flesh under control. You said it’s been crucified. All these things that were popping up.
You you you’re able to juggle all the balls easily now. All these things that troubled you.
You’ve got them all in in order. Everything is in order.
And now you’re just sort of living your life and and, uh, you 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 uh, suppress. Keep everything in order.
Uh, get get the old flesh crucified, and the flesh is that part. Listen to us 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 attempted at times in our life, but about 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, Matula, where none of those things bothered in the middle, you know what that means?
That means I would need god.
If I can get them all under control, then I don’t need him. Listen.
I hate that to tell you this, but did you realize that you just good today as you were the day you were saved and you’re not a bit better?
Oh, no. What I meant you said, but you don’t know what I was like when I was saved.
It was making it was what you were like.
Because all I have to do is take god out of your life and you know what you do, you 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, ma’am?
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.
The scripture says that you and I 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, hear the rules, hear the regulations.
This way I’m gonna conduct myself. This I’m going to this I’m going to admit. I’m going to omit.
That’s not the crystal. 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 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 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 what 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 the regulations, live up the rules, be a better person, My responsibility, it’s as 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.
We’re a believer to to be spiritually mature.
And you see, a spiritual mature person isn’t a person who is eighty years of age and lives at home, somewhere, never watches TV, never listens radio, never never watches, uh, uh, television never reads a magazine.
And therefore, Add a salute 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 was 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 gonna run out.
How do I know that? He wouldn’t have put that passage of Bible if it were not true.
He says, listen. I’m telling you.
Even the finest, the young men, they’re gonna get weary and tired and worn out.
He says, the finest trained athletes are gonna 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 burned out?
Well, if you notice he says here, he says yet those who wait for the lord They’ll gain new strength, man up with wings like Eagles, run and not get tired, and they will walk and not become weary.
Well, listen, 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’re weak.
He knows we’re afraid. 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 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, we’ll gain new strength. That word, gain. Look at that.
Gain, the word here is exchange.
And you can write in that smiley for your Bible, exchange our weakness for his strength.
That’s what that He says, they will exchange their weakness and gain new strength.
They will mount up with wings like an eagle. Lung and not get tired, they won’t 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 2 things become 1 or 3 or 4 things become 1.
When you and I 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 have braided together, those who pause for further instruction, those who went with him.
He says, they are the ones who will mount up with wings, his eagles.
They’re the ones who have the strength and the energy that is tireless. Now listen to what he said.
He said concerning god appear in verse 28, Do you not know and have you not heard the everlasting god the lord that created the ends of the earth?
Doesn’t become weary attire? 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 and living the Christian life or carrying on whatever it may be, then if the source of my strength is god, then if he ever if he ever gives out, then I’m gonna 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 gonna ever give out.
Because he’s not gonna give out.
This is an inexhaustible source of energy and strength and wisdom and knowledge and understanding.
It’s inexhaustible because it is god 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 wheel and tapping into that energy and that strength and that resource.
We will never give out. It is flowing. It is flowing in us and flowing through us.
And so when we think about the causes while 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 what are you saying to me?
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 so blessing my heart.
And I just came back from, uh, being aware about 3 weeks, a few days to see my grandchildren and my daughter and her husband and Portland and then, uh, on the cruise.
And while I was on the cruise, something wonderful happened.
And the lord must have known I was I I’ve been thinking about this for quite some time, and For a number of months, I’ve been feeling this sense of freedom and liberty and 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, uh, one of my friends and I, uh, who is a member of our fellowship, one of our Dickens, he was on the cruise.
And so we slipped up to, uh, an area in Ketchikan to watch these egos, 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, um, I watched this eagle, but this he was huge.
Sitting up at just in a perfect place for me to get a cash out of him.
And so, uh, 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 put his feet up behind him and just began to soar.
And I thought now, he just sailed off into the air, and I watched him and shot him a few times up.
For you folks who are the nature lovers, I mean, with the with the camera.
And, uh, uh, and I noticed he just opened he just opened his the feathers on his wings, and he just sailed.
Now 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 sails sword and he just went up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, And I thought about this passage, and I thought, oh, dear god, how’s that eagle flying?
He’s not batting his wings? You know what he did?
He just launched out onto 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.
And he was soaring over all of us and everything that was going on.
Almost like it was energulous, All he did, it was just lift his wings out there.
And he was just soaring, and he swooped down, and he saw, 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 could he just be have to be beaten 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, lengthen with him, those who rely upon him and recognize or absolutely tell the dependent upon 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 needed that moment to take care of it.