Leading on Empty: Refilling Your Tank and Renewing Your Passion

by Wayne Cordeiro

If we violate the Sabbath rest, something morphs in our soul. We start to get proud, edgy, anxious. The psalmist tells us, “It is vain for you to rise up early, to retire late, to eat the bread of painful labors; for He gives to His beloved even in his sleep” (Psalm 127:2).

In other words, God started each day in the evening, not the morning. Your day does not begin when you get up. It starts when you go to sleep. Rest begins your new day, not coffee.

There are two ways to win a race. One is to be faster than everyone else, and the other is to start sooner! In a normal race, that’s called cheating. But in life, it’s called wisdom. For an Olympian, it is called illegal. For a Christian, it is called biblical.

Learn to sleep in on the front side of the clock. Sleep right and double your rest.

it: “Start small, but start NOW!” Don’t procrastinate until you feel ready or until you’re in shape.

Try adding a little extra physical activity whenever and wherever you can during your daily routine.

Steer clear of fast food, empty foods like potato chips and Twinkies, and snack on vegetable sticks instead. Go green as often as you can with at least 60 percent of your diet in raw foods, such as fruits and vegetables.

Fill Your Plate With Delicious Antioxidants

Adding moderate amounts of foods high in carbohydrates (breads, cereal, pasta) raises the level of serotonin in the brain.

Solomon wrote, “Watch over your heart with all diligence, for from it flow the springs of life” (Proverbs 4:23).

My goal is not to study the Bible for an hour each morning. Rather, it is to let the Bible study me! David sang in Psalm 139:23–24, “Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me and know my anxious thoughts; and see if there be any hurtful way in me.” David was inviting the Lord to evaluate his motives and see if there was anything depleting his soul and subsequently leaching into his life.

Lamentations 3:22–23 reminds us of this new beginning: “The Lord’s loving-kindnesses indeed never cease, for His compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness” (emphasis added).

As David put it, “Weeping may last for the night, but a shout of joy comes in the morning” (Psalm 30:5).

Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities have crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.”

Not a judgment, mind you. Just a fact of life. While everyone in our great church loves the Cordeiro family, I have come to realize that nobody is fighting for my family. That’s my job.

In the clearest of times, when you are near to Christ and thinking with insight rather than with ambiguity, imagine your ideal future. Write down that picture and how it can best be attained. You must write it down.

Habakkuk 2:2 instructs us in this manner: “Record the vision and inscribe it on tablets, that the one who reads it may run.”

Hope is the sustaining energy needed to accomplish the other two: to increase your relationship with Christ and to love those around you. Without hope, you will have the knowledge of the other two, but you will not have the energy to do anything about it. Without hope, you will know everything there is to know about faith, but your own faith will flag. You’ll know everything there is to know about love, but the expression will not be genuine. It is hope—a picture of your preferred future—that will give you the sustenance needed to press through to your highest potential regardless of what your circumstances or surroundings look like.

Hope is the anchor to our soul Hebrews 6:19

we must come to a point where we fully surrender to Christ. Nothing held back. And the events of great suffering in your life will bring you to that point. You can choose to recede or you can choose to surrender. I chose to surrender.”

But God, who comforts the depressed, comforted us by the coming of Titus. (2 Corinthians 7:6, emphasis added) While finding a professional life coach may not be a mandate for rehabilitation, finding a wise Christian friend who knows how to listen certainly is. A friend can help you navigate this new season and calibrate your compass accurately. He can help you find the hope of your preferred future—not another pipe dream, but a vision God has given to you as your calling and purpose.

In this season of life, don’t make the mistake of thinking you are self-sufficient. God made you a part of His body, and each part needs the others to survive.

Friendships are not made in the blur of life. They are made in the margins.

Violating the Sabbath rest by working is a statement that what we are doing on the Sabbath is as important as what God did at creation.

Sometimes, we may need to get our hunger back.

Hunger is renewable.

A leader’s role is not to maintain. It is to gain altitude!