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We don’t forget that we are Christians. We forget that we are human, and that one oversight alone can debilitate the potential of our future.
My vision for the church was barren, and the once-alive heart that beat incessantly for others had begun to shrink. Each day that passed was taking a toll on me, but I didn’t know how to stop the progression. Whatever was causing the drain was winning.
Suffering will change us, but not necessarily for the better. We have to choose that.
“I am weary with my groaning and have found no rest.” JEREMIAH 45:3
What do you fear the most?
When the first signs of burnout appear, it’s time for a break.
“It is in the quiet crucible of your personal, private sufferings that your noblest dreams are born and God’s greatest gifts are given in compensation for what you have been through.” WINTLEY PHIPS
on the inside I was experiencing a slow-motion implosion.
How do you lead on empty? How do you continue when you don’t feel like being “on stage” anymore?
Save me, O God, for the floodwaters are up to my neck. Deeper and deeper I sink into the mire; I can’t find a foothold. I am in deep water, and the floods overwhelm me. (Psalm 69:1–2 NLT)
Although I never doubted my calling and gifting, what began as a joy that filled me now became a load that drained me.
“Worry is a cycle of inefficient thoughts whirling around a center of fear.” CORRIE TEN BOOM
“Serotonin can get depleted when you don’t live with a cadence that allows it to be replenished. This happens in all types of people, but it is most obvious in Type A leaders and those who live with an overload of expectations. Depression takes the place of initiative; your indecision and anxiety increases. You begin to feel a greater need for aloneness and isolation.
You need to recharge, then reflect on what the trigger points were, and finally, restructure the way you’re living.”
The trick is to know when to get off the wave. But that doesn’t come easily. You need to be willing to give up the thrill of speed and advance for safety and longevity. For me, that didn’t sound like a good trade.
God is not cruel, but He is not lenient. He is true; He is not safe. He is unchanging; therefore we must change. We must learn in order to succeed. Our failures do not influence our grades, but our unwillingness to learn from them does. I knew I had to get outside help for this journey that I was about to embark on. But for now, I had to motor on, even though I knew I was . . . Leading on empty.
I had to find permission to heal.
There are things built into the psyches of those of us bent on making our lives count for eternity that can later cause diminishing returns.
“To keep a lamp burning we have to keep putting oil in it.” MOTHER TERESA
Check out this quote.
To finish strong, you must learn to rejuvenate your spirit early in your ministry.
I was fixing everybody’s problems except my own, and I needed time to replenish my spirit.
Silence and solitude can renew and replenish a soul in drought, and it refreshed me.
So the only thing that I kept steady was my daily time at His feet. And it would be here that my answers, and my strength, would eventually appear.
Wisdom and understanding are not built in a day; however they are built daily.
“The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason.” BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
Check out this quote.
“But as for me, I have not hurried away from being a shepherd after You” (Jeremiah 17:16).
But we have many examples from Scripture of men and women of God struggling with depression. Isaiah called it being “undone.” Jeremiah said he wished he’d never been born. Moses asked God to blot him out of the Book of Life, and Jonah said that for him, death was better than life. Job’s struggles are a continuing saga throughout the book that bears his name. Even Jesus, entering into a time of intense prayer in the garden of Gethsemane, was in “great despair.”
Spurgeon felt great anxiety from the “awesome responsibility of being accountable to God for the souls of so many.”
If to be made as the mire of the streets again, if to be the laughingstock of fools and the song of the drunkard once more will make me more serviceable to my Master, and more useful to his cause, I will prefer it to all this multitude, or to all the applause that man could give.”
Spurgeon
It is good for me to have been afflicted, that I might know how to speak a word in season to one that is weary.”
“I am now the most miserable man living. If what I feel were equally distributed to the whole human family, there would not be one cheerful face on the earth. Whether I shall ever be better I can not tell; I awfully forebode I shall not. To remain as I am is impossible; I must die or be better, it appears to me.”
Yet even though their loneliness was acute and real, God never left them.
“We turn to God for help when our foundations are shaking, only to learn that it is God who is shaking them.” CHARLES C. WEST
Adrenaline addiction is an emotional suicide that will slowly progress and may be difficult to detect.
“God is unchanging in His love. He loves you. He has a plan for your life. . . . God is still sovereign; He’s still on the throne.” BILLY GRAHAM
An important part of the journey to healing is allowing oneself to experience and accept all the feelings that roll like waves over our soul.
Unable to control his circumstances, he experienced feelings of despair and deep dismay.
Problems don’t destroy you. Unresolved problems do.
Feeling as if you’re always letting people down can give you a huge dose of depression.
“Write your injuries in dust, your benefits in marble.” BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
Restore to me the joy of Your salvation and sustain me with a willing spirit. (Psalm 51:12)
“Acceptance of what has happened is the first step to overcoming the consequences of any misfortune.” WILLIAM JAMES
He had allowed one evil woman to fill up his whole radar screen and ruin his outlook.
Oftentimes—especially when we’re exhausted—we feel as if no one understands.
Headaches, pains, and stomach ailments—including increased acid, ulcers, and heartburn—are common to the emotional state of anxiety and depression.
It was for me, but as I look back now, it was a season that compelled me into a winter wilderness that gave birth to a springtime of new growth that would refill my tank and renew my passion.
You have to make a choice not to give in to it.
Leanne Payne [The Healing Presence].
“I wonder how much more effective our churches would be if we made the pastor’s spiritual health—not the pastor’s efficiency—our number one priority.” PHILIP YANCEY
I needed to recognize the trigger points in my personality that brought me to where I was: An inability to say no. Overachieving, and then the guilty feeling that I was not attaining what I felt was expected of me.
