“Don’t burn out; keep yourselves fueled and aflame. Be alert servants of the Master; cheerfully expectant. Don’t quit in hard times; pray all the harder.” Romans 12, Message
Don’t burn out? How do we do that? How DO we keep on going when we would like to quit? And what causes us to quit?
WORRY seem to be a major culprit for us. In the midst of working full steam on a project, right in the middle of it all, a roadblock appears. We try to get over it, around it and through it, but it stops us. For a little while. We worry over it, waiting on a solution to be worked out. Did worry help us solve it? No, it just made us weaker. When we stop the worry, thinking about why it went wrong and move our thinking toward what could make this better, a solution is found. Worry is waste of our precious time. Pray instead, says God. And pray “expectantly”.
PHYSICAL STRENGTH is another cause of burn out. Unless we keep ourselves healthy with eating right things at the right time for our bodies, we become weak. When we are physically weak, our minds and hearts grow weak. A cloud of depression tends to form that actually causes us to move even less. If we sit more than we move, we become weak. There is truth to the commercial that says “a body at rest, stays at rest, but a body in motion, stays in motion.” I say this to my dad quite a bit, but it is a good reminder for all of us. To keep ourselves fueled and aflame is eating right, exercising and powering through those weaknesses that will come along.
FROWNING adds to our demise. Did you know it requires more muscles to frown than to smile? I have discovered that I must smile so my face doesn’t fall down! Even forcing a smile when you don’t feel like it, makes you feel less stressed for some reason. So smile, it is an INSTANT face lift that costs absolutely nothing. Start small then work yourselves up to a huge belly laugh! I begin each day with a humor just to get my mind working in a more positive motion. Because waking up is hard to do! (Sung to the tune “Breaking up is hard to do”…see, made you smile!)
ATTITUDE is a huge player in all of life. A positive, realistic attitude can get us through those times when it IS hard and we want to quit. How does this work? “Pray all the harder” says God’s Word. Prayer is more than a plea, a crying out, or a mere request to God. Prayer is God’s way of causing us to “say it all” out loud, so we hear what we are saying, think about it, and realize there are things we need to change in us.
Yes, “prayer changes things” and it is mostly us. “Praying harder” involves listening intently to what we are asking then falling to our knees to listen to what our Master, Our Father, God has to say to us. When we finally get to the end of ourselves, God speaks. Can I get an amen? I can testify to that!
DULLNESS. We become dull in doing the mundane and forget sometimes WHY we do it at all. Our prayers become weak and repetitive. Our passion dulls to only a flicker of a flame. Evil storms into dull minds and hearts and attacks when we least expect it. “Be alert servants of the Master” says God’s Word to us. Stay focused on God, look full into his face, ready to go when He says go! Dull minds don’t expect anything new. Be “cheerfully expectant”. Waking up each day asking, “What’s next, Abba Father”? combats dullness.
NO PLAN! MAKE A PLAN…THEN DO IT! I recently read “Eat That Frog!” and realized how much organizing a plan for each day to reach ultimate yearly goals set by ourselves after passionate prayer to the God who helps us succeed, rejuvenates our thoughts, our actions, keeps us fired up, expectant, happier and daily motivated! (The author is Brian Tracy. Check it out!) Procrastination is a killer and fire snuffer!
REJECTION. We don’t like to talk about it. It hurts too much. It is probably the greatest challenge to keeping our fires blazing. We read Paul’s letter to the Philippians and hear his battle cry, I WANT TO KNOW CHRIST! In our hearts, we shout, YES, I DO, TOO! But the rest of that verse says, “…and share in His sufferings. Uh oh, we don’t want that! Jesus Christ went to His own “and his own received him not”. That is always in the back of my mind when rejected. Still rejection is hard, turns our flames down, and is almost debilitating to us.
But know this dear friends, from one who fights rejection to keep her flame going strong, we can overcome rejection by applying huge doses of God’s love to our wounded hearts DAILY and by allowing Him to renew our minds until the rejected thinks like the accepted.
Jesus Christ will never leave us or forsake us. He is incapable of suddenly deciding He no longer wants us. If we have received God’s Son as our Savior, nothing we can do will cause Him to reject us. Believe what God’s Word tells us about Him and about us. We are defined by the love and acceptance of the Creator and Sustainer of the universe. He happens to think we are worth loving AND keeping.
We must find and focus our identity in Him. Our identity is not in a job, ministry or even in our family as mothers, fathers, daughters and sons, our identities are in Christ. As rejected persons we must turn entirely to God and His Word. We will find glorious restoration and acceptance in Christ no matter what happens. Remember, our names are engraved on the palm of His hands! (Isa. 49:16)
So, “Don’t burn out; keep yourselves fueled and aflame. Be alert servants of the Master; cheerfully expectant. Don’t quit in hard times; pray all the harder.” Romans 12, Msg
In Jesus Name, Amen
