Unleashing Hope: Replace Burnout With Balance

Unleashing Hope: Replace Burnout With Balance

Matthew 11:28-30

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” vs. 28

Leading Causes

Ask congregation to turn to their neighbor and briefly identify the top 2 or three causes of stress and burnout and write them on your outline.

Statisticbrain.com reports that in 2013, the following were the leading causes of stress in the U.S. (Show in reverse order going from #7 to #1)

• Job Pressure
• Money
• Health
• Relationships
• Poor Nutrition
• Media Overload
• Sleep Deprivation

You might be thinking, “Ron, look around. It’s Christmas. This is supposed to be when you talk about the baby Jesus and Mary and all that stuff. What does this have to do with Christmas?” Glad you asked that. We are in the Christmas season and I bring this up because we might call this time the holi”daze.” We get so busy running around running and doing things that we need to be reminded that we could easily burnout and overdo it. There are some very comforting words in Matthew 11:28-30. If you are able, please stand as we read God’s Word.

Read Passage – Matthew 11:28-30

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. ²⁹ Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. ³⁰ For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

Physical Effects of Stress and Burnout

This is a time in our calendar when we choose to remember the birth of Jesus and how important that is to us. I know many people argue that Jesus wasn’t really born at this time and that we are somehow hijacking a pagan holiday and traditions and using them for our religious purposes. Maybe that has some truth but the real story is that we choose to remember a super important act of God that changed history and ultimately changes our lives. I’m okay that this might not be the exact time Jesus was born. But I do know this, God acted on our behalf by sending his Son, Jesus, and we choose to express the significance of that in our life and to remember that we believe Jesus is Emmanuel; God with us.

Keeping that in mind, we noted the 7 leading causes of stress and burnout. Now lets spend a few moments recognizing that stress can have some very detrimental effects on our body. Here are the top 8 physical effects stress has on us.

51% experience fatigue

44% experience headaches

34% experience upset stomachs

30% experience muscle tension

23% experience a change in appetite

17% report grinding their teeth

15% report a change in their sex drive

13% experience dizziness

Those are some pretty staggering statistics and results. One thing that seems to be absent from the list is the effect it has on our religious life. You might not have thought about this but stress and burnout can have an effect on your religious life and your relationship with God. This should be a time of year where we spend some time resting, reflecting, and remembering the provision of God and how that we can celebrate Emmanuel, God with us.

5 Steps To A Balanced Life

So let’s look at 5 steps we can take to bring replace burnout and stress with balance and stability in our lives.

1. Pace Yourself

First, it’s very important to pace yourself. We get going so fast that we burnout. Hebrews 12:1b says:

“…let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us…” Hebrews 12:1b

We can live our lives like we are in a sprint or we can realize that we are in a long race and need to pace ourselves. Notice that Paul uses the word “perseverance.” Sprints are fast races and you burn up your energy very quickly. We need to we are in a long race and need to pace ourselves.

Ex. Claudia and my first holiday season and the one Saturday where we tried to cram everything in.

Lived in RWC.

Went to funeral in Modesto in the morning

Went to wedding in RWC in afternoon

Went to party in Oakland that night.

The thing we looked forward to most was the party with our friends in Oakland. By the time we got there, we were too exhausted to enjoy it.

We go so fast that we miss what is most important to us and what we enjoy and look forward to the most.

Question: What are you doing, maybe with good intentions, that is taking away from what is really important to us? What are we not pacing ourselves at?

2. Refuel Your Tank

The second step we can take is to refuel our tanks. We can’t be refreshed or refresh others if we are stressed and burned out. Prov. 11:25:

“A generous person will prosper; whoever refreshes others will be refreshed.” Prov. 11:25

If you are like me, you want to bring refreshment to people when you are around them. You want them to look forward to being with you. I don’t want to be that person that people don’t want around because it’s always so tense and uncomfortable. The solution for that is to refuel our tank. We give and work and go 100 miles an hour we burn energy and fuel. That has to be replaced.

Ex. Modern technology has given us an illustration to help up understand this; the gas tank warning light.

If you are feeling stressed and burned out, your warning light is on. God has built you with a warning light and many of us ignore it.

Ill. Talk about the stress and focus and anxiety that comes when you see that light go on in your car and how it takes so much energy until you refuel the tank. And…if you don’t refuel that tank what happens? The car won’t work anymore. The same can happen to us. It’s called a nervous breakdown.

Solution: Take some time off, refuel, re-energize.

3. Keep The Right Priorities

The third step we can put into our lives to bring balance is to keep the right priorities. Many times we run around doing things, and sometimes good things, but we have missed the things that are most important to us.

“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices—mint, dill and cumin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy and faithfulness.” Matthew 23:23

You might think this is a strange verse for this point. Let me explain how it relates. The Pharisee were doing some good things, like bringing their tithes to the temple. That is a good thing. But in doing so, they missed what God really wanted. He wasn’t concerned about their tithes as much as their heart so that looked good bringing their tithes but thy neglected justice, mercy and faithfulness. They thought bringing their tithes was being faithful and instead it was just an obligation.

I hate to tell you this but we fall into the same trap. We work really hard in what seems to be the right things and we have missed what is really important.

Ill. Work; we work long hours all for good reasons (like $ to provide for our family) but miss what is really important and we cause ourselves to burnout. We miss our children’s soccer games, school plays, recitals, etc. We even miss things like family dinners and time together and then wonder why our kids don’t grow up with the right priorities and ethics.

Statistic: Men have more heart attacks on Mondays (by 3 times) than any other day of the work week. Why? Don’t rest and the stress of coming back to work.

4. Understand Your Limits

The fourth step is that we need to understand our limits. Yes, we are limited in what we can do. The only one not limited is God himself. Deut. 4:35:

“You were shown these things so that you might know that the Lord is God; besides him there is no other.” Deut. 4:35

It’s a hard concept for us to grasp but we are finite beings and we really can’t do it all. The world tells us we can have it all but the reality is that we all have limitations and we should note those and then make choices that allow us to thrive within those limitations. I have listed four limitations for you here to take note of and to consider.

5 Limitations

• Physical None of us can go a month without sleep or a week!
• Emotional None of us can cope with the weight of the whole world.
• Mental None of us can process all the information around us.
• Space None of us can be in more than one place at a time.
• Time None of us can cram more than 24 hours in a day.

To me, the key is not to challenge our limitation but to understand thenm and then learn to live within them.

5. R and R

And finally, the fifth step we can take, we need to build rest and relaxation into our lives. We touched on this a few weeks ago and how God did this on the 7^th day. Jesus did it too; Mark 1:35:

“Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed.” Mark 1:35

Jesus had just finished healing a bunch of people. He was tired. I am sure there were more people to heal too but he need to rest. My feeling is that if it was good for Jesus, it must be good for us too. Rest is something you have to plan for. I hear way to often people who are bragging to me that they haven’t used their vacation time from work in years. That is a warning light. And planned R and R needs to be done often. I would suggest you build it into your life in three ways:

3 Times To Plan Rest

Daily

Weekly

Annually

No Regrets!

So, why the big concern? We all can get to a point of being overstressed and burnout. Here is what I want to be able to say with some confidence at the end of my life, that I have no regrets. Now I know that is hard but we can make a dent in that. Remember Pauls’ words in 2 Tim. 4:7:

“I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.” 2 Tim. 4:7

Paul looks back and says I have no regrets. Yes he did things wrong, so do we. Yes he wanted to accomplish more, so do we. But we have something that the world doesn’t. We have a God who cares, who loves us, who wants the best for us, and who wants to help us. Remember the first first of the passage we read today:

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” vs. 28

Emmanuel: God With Us!