According to the National Institute of Mental Health, here in America, anxiety
disorders, panic attacks, over-stress, burnout, those type of things, anxiety
disorders, affect roughly 40 million Americans between the ages of 18 and 54.
These are not stats, like, from 20 years ago. These are like April 2016 - 40 million
Americans. We have more food than we can eat, most of us have homes to live in, and
jobs. We're not at war with each other yet, hopefully. We live in relative
security. We can go where we want, marry who we want, eat what we want, live where
we want, work where we want. No imminent threat, and yet 40 million
Americans struggle with anxiety disorders. I suppose we could use words
like stress, worry, as well as anxious, when we talk about the struggle that
affects so many of us from time to time, and to a greater or lesser degree. It's
not just people from 18 to 54. People younger than that and people older than
that struggle with these type of things, but that's kind of the
stat that I'm working with. In the world there are a lot of remedies offered to
counter the problems of stress and anxiety and worry.
Obviously, there's medication, vacations, therapy, support groups, all
kinds of things, breathing exercises, yoga. As Christians, however, we believe that
even if these methods might be helpful, and many of them are, the most satisfying
and permanent solution to the problems of worry and stress can only be found
through faith, and specifically through faith in Christ. With this in mind, I'd
like to review the story of Elijah and how God helped him
deal with his extreme case of stress and worry and eventual burnout. And that's
where we go for our lesson, First Kings chapter 19, let's begin reading verse 1 to
3, it says, "Now Ahab told Jezebel all that Elijah had done, and how he had killed
all the prophets with the sword. Then Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah,
saying, "So may the gods do to me and even more, if I do not make your life as the
life of one of them by tomorrow about this time. And he," meaning Elijah, "and he
was afraid and arose and ran for his life and came to Beersheba, which belongs
to Judah, and left his servant there." Now I don't have time to read the entire
story so I'm picking it up right here, and maybe just paraphrase,
give you a little bit of background. Elijah, the prophet, lived in the ninth
century before Christ. He was a prophet who served God during the reign of
several kings, not just one king, but many kings, but one especially bad king, and
his name was Ahab and his wife's name was Jezebel. Now much of Elijah's
ministry involved the conflict between himself and the royal couple over the
introduction of pagan worship to Israel. Jezebel was from Tyre and through her
influence the worship of Baal Melqart, who was the official nature God of Tyre,
was being actively brought into the kingdom. The word Baal or Baal, as it's
pronounced, means master or possessor or husband. In pagan religions of the time
every piece of land had its master and so each place or each town had its version
of a master or a Baal deity. That's why you have Baal, the name of one city,
Baal, the name of another city. Every city, every town, every plot of land had
this god. In response to this, Elijah had prayed for a drought to come over
the land and it did not rain for three years. And the point behind this is, that
since Baal was a deity that was supposed to control nature, this drought was a
demonstration of this pagan religion's emptiness and lack of any power.
Elijah, towards the royal couple and towards the country, was saying, you
people are starting to follow this God, this is the God that's in charge of
nature. Let me show you who's in charge of nature. And so he prayed to Jehovah,
the God of Israel, the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, and prayed and said,
no rain. And no rain came for three long years. Of course, the drought also made
the king and queen greater enemies of Elijah. After three years, Elijah
challenged all the prophets of Baal to meet him at Mount Carmel in order to
demonstrate who was greater, Jehovah or Baal. After this meeting Elijah taunted
and ridiculed them and performed a great miracle before the assembled people to
show that the God he served was the true God, and Baal worship was
futile. After this great demonstration of power, Elijah then ordered that the 450
priests of Baal be killed and they were put to death by the people. The point
here was that all of these priests had been appointed by Jezebel and were
supported financially by Jezebel, in her attempt to bring this religion into
Israel. Now, if this were not enough, he also offered another prayer asking God
to send rain. So after three years, the heavens opened
up and the water poured forth. After doing these things,
realizing that he may be in danger, he escaped on foot to another town and
that's where we picked up the reading, where she threatens him and she says I
swear to you, before the day is over, you're going to be as dead as those
priests over there. So he takes off running. I give you this story to
underscore the idea that Elijah experienced a physical and emotional and
spiritual rollercoaster for three years, culminating in the great showdown at
Mount Carmel. He is only a man. And if we read between the lines, we realize that
this man is close to burnout, extremely anxious, extremely stressed, ready to
completely fall apart. Now Elijah experienced things that were beyond what
normal life requires of ordinary people and that's what was causing his - I mean,
I, we, don't have time to get into all of it, but I mean, a certain
amount of stress is good. You need a certain amount of stress to get you up
and going, but too much stress, when the needle is in the red all the time, too
much stress, that leads to burn out. And too much stress sometimes is what
happens when too many things are happening at the same time. And so in
Elijah's life, if you look over the three years, you see, first of all, miracles were
done in his name. And you think, well, that's a good thing.
But having a miracle done in your name as you call out to God is a very
exciting and stressful thing. There was a war going on, that he experienced, a
natural disaster. Yeah, he prayed that there be no rain. Well, there was no rain
for three years, that brought a drought upon the country, terrible economic loss,
and he was the cause of it, that the people were blaming him. Threats of
death, forced travel, he had to runaway, he had to hide. Have you ever had to run
away and hide for your life? I mean, think about that for a second.
Imagine, people are looking for you, they want to kill you. That's a pretty
stressful thing. And then, of course, the rejection by society. He's trying to
serve God, he's trying to do something, but everybody, both sides hate him. The king
and queen hate him, the people hate him. So people, they can manage some
of these things, but when too many good things or too many bad things happen too
rapidly, we blow a fuse, we burn out as a protection. Our body is protecting us
from total destruction, as if our body is saying, well, maybe you want to keep going
at this pace, but I'm going to cause an electrical short circuit here, just to
stop everything, so that we don't completely ruin ourselves. That's what
was going on with Elijah now, burnout, has symptoms. And we can
recognize these burnout symptoms as we look at Elijah and the dialogue that he
has with the Lord. So we go back to chapter 19 and we pick it up in verse 4,
the first symptom, if you wish, or one of the major symptoms of burnout is despair.
In verse 4 he says, "But he himself went a day's journey into the wilderness, and
came and sat down under a juniper tree; and he requested for himself that he
might die, and said, "It is enough; now O Lord, take my life." Even though he
had witnessed a great victory, he had done great miracles, he was in despair.
And the chief - the signifying feeling about despair is
there's no hope. You have no hope. He had no hope. Not because there was nothing to
believe in, not because there was no proof to support his faith, he had no
hope because he couldn't function properly to see these things anymore.
Another evidence of burnout is self-depreciation. I'm no good,
nobody loves me. Look at verse 4, continue in verse 4, right to the end he
says, "It is enough; now, O Lord, take my life, for I am not better than my fathers."
Self-depreciation. I'm no good, nobody loves me. Why should I try?
Burned-out people are hard on themselves, no matter what they've done, it's never
good enough. Burnout makes you feel like a failure
and nothing can convince you otherwise. Even if your wife or your husband or
your friends tell you, well, no, but look at all the good things that you've done,
and you've accomplished this, and people love you. You just cannot be convinced
that there's anything good about your life or your person. Those
voices inside your head that tell you, that encourage you, or discourage you,
usually are the loudest during the times that you feel overstressed and over
worried. One of the symptoms is when that voice is constantly negative in your
mind, constantly telling you that you're not good, that you are not going to make
it, you're not worthy, then something else is taking place there. Another symptom,
anger and resentment. Like I said, it's a long story, so let's just skip down to
verse 10. In this dialogue, that he's having with God, chapter 19 he says, "Then
Elisha came there to a cave and lodged there; and behold, the word of the Lord
came to him, and He said to him, "What are you doing here, Elisha? And he said, "I have
been very zealous for the Lord, the God of hosts; for the sons of Israel have
forsaken your covenant, torn down your altars, and killed Your prophets with the
sword. And I alone am left; and they seek my life, to take it away." Do you see the
resentment there? Elija felt angry about - he felt angry about how he felt.
If you do your best, if you try your hardest,
if you succeed, what should happen? Well, you should feel good, not bad. When the
only reward we get from all of our efforts is fatigue and depression, we
need to step back a little bit, because we're close to burnout.
He's, here, I mean, the greatest victory, single-handedly defeated all
these priests, stopped the invasion of this false religion into
the country and how does he feel? He says, I'm the only
one left. I've tried the best and look what's happened to me. In other word, he's
saying to God, I did what You wanted me to do, and look where I am now. What's
the point of serving You? What did I get for all of my effort? Anger, resentment
and then of course, loneliness. Verse 14, skip down to verse 14, he said, "Then he
said, "I have been very zealous for the Lord," repeats this, he repeats it from
before, he says, "I've been very zealous for the Lord, the God of hosts; for the sons
of Israel have forsaken Your covenant, torn down Your altars and killed Your
prophets with the sword. And I alone am left; and they seek my life to take it
away." Does that sound familiar? Well, he just said that a little while before. The
Lord is talking to him. Why are you here, Elijah? What's the problem, Elijah? He says,
well, I did what You said and look where I am and I'm all by myself
and I'm the only one that's fighting. And the Lord talks to him some more, talks to
him some more, and what does Elijah do? He repeats the same thing. He's in shock. You
ever notice people in shock? What happens to them many times, if they're at least
awake, they kind of start repeating the story. Well, I was just standing there and
I went to cross the street and then cars just came out of nowhere and just
brushed me back and I bounced against the wall and I hurt my head and my arm
is sore. And three minutes later, four minutes later, someone else is saying, are you
okay? Yeah, well, I just stepped out to go - It's like a broken record. They keep
repeating the thing, they're trying to absorb it. He's trying to absorb it. He
can't quite absorb everything. Why? Because he's saturated with stress and
anger and resentment and, here, loneliness. He repeats his complaint and with it his
greatest worry, that he'd be left alone. Burnout makes people feel that
no one really understands them, no one really
cares, no one knows how we feel or why we feel the way we do. It's a terribly
lonely thing. Elijah lived nearly 3,000 years ago, yet his symptoms and
feelings are so very familiar to us who struggle today in 2017 with depression
and low self-esteem and resentment and and alienation, in our modern
pressure-cooker society. Because people have not changed. We're the same as we
have always been. There are some common mistakes that people do when they
suffer from too much stress or they're on the verge of burnout. Aside
from the physical feelings of fatigue and the emotional problems associated
with burnout, this condition also pushes us to make mistakes that we would not
normally do if we were emotionally balanced and rested properly.
Mistake number one, for example, we focus on feelings, rather than facts. We focus
on feelings rather than facts. Elijah prayed that he might die. He looked
inward and he saw the world through the lens of his feelings, not through the
facts of what had actually happened. I feel like a failure, therefore I am a
failure. This is called emotional reasoning and it's a mistake. I feel lost
even though I've confessed Christ and I've been baptized and I'm doing the
best I can to be faithful, but I feel guilty, I feel that I'm not worthy,
therefore all of what he said must not be true because it doesn't match how I
feel. Well, brothers and sisters, we're not saved based on what we feel, were saved
based on what we believe and what we do. People who are overstressed
or burned out are easily drawn into focusing and interpreting our life
through our feelings, rather than our facts. Mistake number two, we begin
comparing ourselves to other people. Elijah cried that he was no better than
who? Than his forefathers. We usually compare our weaknesses to other people's
strengths. And we always come out - you ever notice that?
I like to play golf. Who do I compare myself to? Well, I compare myself to a guy
who plays twenty strokes better than I do every time. Or well, you look at
the pros on TV and you see it's one of the pros who makes this
fantastic shot, makes it look easy, two feet in front of the pin. And then when
you try it and it doesn't work, you - oh man, what's the matter with me?
What's the matter with me? I'm going to give up this game. Who are you comparing
yourself to? The world champion. Mistake number three, stressed out people
motivate themselves with negatives instead of positives. Elijah complained
that he had been zealous for God, but the people had rejected God and his
preaching, in verse 10. Do you see it? We blame ourself, we punish ourselves with
criticism and we label ourselves with harsh judgments. It's no wonder we feel
bad. We become our worst critics. I always pray,
God help me not to be too critical, to be more gracious with other people. You
think I can be critical of you, you ain't seen nothing till I start being critical
with myself. Why? Because I know me. I know who I am. I know how hard I really tried. You
know what I'm saying. So when I level criticism at me, whoa it's got a very
pointy edge.
You can't motivate yourself by criticizing yourself. I'm not saying we
should excuse or just let everything go by that we do wrong. No, of course not. We
need to hold ourselves accountable, but we cannot motivate ourselves to higher and
better and more noble and more spiritual, by continually criticizing ourselves,
doesn't work. Mistake number four, we exaggerate the negatives. Elijah said, I
am the only one left. Later on the Lord tells him, yeah, you and 7,000 others. The
attitude, or this attitude, degenerates into self-pity and to despair. So here's
what the cycle looks like, okay, this over-stress, over-anxious cycle. It begins
we're overburdened, we're over stimulated, we're overworked, we're overstressed,
we're over worried, too much, too fast. And it doesn't have to be bad
things, it can be good things. We've just got too much, too many plates spinning in the
air. This leads to a weakened physical and mental resistance, as well as the
spiritual letdown. You just don't have enough gas in the tank to take care of
all the things that you've been committed to or to take care of all the
things that may have happened to you. Then this condition produces a variety
of symptoms, such as anger and depression and low self-esteem and moodiness and
all kinds of things, because these attitudes drive us to make critical
mistakes, such as: emotional reasoning, and false comparisons, and negative self
judgments, and further alienation from other people. And then these mistakes
produce, what? Well, they produce more stress. More stress on our system, which
perpetuates the vicious cycle leading to total breakdown. And what I'm saying is
that sometimes the body, again, not claiming any
medical knowledge, but I've seen it in myself - the over-stress, eventually the
body takes over and says okay, buddy, you're about to kill yourself, so
we're going to do something here, we're going to give you a lot of low back pain
or we're going to give you some migraines or you're going to have an
upset stomach or - we're going to do something to just knock you out,
break the cycle, because if you keep on spinning, you're going to
blow up. So God, thankfully, has a remedy for burnout, prescription for burnout,
because He is aware of the body's frailty, especially when it is under
stress. In the same passage we see the remedy that God uses to renew a
burned-out servant named Elijah. The first thing that God prescribes is
rest. God gave Elijah rest for his body. In
verse 5, go back to verse 5, because I've had to jump around in passage
here. He says, "Elijah, laid down and slept under a juniper tree; and behold there
was an angel touching him, and he said to him, "Arise, eat." Then he looked and behold,
it was at his head a bread cake baked on hot stones, and a jar of water. So he ate
and drank and laid down again. The angel of the Lord came again a second time and
touched him and said, "Arise, eat, because the journey is too great for you." So he
arose and ate and drank, and went in the strength of that food forty days and
forty nights to Horeb, the mountain of God." So the body will
short-circuit if it does not receive rest and nourishment. A balance of work
and rest and leisure is the best medicine for a burned-out system.
People usually rest until they are well enough to repeat
the same mistakes that led to the burnout originally. They're working 64
hours, 70 hours a week, and then they've got this over here, and then
they're taking care of a sick aunt, and the church things that they've
got to do, and then they've committed themselves to something else,
and all of a sudden, boom, they burn out. And they can't do it.
They need a rest and then they take a break, a vacation,
something, just to recharge the batteries, and what do they do when that rest is
over? Well, they go back to doing the same things over again. No changes. They don't
realize that if they repeat the same type of things, they're going to end up
in the same place. People usually, as they say, rest until they're well enough to
repeat the same old mistakes. What's needed is an attitude that understands
that rest and leisure are as important as work, in developing a balanced and
pleasing life to God. And many of us, unfortunately, feel guilty when we're
having fun. We feel guilty when we're having fun. As if, oh, that's my -
my guilty pleasure is, I go fishing. Why should you feel guilty about that?
And I was thinking the other day, I was giving thanks, sometimes in my
own prayers, I say, today I'm just going to give thanks. I'm not going
to ask for anything. I'm not going to complain about anything.
I'm just going to find the things in my life and just say thank you for them. And
I realized, as I was making that prayer, that almost, I mean, I couldn't think of
an exception, but there may be one out there, almost everything that God has
created is for our pleasure. I look at the sky, the beautiful sky, even with the
cloud formation, it gives me pleasure. Pleasure for my eyes. Look at that, it's
just amazing. And I smell - the grass gets cut, and I smell the grass, and what does
it - freshly mown grass, right, we know, it gives me, what? It gives me
pleasure. I lay my head down on my pillow at night,
the first few moments when you - before you go to sleep, oh that feels so
good, pleasure. I drink a cold glass of water,
pleasure. I feel the hot Sun on my head, in the
afternoon, pleasure. I mean, He didn't have to create us where almost every single
experience that we have involves pleasure of some kind. What kind of God
do we have? We have a God that gives us pleasure. Not illicit pleasure. Not sinful
pleasure. We don't have to do things that are illicit or disobedient in order to
have pleasure, because He's created everything in this world to give us some
kind of pleasure. We have to understand that life has work in it, of
course, and even that can be pleasurable, but it also needs rest and it also needs
leisure in order to be proper, to be balanced. If you're overstressed and
close to burnout something is wrong.
You have to figure out what the wrong thing is and something has to change in
order to find again the balance. And that's why I'm not throwing this at you
as an accusation, I'm saying this is what you need to be thinking about, if that's
your situation: over-stress and anxiety and burnout. Something will have to
change. It might be, there needs to be more leisure. Wouldn't that be great.
Or maybe there needs to be less commitments or maybe there needs to be
new commitments, in different areas. I don't know, but
something has to change. Number two in His prescription - so we said rest, the
next one is release. God allowed Elijah to pour out his heart,
his frustrations, his fear, and his anger before Him. Again, I'll read one more time
verse nine, "Then he came there to a cave and lodged there; and behold, the word of
the Lord came to him, and He said to him, "What are you doing here, Elijah?" I mean, do
you think God didn't know what he was doing here. What was he doing? He was
giving Elijah a chance to express himself. And he did. "I have been very
zealous for the Lord, the God of hosts; where the sons of Israel have forsaken
your covenant, torn down your altars killed your prophets with the sword. And
I alone am left; and they seek my life, to take it away." He's just, it's just
pouring out of him. Notice there's no, dear Lord, I humbly
come before you, my God of hosts and I appeal to you as your humble servant,
Lord. There's none of that. It's just Elijah, what are you doing here?
Oh well, they hurt me, then I hurt them. The problem with burnout
is that it's like a low burning fire inside that never gets extinguished. It
keeps burning and building and destroying us from the inside. You can
pray and cry and share with others and enter your heart before God. The
emotional energy created by the stress needs to be released and released in a
positive way, not a negative way. Some people, they get release, all right, but
how do they do it? Well, they abuse drugs or alcohol or other things like that. Or
they do other self-harming things, thinking that this will - hey I
drive my car at 120 miles an hour, that's how I get some relief. Or I go
bungee jumping off a bridge. Yeah, that feels better. There are better
and safer ways and more constructive ways to release the raw emotional energy
created by over-stress. Third part of his prescription: rest, release, refocusing.
Refocusing. Elija was seeing only the problem, but in the cave at Horeb, he
sought, again, the version and the vision of God that had originally sent him to
prophesy, he heard again the voice of the Lord. This time, verse 11, "So he said, "Go
forth," God is saying, "Go forth and stand on the mountain before the Lord." And behold,
the Lord was passing by! And a great and strong wind was rending the mountains
and breaking in pieces the rocks before the Lord; but the Lord was not in the
wind. And after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake.
And after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the
fire a sound of gentle blowing. When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in
his mantle and went out and stood in the entrance of the cave. And behold, a voice
came to him and said, "What are you doing here, Elijah?"
Sometimes it isn't a change of place or a change of people
that we need, sometimes it's a resetting of our sights on God and His Word and
His Son Jesus Christ and His Church, that is truly needed. In other words, sometimes
we need to re-establish our spiritual priorities, because many times the over
stress and the anxieties are caused because we have confused our
priorities. We've taken God, who should be up there, and we've put Him
down here. Or we've taken our spouse, for example, which should be our main
priority, and we put them down here, because, well, I got a lot of work to do
and my career is demanding this and I play, whatever,
I play soccer on Thursday and Friday.
But for some reason or another, I've taken my spouse, who should
be my priority, and I've put her down in spot number four. And I don't realize
that spot number four, her being in spot number four, is causing a lot
stress and a lot of anxiety in my marriage and in my personal life and in
her life and in the life of the children.
So sometimes we need to refocus, reorder. So: rest, release, refocus,
recommitment. Recommitment. As far as Elijah was concerned, one task was over,
it had been a challenge, it had been a burden, and after a time of rest and
prayer and renewal, Elijah is given a new ministry, a different service to perform
for the Lord. This time we go to verse 15. The Lord said to him, "Go, return on your
way to the wilderness of Damascus, and when you have arrived, you shall anoint
Hazael king of Aram; and Jehu the son of Nimshi you shall anoint king over Israel;
and Elisha the son of Shaphat of Abel-mehola
you shall anoint as prophet in
your place." So God gives him another task. There's work to be done, you need to
go. You need to go anoint a new king. You need to find another assistant,
a new prophet. Many times the best way to beat burnout is to be active in
different ways, with different people, pursuing different goals. Not always, but
sometimes. If our focus is on God and His purpose, He will be able to direct us
into some service that will give us fresh hope and a renewed sense of
purpose and an enthusiasm. He will also supply us with health to do the
work at hand. He noticed that Elijah, this guy was burnt out, he was toast.
He had given his all. He wasn't the same man as he was before, so what does He do?
He gives him a younger man to work with him, to help him, to mentor, to carry on
the work. Sometimes part of the stress
is, who's going to continue the good stuff that I've been doing? Who's going
to take care of my family? Who's going to take care of my ministry or my job or
the business that I'd built up? I've spent so much time working on this
and now I'm getting tired and I'm getting old. Who's going to take over?
Who's going to bring it to fruition? Who will love it enough that they won't let
it die? That they'll continue it with the same zeal that I had. These are real
worries that people have. Elijah was human like all of us here, who nearly
burned out because of the pressures of his service to the Lord;
but God renewed him with rest for his body, release for his soul, the refocusing
for his spirit, and a recommitment for his heart. Also, a reinforcement for his
ministry, and that would be Elisha. God not only cares for us, He knows exactly
what we need, for what ails us, no matter what the generation is that we live in.
So the question begs, are you overanxious, stressed, burned out? Do you recognise
yourself, whether you're a man or a woman, whether you're older or younger, whether
you're married or single. Do you recognize yourself in Elijah? Is there a
little bit of Elijah in you? Are his symptoms, your symptoms? Have you given up
on man's solutions to fix the problems, worldly ways to be renewed: denial, or
escapism, or materialism, or medication, or hedonism, all the isms. I encourage you
to try God's prescription for burnout. Just a reminder: number one, find the
proper balance between work and rest, even if it means less money. It's not all
about money, brothers and sisters. Number two, express your feelings to God
honestly in prayer, and do it often and do it sincerely.
Number three, reestablish your priorities, putting Christ and His kingdom first in
your life. Once again, this will then properly order all of your other
priorities. And number four, begin seeking for new ways to serve the Lord through
His church, to serve your family, to serve your career. Sometimes working at
different things with different people helps us in our renewal process. So if
this prescription means that you need to be baptized, for example, or you need to
be restored through prayer, then, of course, we wait for you to come forward
as we stand and as we sing the song of invitation.