The Antidote for Burnout

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By Larry Short

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. Help needy Christians; be inventive in hospitality. (Romans 12:11-13, MSG)

In challenging times such as these, which seem to take an extraordinary level of effort to hold onto whatever hope can be had—when we are tempted to throw in the towel and retreat into ourselves—we seriously need the perspective that the Apostle Paul provides us with in his letter to the Romans.

What is God’s will for us, when we are in danger of burnout? “Keep yourselves fueled and aflame.” And how exactly do we do this?

1. Realize that we are not the bosses of ourselves! We have a Master. He is calling us to reject cynicism and to be “cheerfully expectant.” He is the God of all hope; and even when we can’t see the sunrise on the horizon, He promises that it is coming. “With God, all things are possible” (Matthew 19:26). We must not quit in hard times, but stick to our commitment to keep on keepin’ on until we see Him finish the good work that He has begun in us and has promised that He will finish (Philippians 1:6).
2. “Pray all the harder.” I don’t know about you, but I have to confess that I don’t pray all that hard. I can do a lot of things hard—complain hard, lick my own wounds hard, or guard my own self-interests hard. But pray hard? In times when we feel like quitting, God is calling us to pray harder instead.
3. Help needy Christians. As we walk down this hard-packed path of life, we are surrounded by people with needs. Do we keep our eyes open to those needs, allowing them to touch our hearts? For Jesus, when He saw human need, He had compassion and was moved to action. “Lift your eyes,” He told us, “for the fields are ripe for harvest” (John 4:35). The executive fire chief for Central Pierce County recently told me that the majority of calls his 9-1-1 operators received were not specifically related to emergencies, but were made by lonely, hurting, and desperate people who just needed to connect with people who cared. Are we willing to “lift our eyes” and see these needs around us? Ironically, spending ourselves to help others is a key way to “keep ourselves fueled and aflame.”
4. And this is one I really think Elim needs to hear. Paul says, “Be inventive in hospitality.” Literally, “pursue hospitality.” Not simply “practice hospitality” or “be hospitable,” but be passionate and creative in pursuit of it! God calls us to open our hearts and lives to those around us who aren’t necessarily “in our circle,” to those who are on the fringe, to outsiders. We are very good at connecting with those inside our circle, but not nearly as good at breaking the circle and inviting others in. The extent to which we will be energetically inventive in hospitality is the extent to which we ourselves will be kept aflame and refueled.

Do you feel like you are out of gas? Close to burnout? Do you want to give up, to retreat, to withdraw? Trust in God’s Word and do the exact opposite of what you feel your “own understanding” (Proverbs 3:5) is calling you to do. Rather than hunker down, hop up and open up your arms to others around you. Embrace a cheerful hope. Pray hard. Invest in helping others. And pursue creative ways to open up your life to those outside your circle!

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