Thank you for that song. What a blessing. We'll be in Matthew chapter number 28. I'm sorry, Matthew 11, 28. I'm preaching on avoiding the burnout trap. I'm looking at you and nobody in this room looks like you're burned out. So this sermon will just be for those who are online. Seriously, it's a problem that each of us could face. Matthew 11, 28. Come unto me, Jesus said, all you that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. And take my yoke upon you and learn of me, for I am meek and lowly in heart. And you shall find rest unto your souls, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light. Father, I pray now that you would come into our midst Lord, those who are saved have your Holy Spirit living inside and so I pray that you'd speak through him and through thy precious word to give us the enlightenment that we need to deal with the problem that we could all face and probably do face. Lord, you have the strength to solve our problem and we pray that you'd bless us this morning. Help us to not only hear but to apply what we hear from the Word of God. We thank you in Jesus' name. Amen. You've all been there. The warning light's flashing on your dash. One guy saw the warning light flashing. It's flashing on and off. The car's sputtering. And he just keeps on going. Lights are blinking. Making lots of racket. And the guy just keeps on driving. He says, I think I can make it. If I just go a little bit longer, I'm going to make it. And finally, the engine quits. and he's stranded. And that's how a lot of Christians live today. The warning light's on, the warning light's blinking, the motor's sputtering, but we don't either see or heed the warning lights. What happens? Well, we face burnout. Don't take this lightly because It can be real in your life and you don't know it. You may not know it. According to a 2022 Gallup poll, 76% of employees experienced burnout at some time. And among pastors, Barna research shows that 42% have considered quitting full-time ministry in the last year. But this isn't just a workplace issue. This is an issue that affects students, parents, retirees and faithful church members. Burnout. Feel tired yet? Feel like throwing in the towel? Feel like maybe I just shut a slap in this morning? Maybe that's a warning light. We are not invincible. Sometimes we think everything's going to be okay and we just keep on doing the same old thing, expecting different results. That's the definition of insanity, right? And so we feel like we can withstand everything, but in the flesh we cannot. Let's look together at how we can recognize burnout Understand its danger and how to prevent it from happening in our own life. First, in the order of dealing with this subject, number one is to recognize the signs of burnout. Recognize the signs. We talk about the signs of the times and we believe Jesus is coming but what about the signs in our own life about what's happening? Psalm 42 verse number 5 says, Why art thou cast down, O my soul? And why art thou disquieted in me? Hope thou in God, for I shall yet praise him. Why art thou cast down? I think the psalmist was facing this. He's been facing some difficult trials, some difficult times, hard decisions, misery, persecution. And he says to himself, why are you cast down? I'm talking to my soul. You ever have a conversation with yourself? We all do, all the time. We carry on a conversation with ourselves throughout the day. Some of us say it out loud and some don't. Aaron's kin to one of my distant cousins, he talks to himself all the time. And I ask him, who are you talking to? I don't know. Nobody was around. He's way off over there. Ted Brooks was a very distant cousin, but he was an older man. He'd come down the road driving an old team of mules and standing up on that old wagon, you'd hear it going over that gravel road, rickety shod old mules and wheels creaking and rattling. and you'd hear old Ted, he's the only one in that old wagon and you'd hear him talking to himself. Top of his lungs, man, he's going up the road and he's having a conversation with himself. Well, we may not do it out loud, but we all talk to ourselves and we all have a conversation internally going on. And David did here and he said, why art thou cast down, O my soul? Burnout usually doesn't happen just in a flash like that. It happens gradually, doesn't it? I, this happened a couple of times on my tractor recently. The tire had a slow leak in it and I didn't realize it. And I just go and get on it and glance at the tires, they looked okay, and get on it and start driving it and go a few feet and all of a sudden I look down, wow, the left front tire is all the way down and it's broken the bead loose from the rim and it's just flopping. Well, it didn't happen all at once. It happened because that air gradually seeped out. I went and had it fixed, took it back, and put it back on my tractor. And after a few days, I got on it thinking, man, I'm good for a long time now. And I got on it and went a few feet, and there it is, flopping and broke loose in the bead again. It doesn't happen suddenly. That air was leaking out gradually. And that's what happens to you. Burnout comes gradually. This was 100 years ago. I had a 59 Chevy. as a teenager, and I'm driving that 59 Chevy going up the road at highway speeds, driving fast. And I come back into town and pulled in an old parking lot, Dairy Queen. It was a little country parking lot and had big old tree roots growing out in the parking lot. I wasn't real big, but they're standing up maybe that high above the dirt that you had to park on. Nobody had paved parking lots back then much. And so I've been out there driving full speed and I come back in and as I'm creeping into that parking lot like three miles an hour, all of a sudden when the wheel goes up over that tree root and it comes down, bam, the whole front end dropped to the ground. I don't know. Is that A-frame? Is that what you call that thing? A-frame? The A-frame had been cracked and it was just at the breaking point. After having been driving at least 60 miles an hour, coming in that parking lot, the Lord had mercy on this poor old country boy because it hit and broke. What if that happened when I was going 60 miles an hour? But you know that thing didn't crack all at once. That crack gradually wore its way across that framing member of that car and I didn't discover it until it was too late. Had to have the thing towed away. Burnout doesn't happen in a crash something leading up to it. We're talking about recognizing burnout, recognizing it. What's some signs? Well, emotional and physical exhaustion. We've all been tired physically, right? Do you ever feel like your brain is tired? There have been times when I've been laboring, trying to take a passage of scripture and think, boy, I believe the Lord wants me to preach on that. And I'm trying to make a sermon outline out of it, trying to put it together in my own head. I don't want to preach it if I can't understand it myself. And so I'm working on it and working on it and working on it. And about 10 or 11 o'clock at night, my brain just feels sore. And I think, I'm in a deadlock. I can't go any further. I can keep sitting here running this thing through my mind over and over again, but if I'm not getting traction, maybe I better just call it quits, go get some sleep, let my noggin rest a little while, see if it comes into it later where I can understand it. After a night's sleep, rest, calm, relaxation, not feeling pressured and pushed. Somehow the Lord just flashes a light on, it comes on, I'm able to finish it. You get that way too. And whatever you're doing, whether it's dealing with your family, whether it's dealing with household chores, whether it's on the job where you work, you get brain tired as well as physical tired. and you wake up tired and you go to bed tired and you experience maybe frequent illnesses when you're talking about these signs of burnout and there's just a mental fog. Man, you just feel like, I'm just mentally numb. I can't think. This all happens. You just lose the passion you had for whatever you're supposed to be doing. Maybe it's your work. Maybe it's ministry, maybe it's family, but you've just got a mental fog and you can't see through it. What else happens as a sign of burnout? Cynicism, detachment. Cynicism when you just get critical of everything around you. You start pulling away from people and you're just tired of people, you just want to go hide out. You become critical. irritable and you just lose that zeal that you had before and you're just doing whatever you're doing through mechanics, just mechanical movement without engagement of the mind or the heart. What else? Spiritual numbness comes along. I mean, your Bible reading and your prayer just kind of dries up. I mean, you do it, but man, it's just like your mind is numb and none of this is helping. You're going through the motions because you know that's what Christians do. You read your Bible, but man, you get through with it and you don't know what you read and you don't know how it affected you. You don't know what to do with it. You don't know how to apply it. Your prayer life, you go through it and you're repeating words, but you feel like, boy, the heavens are made out of brass. I'm not getting anything up and nothing's coming down. The spirit that lives within you, that used to speak to you, his promptings now are very faint and that still small voice is just about gone. You go through your motions without heart or joy. You remember the story of Elijah. I think we wouldn't be complete on this subject without mentioning Elijah. I mean, the great man of God, the one who preached and brought fire down from heaven and licked up the sacrifice and proved to the prophets of Baal and the people of Israel that there is one God and it's not Baal, it's the real God. And man, he has a great victory on Mount Carmel that day. And then he hears the king's wife, Jezebel, That old made up toad frog, she's after Elijah. She said, I'll guarantee you one thing, Elijah's gonna be dead by sundown tomorrow. He's a goner. Elijah hears about it. And he's exhausted, man. He's been working and he's been praying. He's been doing all these things on Mount Carmel and having a great victory through God. But then when he hears about Jezebel, he takes off like a bullet, man. He's running from the north end of Israel all the way to the south end of Israel. He's running all the way. He's trying to escape Jezebel. And he comes down there to this cedar tree and he falls under the cedar tree and his low-hanging branches and hides out. And he's laying there and he says to the Lord, I've had enough, Lord. I'm probably the only one left in the whole land that cares anything about you. I'm the only one that's been preaching. I'm the only one that's faithful to you, and I'm quitting. I'm not going to keep going on without any help. God, just go ahead and kill me. He despaired of his life. God sent an angel. He said, calm down, big boy. You're not ready to die yet. If you're going to die, you just stayed up there and let Jezebel kill you. lay down and do the spiritual thing, take a nap. So he went to sleep. I mean, he's mentally and physically exhausted. If you run from the north of Israel to the south of Israel without stopping, you'd be tired too. And before we get too hard on him, I mean, Jezebel did have the power to have him executed without God's intervening hand. Now he began to kind of forget about God doing that And so he's laying there under that juniper bush and he's taking a good nap. When he wakes up and he's ready to get up and move a little bit, the angel said, no, lay back down. Well, let me feed you a little sandwich. We'll have a Chick-fil-A sandwich, no, a David's Burger, right? We'll have a David's Burger and eat you a few fries, those endless fries, eat you a good meal, and then you're going to lay down and take another nap. Drink a little water, take another nap, get your belly full. I get sleepy when my belly's full. And so he takes another nap. He wakes up again, the angel feeds him again and says, now you're ready. You've got your rest in, you've got your food, you've got your nourishment. You know, you do have to eat a little bit when we get older. Sometimes we don't eat as much as we used to. What's the drink that you drink, the nutritional drink? Ensure. Yeah, coffee. Coffee. No, coffee's what got me in this shape. And so you drink, yeah, coffee and then ensure. And then so you got to have a little food. You got to have some nutrition. You can't just keep going on. You got to have some fuel. Like a car's not going to run on fumes. You've got to have some energy. So Elijah gets his energy back and God said, now I'm going to use you. And God wasn't through with him yet. And God's not through with you. When you have a burnout, it's not the end of the world if you turn back to the Lord and let Him take over. He was exhausted, discouraged, and done. But that's what happens when we ignore the signs. That brings us to the second thing, understanding the dangers of burnout. Galatians 6, 9, watch this. Galatians 6, 9, you know the verse. And let us not be weary in well-doing, for in due season we shall reap if we faint not. Now notice he says a couple of things that's real important here that we need to grasp. Let us not be weary. He doesn't want, God doesn't want you worn out. God doesn't want you burned out. I know we're supposed to work from daylight till dark. I know we're supposed to put in 24 hours a day. We think when we're younger. But he says be not weary. God is concerned about you being weary. He doesn't want you to be burned out. And he says, he doesn't say stop well doing. He says he doesn't want you weary. in well-doing. God said, I want you doing well, I want you serving, I want you living for me, but I don't want you to be weary in it, and that's what we need to fix. Because he says, if we faint not, we'll reap. If we faint, let me ask you this, if we faint, we burn out, we just crash somewhere and don't carry on, are we accomplishing anything much then? So if we heed the warning signs, we can avoid this fainting where we're just like an old broken down car that's in the shop and just can't seem to get fixed. Becoming too weary to be effective is a danger. Did you hear that? Becoming too weary to be effective in well-doing. Pastors naturally concerned about people's work and worship and recreation. I think about people. I think about how your life is going. And sometimes I'm concerned. I mean, that's what a pastor does. He cares for the sheep. And one of the things I see some people They don't really need a sermon on burnout. What they need is a sermon on how to get busy doing something in the first place. Some people ain't nothing but stinking lazy and won't do anything. And they need to get their life focused on doing something. What they need is like the guy I saw in Walmart yesterday. I saw this probably 30-something year old guy prancing around in Walmart in his white pajamas with balloons all over it. He went there, you've seen him, haven't you, at Walmart. He's got this funny haircut and he's with an older woman, probably his mother it looks like, probably still living in her basement or he's living upstairs and he put her in the basement. And he's prancing along like a pixie. And I'm thinking, what he needs to do probably is get a job and buy himself some clothes worth wearing out in public. And guys like that, they just need to do something. And so, I always, when I preach on something like burnout, I'm thinking, but what about those lazy people that just need a swift kick in the rear end? Well, this sermon's not for them. We'll get them next time. I'm talking about today, the people who are Just working the fingers to the bone, so to speak, in whatever you're doing, stretching yourself thin. Some people are just going too hard. Instead of needing to kick in the seat of the pants to do something, some people need to be taken by the arm and say, hey, come over here. Come over here, brother, and sit in this lawn chair under the shade tree. Let me get you a glass of iced tea. And then let's fire up your smoker and smoke some barbecue and just sit here and watch the smoke come up for the rest of the day. Let's rest. Some people just need to rest. If you get too busy, If you get too busy to sit in a lawn chair sometime, you're too busy. And I think sometimes we've been, we've had it beat into us a lot of times, especially those of us who have been in an independent, fundamental, Bible-believing church. We just think you're supposed to work as hard as you can to start bleeding, you know, and then keep on working. So we got it drilled into us, that's the way we're supposed to go. But friend, just like the guy who's too lazy to do anything, that's one extreme. But the guy who never finds time to rest is the one who's in danger of burnout and that's the other extreme. Somewhere, as usual, the truth is in between. We go to seed one way or the other. Yes, we need to take time. We need to take not to play like the guy who won't work, but the guy who's working all the time, the lady who's always doing something and can't ever seem to rest, need to find time to just sit down and relax a little bit, let your thoughts get together and give your carcass a little time to recover. Now, once you do that, I'm not saying turn into that guy over there that's too lazy. I'm saying sit down and rest, have regular times of rest. and then get up and begin to do some adulting again. Play with the kids but then get up and get back to work. Don't leave the rest out. I'm just speaking to those today who don't know how to relax the mind and the body. So have you ever done anything like that preacher? Unfortunately I have. I've learned a lot of this the hard way and some of you may have too. If you're too tired to think clearly, you're not helping anybody. Back in the, I guess this was in the early 60s, we had a little country store. That was the center of our community. The church and little country store, that was about the only thing in our community that there was for recreation. You either went to church or went to the store. I went to the store with Dad one day. I don't know, I was probably eight or ten years old. a 61 Ford pickup and it was green and white. And he had parked in front of the gas pumps and he filled up his tank with gas and we went in and we were in there just talking and visiting, you know, that's where everybody gathered and so we're talking and everything. Well, Ivy Love was in there, he was another man in the community, he was older than Dad, He was probably at the time in his 60s and he's still logging. He was a logger. He worked in the woods, man, all day long. I'm talking about hard work. Have you ever watched anybody cut down trees and drag them and load them on trucks and haul them to sawmill and come back and do the same thing over and over again all day long? Man, that's hard work. Ivy Love had been working He told guys in the store, he said, man, it's been a rough day. It was hot summertime. He said, man, we've been working since daylight this morning and still got another load of logs to get out of the woods yet this evening. He was tuckered out, but he stopped by the store to get him some gas too. Well, Ivy had, I guess his was a 61 or 62 Ford pickup, same color as dad's. And so we're in there talking and and we're getting ready to leave, and I'm following Dad out of the store, and Ivy loves walking out of the store at the same time. And Ivy walked over and started getting in Dad's truck on the driver's side, got in the steering wheel. And Dad walked around to the other side, my passenger's side, and got me and said, get in, Rick. We're getting in over here. And so we started climbing in the truck. Ivy said, well, bud, are you going home with me? He said, if you're going to take my truck home, I am. Ivy looked around and said, Well, I'll be. That's not my truck. Well, his was kind of similar, but there was quite a bit of difference too. He should have known. He had just worked and was tired and physically tired, emotionally tired, and we make mistakes. We make mistakes. And that's why we have to learn not to push ourselves past that point when we don't have to. What happens? Well, what's another danger? Spiritual drift. You see, when you get weary, you're vulnerable to doubt and temptation. And your priorities shift from the spiritual over to survival mode. You just want to make it through the day. You don't care about tomorrow, I just got to make it through the day. You're not thinking about the Lord. You're not thinking about who you might win to Christ. You're not thinking about the next passage you're going to read in the Bible. You're not thinking about maybe having a time of meditation or prayer. Listen, if you give job and money top priority in your life to the exclusion of spiritual things, job and money to the exclusion of spiritual things, you stretch yourself that thin, you'll drift. I bought an old boat and motor a number of years ago, probably 20 years ago I guess, and I was trading stuff. I've always loved to buy and sell and trade stuff and I bought this old boat and motor and the boat had a little leak in it and the old motor you could wear yourself out pulling that rope and trying to get it to start. And so I took it over here to Little Red and put it in the water up above where the bypass is now, well before you go down to Riverside Park. And I put the boat in at Riverside Park and got out there and trying to get that thing to run. A lip died out in the middle of the river. And so I'm pulling on that rope, trying to get it started again, choking it and checking this, checking that, taking the hood off, putting it back on, working on that old motor, trying to get the thing to run. And next thing I know, I looked up and there's that little rock dam, you know, you can see from the bypass when you look up the river, there's that rock dam and I'm headed straight for it. I think, oh goodness, I've got to do something fast and this motor's not going to run. Well, I had a paddle. And there's a creek that comes in right across from Riverside Park down towards the dam. And I thought my only chance is if I can paddle fast enough to hit that little creek, the mouth of that creek and get up in there, maybe I can keep from going over the dam. And so I'm paddling like crazy. I'm going across the river. It was probably faster than that motor would have run. And I did. I pulled in. Just before I got past it, I was able to pull into that little mouth of the creek and get anchored. We do the same thing spiritually. When we get our eyes off the Lord, turn your eyes upon Jesus, remember we sung about that a little while ago, Erica did. We get our eyes off the Lord and we get distracted by other things, secular things, worldly things, entertainment. We get distracted, we get busy. Some things may not be wrong, but they're just distractions. Did you hear that? Some things are not wrong, But when we do too many of them, they all together become a bundle that distracts us from the Lord. And you're just as much danger going over that dam of burnout that I was in that boat. Spiritual drift, what else can happen because of burnout? Physical and mental breakdown. Chronic stress weakens the body and fogs the mind. Burnout leads to more mistakes and more regrets. In Bible college, I hadn't told this story in a long time, but I'm looking for sympathy, so this happened like 40 years ago, but you can feel sorry for me in a little bit. In Bible college, I went there because I was excited, I was getting ready to serve God, getting ready to become a preacher, and so I'm there, and it's Bible college, and I went there because another preacher told me, go to Oklahoma Baptist College, that's where Jim Vineyard is, and he's an old ex-Green Beret, and man, he'll toughen you up, and that's what you need. So I went to Bible college there. And here, my schedule was exciting, but here's kind of the way it went. I'd head for school and drop the kids off at the Christian school at 7.30 that morning, every morning, five days a week. And then the college was right there beside the Christian school, so I'd drive over to the college. and go in and my first class started at 8 o'clock in the morning and I have another one an hour later and another one an hour later, taking a full load of 16 hours, 16 or 17. And so I'd go to classes until about 2 o'clock in the afternoon and then when class was over I'd rush home and grab a bite to eat and then load up my tools and get in my truck and drive to the housing addition where I was trimming out houses and building cabinets and stuff and we'd work till about midnight. That's when normal people would have been in bed, maybe before that a little ways. Well, then work till midnight and then go home and then put all the truck back to sleep and park it where somebody wouldn't steal my tools and go back in the house. Now, I hadn't had time to do any study for my college work. I hadn't had any time to do those reading assignments. Every class thought they had to give you 900 pages a night to read. And so I get home at midnight, grab another little bite to eat and then sit there and try to read and keep from dozing off. Try to study for a test and try to stay awake. Get up and walk and read to kind of keep the body working enough that it wouldn't just go numb and go to sleep. And then wake up the next morning and try to have some devotion time and then try to get the kids to school at 7.30 again and go to classes and do it all over again the next day. And then that was just the weekdays. Then on Saturday, preachers, because the old Green Beret was a tough preacher and wanted us to be tough like him, he wanted all the preachers, trained to be preachers, you didn't just go out and visit a little while on Saturday. You had to stay out at least five hours making visits and soul winning and gathering up bus kids. So five hours on Saturday and then We'd get home maybe around three o'clock in the afternoon and do some more Bible study and college study and then on Sunday we'd get up and have to be at the bus stop. Everybody was required to go in the bus ministry. Everybody had to have at least one semester. or two semesters of bus ministry. And so then on Sunday morning we were at the bus lot across town at the bus lot at 7.30, 6.30 to 7.30 in the morning. In the wintertime we had to get there really early to warm those old clunky buses up. And then we'd go out and gather up kids for three or four hours and get them back in at 10 o'clock to church in time for Sunday school. We'd walk all them little rascals to their classroom and then I'd go and teach my Sunday school class of fifth graders that were raised somewhere in the jungle. And so I'd teach my class, be through with that by 11, then I had to get back over and be in the preaching service where I sat and get preached out there. And then when preaching is over, Brother Vineyard usually preached about 12, 13 in the afternoon, he was merciless. And then we got through with that, There was no going home, taking a nap. Back on the bus, take all those little rascals back to the neighborhoods in downtown Oklahoma City, get them all dispersed back in their homes. If somebody, the parents wasn't home, we had to sit there and wait sometimes, make sure the kids get in the door. They might have gotten locked. Then, then we'd be home by around 3, 4 in the afternoon, on Sunday afternoon. No nap, time to do a little more college study and a little more reading assignments. I had that relaxation time of reading from 3 to 5. Had to be back at church at 5 o'clock because we were required to sit in on training union. Anybody remember training union? Training union was like another church service before the main service. And so I had to be there at 5 o'clock and sit through another preaching service and then by 6.30, 6 or 6.30, somewhere in there, then the main preaching service. I remember sitting in those pews after going through that whole day. So tired. And if you went to sleep when Brother Vineyard was preaching, he'd assassinate you. And so when he was preaching, boy, about halfway through it, trying to be as spiritual as I knew how, I'd left my feet up off the floor and I'd wiggle my shoulders and I'd do everything under the sun to stay awake because I didn't want to get shot. And finally, the preaching service would end around 830 on Sunday night. but no going home to bed at that time. Then we had to go out to the street corner and preach three times on the street corner before we went back home. Well this puts us up to about 10 o'clock on Sunday night. Then we get to go home and read and study for college class again. Finally we go to bed sometime after midnight on Sunday night and then we get up six or so the next morning and go through this whole week again. And that was every day of every week of every month forever while you're in Bible college. I don't know if it toughened me up any or not, but I was on the verge of burnout. I got so tired. Boy, I was, I was just tired. And can I tell you, I don't know if I've ever been very spiritual or not, but I can tell you that was the low point of my life. Surrounded by preachers, surrounded by preaching, surrounded by Bible classes, and surrounded by visitation and soul winning, surrounded by everything spiritual, was when I was the least spiritual in my whole life. And you can go to church and not be spiritual. I was tired. I let Brother Sneedern know. He was my home preacher here in Arkansas. I let him know, man, I'm tired. I don't know what to do. I don't think I can go on much longer. I don't know if I can take another year of this or not. There was no rest in sight. And he offered me the opportunity to come back and be his associate pastor and be principal at a Christian school. And I took it. I thought, boy, it lasts some rest. So I got home and worked for Brother Sneather The little church didn't have enough to pay me very much. And so I had to work a bread route on two days a week. It was my off time. The other time I was preaching and teaching in the school. And I thought, man, I ought to get some rest now. But no, that bread route, you had to get up at 2 o'clock in the morning, drive halfway across the state to start the bread route, and I'd get back in about 10 o'clock at night. Well, I went with spirituality again. You know what? Burnout can sneak up on you or it can come up on you like a grizzly bear and it can get the best of you. If you think that schedule was busy, here's what they told us in Bible college. Some of the guys would stand up in class and stand up and lean against the back wall to keep them going to sleep. They're leaning up against the wall This actually happened. Some of those guys go to sleep and fall over on the floor standing up. You know what they told us? The instructors had this famous saying, you can rest when you get to heaven. Or number two, they would say, if you think it's hard in here, wait till you get out. Well, I don't think it's ever been that hard. in recent years anyway in the ministry because I made up my mind I'm not going to treat anybody else like that because I'm still tired from 40 years ago. Reggie Lewis was the esteemed captain of the Boston Celtics renowned for his dedication and resilience on the basketball court. However his unwavering commitment led him to overlook some critical health warnings. In 1993, I believe it was in April, during a playoff game against the Charlotte Hornets, Lewis collapsed on the court. He tried to go back in, but he kept being so dizzy he just couldn't make it, so finally he had to come off the court and stay off the court. went to see doctors, and a whole host of doctors together determined, he was so committed to the game, he didn't want to quit. And so the host of doctors, after conferring together, they said, well, we believe it's this condition, a name about that long, and we don't believe it's life-threatening, you'll be able to go back to the court. The first doctor told him it was a heart problem that would kill him if he went back on the court. But he shopped around and found some other doctors that told him that he won't die, you'll be fine. And so he went back on the court because he loved what he was doing, didn't want to retire from the pros. And so I think it was in August maybe, later that summer, 1993, He went back to the court. He worked out and prepared and got ready to go back on the court. Got on the court and fell dead right on the basketball court. I'm saying burnout can be a lot worse than you think. I mean, you're looking at a specimen of a magnificent body right here, but there are limits, right? And you may think your body is a specimen that's magnificent as well, but it has limits of how far it can go, and you have to be able to see the warning signs. Spiritual drift, broken health, or a broken mind. If you're dead, you can't do much here on earth for the Lord. Or if you're laid up, paralyzed or on life support machines, you might not be able to accomplish a lot for the Lord. Howard Hughes, I'm talking about right now strained relationships. Not only your physical health and your mental health, but burnout can cause strained relationships for your friends and families around you. It's not just all about you. Are you listening? It's not just all about you. If you come close to being burned out, you can affect everybody around you. You can make life tough on them as well. And strained relationships often stem from this. Howard Hughes, he always had money and influence, more than most people could even imagine. And yet his relentless pace drove him to not only having mental problems and paranoia, he became very ill physically and wealth and stamina in his earlier years couldn't save him from the destruction that lies ahead. He died. You may not have millions like Hughes but you have a calling for the Lord and If the enemy can't ruin you with sin, he'll try that. The devil will try to ruin you with sin, but if he can't do that, he'll try to burn you out so you don't want to do anything. He doesn't just want to stop your work, he wants to stop your worship. So how do we stop burnout before it starts? Let's get to the bottom line. Number three, applying biblical principles to prevent burnout. Applying biblical principles. Matthew 11, 28, our text says, Jesus said, come unto me, all you that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Turn your eyes upon Jesus. What do we do? Well, first of all, prioritize rest and renewal. I mean, your body can just go so far. You might have to rest. You might have to rest and get renewed, get your batteries recharged. Even Jesus withdrew to pray and to rest in Mark 6, 31. Jesus had to come apart for a while and rest. He was in a human body. Yes, he was God, but he was housed in a human body and he had to rest sometimes. He had to get away from the crowds and rest and pray and get along with the Father. If he did that, don't you think maybe you and I probably need to at times? His flesh got weary. According to a Greek legend, the great storyteller Aesop was seen playing childish games with a bunch of little boys. Here's the great philosopher and storyteller. He's playing games out there with some little boys and one of his critics comes along and sees him playing. and was rebuking him. The great Aesop, playing like a little kid, you ought to be ashamed of yourself. Why would you do such a thing as this? Aesop responded by taking a bow, you know, like a bow and arrow. He took the bow, pulled the string loose and relaxed it and laid the bow down and he didn't say anything except this. He said to his critic, What lesson do you learn from the bow? And he didn't say anything else. And the guy finally said, I don't have a clue what you're talking about. I don't know what's going on, what you're trying to teach. Aesop said, well, it's this simple. If a bow is left strung all the time, it weakens the bow and it may even break. Take the string loose when it's not in use. Let the bow relax and rest when it's not strung up to be used. And then when you do string it, that thing will be tight and strong and it'll complete the job that it's meant to complete and do. And the same thing is true in your life and mine. Well, what else do we do? Rely on God's strength and not your own. Oh no, has it come to that? I'm a self-made man, I should be able to do it all myself. No, that's where Elijah made his mistake. You can't do it all yourself. The Bible says in 1 Peter 5, 7, God gives grace to the humble who acknowledge Him in their life for their strength. I can do all things through God, Christ, the Holy Spirit. It strengthens me. I can't do it in the flesh. Imagine a wick. Now, a newer generation probably don't know as much about wicks. We had kerosene lantern and kerosene lamps. I mean, we had electricity when I was a boy, but if we were in a place like in a cellar or in an old shop at nighttime, we had to have a kerosene lantern or a kerosene lamp or a candle. to be able to see and so imagine a wick. A wick is surrounded by the wax and you burn it and that wick doesn't really burn up as long as there's wax around it. The wick doesn't burn, the wax does, it's the fuel. Imagine when the wax burns up, what happens to the wick? When there's no wax, the wick burns. It would happen if you let your old kerosene lantern run out of oil. The wick would start burning itself and it wouldn't work. One of those can burn. Either the fuel can burn or the wick burns. The Holy Spirit is often in the Bible symbolized by oil. The Holy Spirit is your power. You're the wick. And if you run out of Holy Spirit power and involvement and strengthening. What's burning then if you run out? Your wick is burning. Somebody said about people that try to burn the candle at both ends, if you're burning the candle at both ends you may not be as bright as you think you are. So how do we fix this problem before it happens? Live with eternal perspective. This life is not all there is. There is eternal perspective. Hudson Taylor, the great missionary, he came to the place in his life where he was inundated by problems and demands from the ministry as a missionary. I mean, it was never ending. And he come to the point where he contacted another missionary friend And he asked, what do you think I can do? Here's the problem I'm facing. And he gave him some advice about relying on God instead of the flesh. And Hudson Taylor took that little phrase and made a new one out of it, the exchange life. I need to exchange my life for his life. I need to live with eternal perspective. I need to use him for my source of strength and not my flesh. I'll end with this story and then we'll be through. Two lumberjacks entered the contest. One was an old man named Jacob. The other lumberjack, this was back in the old days when they chopped down trees with an axe. You remember that, right, teenagers? And so these two lumberjacks, they're in a contest to see who can chop down the most trees. The young man, he's energetic, he's strong, but he's saying to himself, old Jacob's old, Eli's going to win because I've got the strength and the youth to do it. So they go all day long chopping down trees. Man, they're laying those trees down right and left. But every hour, Jacob would sit down. The old man would sit down. He'd sit down on a log. He'd take a file out of his pocket and he'd sharpen the axe a little bit and he'd sit there for a good while and then he'd get up and start chopping trees again. Eli would look over at Jacob and he'd say, that old man's had it, man. He can't go on much longer. That old fella's had it, man. He's sitting there fiddling with his axe when he ought to be chopping down trees. I'm going to beat the socks off of him. And so at the end of the day, they counted trees. Old man Jacob beat him by several trees. Young Eli was shocked. He went over and said, Jacob, I don't understand it. I was chopping down trees when you were sitting there fooling around with your axe. How? How did you beat me? I was busy the whole time. Jacob said, well, son, I found out if I take time to rest a few minutes and sharpen that axe, not only do I get a rest, the axe is sharper, and I was able to be more efficient in cutting down the trees. And the same thing happens to people. Take time to rest. Take time to get alone with the Lord. Take time to sharpen your axe. If the iron be blunt, you have to put forth more strength. That's what the scriptures say. Let's pray together. Father, I pray that you'd bless us in a wonderful way. Help us, Lord, not to fall victim to burnout, Lord, I pray that you'd remind us of the verse in Isaiah. It says, but they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength, and they shall mount up with wings as eagles, and they shall run and not be weary, and they shall walk and not faint. Lord, we're grateful that you offer us more than just strength. You offer us renewed strength. I pray that our people and this preacher would lay down the yoke of burnout and take up the yoke of Christ. Let him sharpen our soul and restore and renew our hearts. In Jesus' name we pray. Our heads are bowed and eyes are closed. As the piano plays, you can stand if you'd like. Rest your legs a little. You've been sitting for a while. If you need to come to the altar and pray, you're certainly welcome to do that. Now some people Some people, and there might be some in the room or watching on the internet that's never took the yoke of Christ upon them at all, never been saved, never been born again. And you need to start there. There's only one way to heaven, and it's through the shed blood of Jesus Christ. His death and resurrection is the gospel, and that's the only method whereby you can be saved. is by believing that Jesus died for you. And if you'll put your trust in Him, this very day, you can be born again, you can be saved, you can have eternal life. Would you do it? Do it now. Christian, sometimes you're just kind of spitting against the wind when you think you're gonna burn the candle at both ends. I'm not suggesting we ought to be lazy. I'm not suggesting we ought to shirk responsibility. That needs to be done. We have duties. We ought to serve God. But we need to rest and be renewed on a regular basis.