Spiritual Burnout: Finding Balance in Your Relationship with God

Spiritual burnout is real, and it can happen when we approach our relationship with God from a place of desperation rather than balance.

• Overdoing spiritual practices can lead to exhaustion and confusion
• Binge-listening to sermons and excessive Bible reading can create its own anxiety
• The Word is designed to speak to us throughout our entire lifetime, not as a crash course
• God doesn't operate on our timeline or respond to spiritual performance metrics
• We can't force God's hand through busyness or spiritual cramming
• The Holy Spirit prays on our behalf when we don't know what to pray
• Rest and balance are essential parts of a healthy spiritual life

Affirmation: God doesn't need me exhausted to fulfill His purpose.

Transcript

Can You Overdo Spiritual Practices?

Speaker 1 0:00

Can you read the Bible too much? Can you pray too much? Can you go to church too much? Jimmy James Johnson, guilt-free thing. If you're looking for guilt, you're in the wrong place, because we all get down like that. Here we're going to get you walking in victory today.

Speaker 1 0:18

Let's get into it. There's an underlying assumption that we're all so behind in seeking out the Lord, we're already so stingy in the time that we give to the Lord that of course we're not overdoing it. We're underdoing it. But let me just say to you you can in fact overdo it.

Speaker 1 0:38

When I was in grad school, even people who didn't have anxiety or depression suffered under that intense workload. Because I actually had those problems, I was even more desperate for relief. So I really ramped up my pursuit of God and his peace, deliverance and healing power. You couldn't find me without headphones on binge listening to someone's sermons. My mentor warned me about overdoing it. He told me hey, man, god designed us for balance and even taking in too much of the word can confuse and exhaust us. We all know you can have too much of a good thing. It's great to have a tasty dessert after a great meal, but overdo it. You may have indigestion. If you start eating big desserts after every meal, you start to put on some weight. Do that year after year and you may be heading for diabetes. So we see this principle in practice, but we often don't associate it with our spiritual life.

Speaker 1 1:42

No one poses this question. Do I mean that there are days you shouldn't seek out Jesus? No, does that mean there's days you shouldn't read the Bible? No. Should you swear off church for a few months? No, not necessarily.

Exhaustion From Spiritual Marathon

Speaker 1 1:58

But I can tell you this I was listening to sermons day and night, literally hours a day, going on walks, playing them while I'm studying, so desperate for that hope, for that healing power of the Word. And it can be very soothing Sometimes. If you're really in a panic or you're overwhelmed, you need a lot of the Word to come to your aid, to be in your corner. So there is a time and a place for that. But let's speak about the other side that people don't bring up. If you start listening to all kinds of sermons day in, day out and you're just constantly on your knees praying and all of that, you can actually get to a point of saturation where you're just confused. I mean, you're just exhausted, you're overwhelmed, Like you've heard all these messages, and even if they're from people that you respect and believe to be teaching the truth. There's so much nuance in the Bible, there's so many layers, there's so many things that the Holy Spirit has to reveal to you in God's time, and that's not something that you can force.

Speaker 1 3:03

I was feeling very sick, very ill, very troubled, very down, sad, anxious, and here I'm thinking like I'm going to apply the balm of the Holy Spirit to this whole situation. Right, and there is something to that. But I think the way I was going about it demonstrated to me that you can overdo it. The idea that you're just going to overwhelm your faculties with prayer after prayer, page after page, chapter after chapter, and you're going to continue with this like a marathon. That created its own type of anxiety. It was his own type of mania, and that desperation had me devouring all these sermons at such a feverish pace. I didn't really know what I was doing. I was kind of in a haze.

Speaker 1 3:52

People say, hey, the Bible has a lot of contradictions. Well, on the surface I can't really argue with that. I can certainly point out things that seem like contradictions, and if you're looking to me to clarify and argue away all of those or something. You might as well switch channels, because I don't have all those answers. I mean, one answer is the Spirit speaks to you and interprets things for you as you need them. There's a time and a place and a season for everything, and what I've found over the years of being in the Word is my perception of what it's speaking to will change over time. Now I don't look at that as a failure of the Word or, oh, the Bible told me one thing and now it's telling me another thing, like when you're trying to walk in the Spirit and you're asking the Lord to speak to you through the Word.

Speaker 1 4:44

Sure, there can be confusion. You may not get a revelation on something immediately. There may be things you don't get a revelation on while you're still on this earth. I can't speak for God or why all the reasons that happens, but I can say for certain that you will get different things from the Word at different times. And what that means is if you try a speed course, you know how people do programming bootcamp In eight weeks you learn 10 years of programming in Python or C. Or here's a six-hour bootcamp on how to be a bartender. We like the shortcut, right. We want the condensed little package. You know, rarely when we want to do something do we want somebody to say, hey, oh yeah, this is a 20-year path. Like, how does that sound? Hey, do you want to go to school for 20 extra years to do this? That's not generally what people want to sign up for, right? That's why you get the real estate crash course weekend, bootcamp challenge, right. Or you'll see things on YouTube. Let's do the three-day challenge, the 30-day challenge and those have their place.

God's Timing vs Our Timelines

Speaker 1 5:53

But I would submit to you that the word isn't like that. The word is alive with the spirit and it's designed to speak to you as needed, over the course of your entire life. See, the Lord lives outside of time. The Lord isn't in a hurry. Time isn't the issue for God. God has his own time, he has his own seasons. His knowledge is above ours. He can see the lay of the land, he can see the 10,000-foot view of where you are in your life and where he's trying to take you and riding with God. Man, that ain't no.

Speaker 1 6:29

It's not a crash course, it's not a boot camp weekend. It's not a speed reading course. You can speed read through the Bible, but that's not where the power is. The Lord is going to reveal to you over time and hopefully, if you're staying in the Word, you know throughout your lifetime you'll go through the Bible numerous times. Maybe sometimes you read it straight through. Maybe sometimes you're staying in the Word. You know throughout your lifetime you'll go through the Bible numerous times. Maybe sometimes you read it straight through. Maybe sometimes you're studying a particular passage or you're like in a Bible study or something. All of that's valid, but the goal of the Word is not to compact God's power and truth and knowledge into a weekend.

Speaker 1 7:13

That's what I was doing as I was flailing my arms for help, as I was overwhelmed by my studies and the pressure I was under, I kept throwing out a lifeline. Let me listen to another hour of this. Let me listen to another hour of this, let me listen to another hour of this person, and I realize now what my mentor was saying was man, you got to let the Spirit germinate and develop and water those seeds. God doesn't need you to listen to 10 hours of sermons today to heal you. He doesn't need you to listen to 10 sermons today to know that he has a plan for you. You to listen to 10 sermons today, to know that he has a plan for you, a plan to bless you and to look after you, and nor is he promising to heal you. So that's another way people get stuck. They say, hey well, I'm listening to a lot of sermons, a lot of truth on healing, I'm fitting to get healed. Okay, well, guess what? It doesn't take much looking around to see that at least in this life, you don't always get healed.

Speaker 1 8:11

That's one of the most difficult truths that we have to face and indeed one of the most difficult conflicts of being a Christian. Why does God allow these things to happen to good people? Why doesn't God answer prayers? Why doesn't God heal this? Why doesn't God take this from me? Why doesn't God help me get up from behind on my bills? Why is't God take this from me? Why doesn't God help me get up from behind on my bills? Why is God letting my relationship fall apart?

When Prayer Becomes Performance

Speaker 1 8:35

And sometimes we're thinking, hey, let me just dig real deep into a whole bunch of word, a whole bunch of truth, a whole bunch of cassette tapes, videos and CDs. And I'm telling you, man, this is what I did. You think I've exaggerated? I'm not exaggerating, I was listening to this and taking this to heart and begging on this and praying on this and pleading on this day in and day out. And what happened? Well, it added to my exhaustion because obviously there was a lot of time. I actually needed rest. I needed to just be resting. I needed to take my mind off my troubles. I needed to cast my cares upon the Lord. I thought I was doing that by going on these eight-hour marathons of the sermons, but that's not what I was doing. I was taking it upon myself to actualize that deliverance and that healing. I was say no, god, like not in your time. This is how I'm going to force this issue. This is my timeline. So if I got to just keep listening to this or keep saying these words over and over, but God showed me like I could tell you right now, in retrospect, that didn't save me. In fact, I got much more sick, much more seriously ill shortly thereafter.

Speaker 1 9:50

So you know that's not the magic key, that's not a shortcut. You don't need to cram for your relationship with Jesus. You don't need to cram to get your deliverance, to get that helping hand. You don't have to cram to get God to hear your pleas, your cries out for help. No, you don't need to. That's not, thank God. You do not need that type of effort in the flesh to reach God. God doesn't need all that. He can hear you, he can see you, he can speak to you. You won't have to sleep with the headphones on tonight, going to sleep to sermons. I mean, I'm not saying you never do that, but I'm just saying like I'm weighing in just on the opposite side of the scale.

Speaker 1 10:36

Some people will say you can't get too much of a good thing when it comes to whatever the word Christianity, god, something in this spiritual category. And I'm here to tell you there are facets of that you can get too much of, because we're not talking about taking a break from being a Christian or from being a believer, or talking about renouncing your salvation for the weekend. That's not what we're talking about. We're just talking about God doesn't need to have your nose buried in the books 24 hours a day to handle your circumstance, 24 hours a day to handle your circumstance. And you'll find that when you overdo it, you will stop getting the rest from it, it will stop putting you to peace and it will start to irritate you. It will start to grind on you. And how does this happen?

Speaker 1 11:23

One way to grind on you is, eventually you're going to be like, well, god, like I've been praying and listening and speaking, and where's my miracle? So here you are, like you're putting in all this work so naturally, like in the flesh, like you're expecting a payoff. Right, god? You see, I'm doing this, I'm doing that, I'm saying the word, I'm memorizing the word, I'm praying the word, I'm doing all the things you told me to do. Where's my?

Speaker 1 11:47

And that disappointment really builds up. See, when you're doing that and you're out of balance, when that deliverance doesn't come the way you want or quickly enough, what a letdown that is, what a bitter disappointment that is. And then that creates a friction in your relationship with God, because now you're not getting what you want. And you were already kind of frayed and agitated and down and at the end of your rope, and now it's like God, I'm putting in overtime. Can't you see me on my knees? Can't you see me crying? Yeah, yeah, he sees all that man. He sees and he cares, and, for whatever reason, sometimes we may come to find out, sometimes we don't.

Speaker 1 12:31

But we can't force God's hand by overdoing it. You're going to have to ask the Spirit what overdoing it means for you, depending on the season you're in. But I just want to plant the seed in your mind that there is such a thing as that. The relationship that we have with God through Jesus is one that is supposed to bring strength and refreshment. It renews our mind, it renews our spirit, it gives us hope and power and the ultimate victory. But sometimes we can get in our flesh too much. We can start trying to work God like the way we work on earth. If I just work harder and faster and take these shortcuts, then that's how I'm going to get my money up. That's how I'm going to lose this weight by starving myself. There's so many circumstances in which we have these very earthly ways of thinking that we're going to really slug it out, and sometimes that's appropriate, sometimes it's not.

Rest in Christ's Finished Work

Speaker 1 13:29

But you can't force God's hand through your busyness, through no matter how many prayers you say or how many books of the Bible you read. Today. God doesn't operate like that and we should be thankful that he doesn't. That's more of the guilt-free faith. Put the performance on Jesus. It's Jesus's performance, it's Jesus's righteousness that deliverance flows through. It's not because of something you did or are doing. No, it's because of the finished work of Christ.

Speaker 1 14:03

And now the Holy Spirit is praying on your behalf, you see. So notice the rest that's in that. Oh, wait a minute. Yeah, jesus is the one that walked out this tough path for me. I mean, he's the one that made me righteous in the eyes of God. So when God looks at me, he doesn't look at my sinful nature, he looks at Jesus in perfection and in love and in kindness and generosity and patience. The Holy Spirit that lives inside me is praying on my behalf. This is all biblical.

Speaker 1 14:36

How often has somebody told you or referred you to that verse about how the Holy Spirit is praying on your behalf? If somebody had come to tell you that today and said hey, jimmy, man, you look real uptight. Man, the Holy Spirit's on your side here, right, he's praying for you. Ultimately, you're going to cast your cares on him. Oh, man, yeah, I almost forgot man, right, it isn't on me to do this.

Speaker 1 15:01

It isn't on me to carry the burden of making these grand things happen on the spiritual plane. Who am I to do that? I can't do that. I mean, I could call upon the powers that the Lord outlines for me in the Word. But you know, even those powers like I, just I'm only inheriting them through the conduit of the Holy Spirit, because Christ died for me and left the Spirit for you, me and everyone who calls upon his name for salvation. So let me leave you with this affirmation, because we have to be reminded of this a lot more often than we are. This is an affirmation that you can rest in. God doesn't need me exhausted to fulfill his purpose. God doesn't need me exhausted to fulfill his purpose.