Honoring My Temple

The Most Spiritual Thing You Can Do When You're Burned Out

• Kelly Wenner • Season 1 • Episode 16

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0:00 | 19:58

How is your spiritual life really going?

Most of us answer that question by looking at our devotional checklist — did I pray today, did I read my Bible, did I make it to church. But what if that's not the best way to measure it? What if your spiritual life isn't about what you do — but about who you're becoming?

In this episode, we look at a better way to gauge the health of your soul: the growth of the fruit of the Spirit in every area of your life — your relationships, your work, your mind, and yes, your body and your health.

But here's the honest part. Sometimes, when we ask ourselves how we're really doing, the answer is not great. Sometimes we're discouraged. Worn down. Irritable. Ready to give up.

If that's where you are, this episode is for you. We'll look at a moment in Scripture where one of God's faithful servants hit complete burnout — and the surprising, deeply practical way God met him there. It's not what you might expect. And it just might change the way you think about caring for yourself, body and soul.

Because sometimes the most spiritual thing you can do is also the most practical one.

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SPEAKER_00

Welcome to the Honoring My Temple podcast. If you're looking to put God at the center of your life and live that out practically through your health, habits, and everyday choices, this podcast is for you. I'm Kelly Wenner, founder of Soul Strength Fit and author of Honoring My Temple. Here we explore biblical wisdom and how to apply it to real life, your mindset, food, exercise, and the habits that shape who you're becoming. Let's get started. Let me ask you a question, and I want you to answer it honestly. How's your spiritual life going? Most of us, if we're being honest, answer that question by looking at our devotional activities. Did I pray today? Did I read my Bible? Did I go to church this week? And if the answer is yes, we feel like we're doing well spiritually. If the answer is no, we feel like we're falling behind. But what if that's not actually the best way to measure it? What if your spiritual life isn't measured by what you do, but by who you are becoming? You are God's handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works. Only God knows your full potential. Only God can see the best version of you. And he is even more concerned with you reaching it than you are. He's guiding you toward that version of yourself all the time, in countless ways, through countless small moments. And he's never in a hurry. He doesn't get discouraged with how long it takes. He delights every time you grow. Here's something important to understand. Your spiritual life, your spiritual growth is not limited to certain devotional activities. It's not a checklist of things you do. It's receiving power from the Spirit of God to become the person he created you to be, to become his handiwork, the person he had in mind when he made you. When we live in the flow of the spirit, we're growing into the people God designed us to be. God's plan isn't just for us to be saved by grace, it's for us to live by grace. And when we're living by grace, when we're experiencing gratitude, satisfaction, and peace, there's a good chance the spirit is flowing there. When we live in the flow of the spirit, we become increasingly full of the fruit of the Spirit. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. The best indicator of whether we are living in the flow of the spirit is the growth of the fruit. And that's what God wants for us to experience true, pure satisfaction and peace in every area of our lives as we grow and flourish in the fruit of the Spirit. That was always the plan. It's still his heart for you, for me. Now, we live in a fallen world. None of us are going to experience that fullness perfectly this side of heaven. There will be hard seasons, there will be disappointments, there will be places that don't look the way that we hoped. But God's desire for you hasn't changed. The Spirit is still moving, still working, still inviting you in to walk in step with the Spirit, to experience the flow of the Spirit working in you and through you, changing you, guiding you, growing you in every part of your life. Imagine what that looks like. Imagine what that looks like in your marriage. The Spirit growing your patience, softening your responses, in love that serves and doesn't keep score. In your family time, leading with gentleness instead of frustration, modeling faith instead of stress, in your community, relating to others with grace, free from comparison, free from the need to perform or look a certain way. In your work, pursuing excellence, not for praise, but as worship, doing your work with integrity even when no one's watching, in your mental and emotional well-being, peace rooted in something deeper than circumstance, joy that isn't dependent on everything going right, and in your health, caring for your body with wisdom, eating with intention, exercising with discipline, honoring the temple God gave you. I love John Orperg's answer to this question: How is your spiritual life going? In his book, The Me I Wanna Be, he writes, I used to answer this question by looking at the state of my devotional activities. Did I pray and read the Bible enough today? The problem is that by this measure, the Pharisees always win. People can be very disciplined, but remain proud and spiteful. How do we measure spiritual growth so that the Pharisees don't win? I asked a wise man, how do you assess the well-being of your soul? He immediately said, I asked myself two questions. Am I growing more easily discouraged these days? And am I growing more easily irritated these days? At the core of a flourishing soul are the love of God and the peace of God. If peace is growing in me, I am less likely to be discouraged. If love is growing, I am less likely irritated. It was brilliantly helpful diagnostic to assess the health of my soul. What a beautiful way to think about it. So what does it look like to apply those two questions to your life? How discouraged have you been feeling lately? How irritable in your marriage, as a parent, in your work, in your eating habits, in your body, in your health. This isn't a question of how happy am I in my job, or are my kids turning out the way I hoped, or is my spouse living up to my expectations, or am I where I wanted to be with my eating, my body, my health? It's a question of whether, regardless of your circumstances, are you growing in the fruit of the spirit? Because the best indicator of whether you're living in the flow of the spirit is the growth of the fruit. How's the growth of the fruit in each of those areas? Am I increasingly gentle even in the midst of irritations? Am I growing in patience and peace even when things don't go the way I wanted? Am I growing in self-control even when I'm tempted or unmotivated? Here's the thing: we can't make ourselves more gentle, more kind, more peaceful, or more self-disciplined. A tree's job is not to bear fruit. A tree's job is to abide near the river. And over time, when it does, the fruit it bears will ripen. Now let me be honest with you for a minute. Those two diagnostic questions can be brutal to answer. Am I growing more easily discouraged these days? Am I growing more easily irritated these days? Sometimes the honest answer is yes. Yes, I am. Yes, I have been. And I want to acknowledge that because the truth is there will be seasons in every one of our lives where the honest answer to those two questions is yes, where discouragement is real, where irritability is rising, where we feel worn out and ready to give up. God's not surprised by this. In fact, when we come to Him in those moments, He often meets us with something we don't expect. Not always a dramatic answer, not always a sudden change. Sometimes it's something tangible, something practical, something simple and small. Such a relatable moment in Scripture is Elijah under the broom tree. Just one chapter earlier in Kings 18, Elijah had experienced the greatest victory of his life. He stood on Mount Carmel against 450 prophets of the false gods, and he called down fire from heaven. He ended a three-year drought. It was an enormous victory. And then, just verses later, in 1 King 19, Queen Jezebel sends a messenger vowing to kill him. And Elijah breaks. He runs into the wilderness, he collapses under a broom tree, and he prays to die. I have had enough, Lord, he said. I have had enough. Take my life. Have you ever felt that way? Maybe not those exact words, but that feeling of I have had enough. I've got nothing left. I can't do this anymore. Maybe it's been in your marriage or your parenting or your career. Maybe in a goal you've been pursuing, maybe a health goal, a life goal, a dream you've been working toward. And it just isn't moving the way you thought it would. I've sure been there more than once in multiple areas of my life. I've come to God and said the same thing Elijah said. I've had enough. I've got nothing left. God, I give up. And here's what hits me about Elijah's prayer. He didn't just say I'm tired. He says, Take my life, for I am no better than my father's. Think about that for a second. This is a man who just days earlier had been used by God to do something extraordinary. And now he's lying under a tree completely overwhelmed by the feeling that his ministry has failed, that his life's work was futile, that despite everything he had accomplished, he was no better than anyone who had come before him. How relatable is that? How easy it is for us to do the exact same thing, to forget every victory, every step of progress, every place we've grown, and let our exhaustion convince us that we're no better than our past failures. That was Elijah under the broom tree. And here's what I want you to notice about how God responded. He didn't tell Elijah to pull himself together, he didn't rebuke Elijah's lack of faith, he didn't demand that he get up and get back to work. He sent an angel who touched Elijah, woke him gently, gave him fresh bread and water, and then let him sleep again. Then woke him up and fed him a second time, twice, before any spiritual breakthrough, before any next step in his journey, before God called him to what was next, God's first response to Elijah's burnout was eat something, take a nap. And we miss that sometimes. We expect God to answer our prayers with big dramatic interventions, sudden changes to our problems, to our circumstances. We want the problem solved, a miracle, a revelation. And sometimes he does answer that way, but sometimes he answers with something quiet and practical. Sometimes he answers by pointing at someone or something already there to help us, if we'll just slow down enough to notice. I'll tell you about a time this happened in my own life. A handful of years ago, I was going through what I'd now call my Elijah moment, a really dark season. It was during this time that I wrote the Soul Strength Fit program called Broken. And the reason it was called Broken was because that's exactly how I felt. Worn down, exhausted, like I had nothing left. I remember telling God I'd had enough. I did not have it in me to keep going. And I remember reading this exact story, Elijah under the broom tree, and praying, God, I need an angel. Just like you gave to Elijah. I need someone to come tap me on the shoulder and help me. Because right now I feel hopeless and alone. And it took me a while, longer than it should have, to realize that God had already provided that angel. This was someone right there in my life all along. I just hadn't slowed down enough to see that this was the person God was sending in my life to help. And it's something worth paying attention to because sometimes the help God is providing isn't in the form we expect. It's not lightning from heaven. It's a person. It's conversation. It's a friend. It's a book that lands at the right time. It's a counselor, a therapist, a coach, a trainer, a nudge to call someone you've been meaning to call. But there's something else I don't want us to miss about Elijah's story. Notice the order of what God did. He didn't start with a spiritual. He started with the physical. Eat, sleep, then eat again, then sleep again. Only after Elijah's body had been cared for did God speak to his soul in that still small voice on the mountain. Physical care preceded spiritual instruction. And I think that's profoundly important and easy to overlook. Because the way we care for our bodies, the way we eat, the way we sleep, the way we move, the way we recover has a direct impact on our energy, our stamina, our emotional regulation, our ability to keep showing up. You cannot separate the physical from the spiritual. They're woven together. They were designed that way. Sometimes the most spiritual thing you can do is eat a real meal, go to bed earlier, take a walk outside, drink some water, stop pushing through and let yourself rest. When we're depleted, even the spirit's flow can feel hindered in us. Not because he stopped moving, but because we don't have the capacity to receive what he's offering. Sometimes we just need to nourish our bodies and rest. So let me come back to where we started. How is your spiritual life going? And specifically, how is your spiritual life going in the way you care for your body, in the way you eat, in the way you move, in the way you rest? Are you growing in the fruit of the spirit in that area? Or are you battling discouragement and irritability, feeling like you're trying and trying and nothing's working? If that's where you are, I want to tell you something today. Your body matters, your physical well-being matters, not as a vanity project, not as a checklist, but as part of how you live the life God has given you on this side of eternity. Any area of your life that's hindering the growth of the fruit of the Spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control is an area worth bringing before God. And it's okay to come to Him the way Elijah did. God, I'm exhausted. God, I've been trying and I'm not seeing the changes I hope for. Nothing seems to work. I don't know what to do. I feel no better than my past failures. Will you help me? Because if it matters to you, it matters to God. If it's hindering the growth of the fruit, it matters to God. If it's leaving you discouraged or irritable, it matters to God. So bring it. And then notice. Notice what God might already be putting in your path. The friend you keep meaning to reach out to, the counselor, the coach, the trainer, the program, the book, the resource that's been on your mind. The next small step you've been avoiding because you wanted a bigger answer, maybe. Sometimes the angel is right in front of us. We just have to slow down enough to see. And then ask yourself, what is my body asking me for this week? Elijah needed food and sleep. What do you need? Better sleep? A meal that actually nourishes you instead of just filling you up? A walk outside, some exercise, a break from the noise, time to recover. Whatever it is, start there. Because here's what I want you to remember: a tree's job isn't to bear fruit. A tree's job is to abide near the river. And sometimes the most faithful thing a tree can do is to just stay rooted near the water, even when nothing visible seems to be happening. You don't have to white knuckle your way to spiritual growth. You don't have to perform your way to a flourishing soul. You just have to keep showing up. Keep abiding. Keep caring for the body you've been given. Keep coming back to him when you're tired. So this week, three simple things. Bring it to him, whatever the area is, your marriage, your work, your eating, your health. Bring it honestly before God. Tell him you're tired. Tell him if you're discouraged. Tell him you've been trying and you're not seeing what you had hoped for. That prayer is welcome. And then notice. Slow down enough to see who or what God has already placed in your life. Where is he giving you help? The friend, the counselor, the coach, the resource, the next small step. The angel might already be there. Don't miss it. And then take action. Whatever God is asking of you. Eat the healthy meal. Go to bed earlier. Take the walk. Make the call. Care for the body he's entrusted you. Because sometimes the most spiritual thing you can do is also the most practical one. You are God's handiwork. He is forming you even now. Even in your tiredness. Even in your I can't do this anymore moments. He is not finished with you yet. Thanks for spending this time with me. To learn more, visit SoulStrengthFit.com.