Peace Of Mind: Week 5

Welcome to Church of the Crossing. My name is James, and we are

in the last week of this series. But I want to just share a

couple of things I'm excited about today. Number One, after surface, I

want you all to get up and go around through the Cox Swing, go

all the way around. If you have not seen our neighborhood market, today's

our kind of open house. We did a run through yesterday's for the community.

I think we had twelve families which represented about seventy people that we fed

yesterday. But it's just so awesome to see. I bet there was at

least fifty different people who's helped with this project so far. And we're so

excited about just blessing the people of our community. And let me tell you,

I believe that we were going to reach so many people to Christ through

these relationships. So as you leave today, please check that out. We're

excited about that. Also, last week I announced, or a couple weeks

goo, I announced that we have come into a contract for our new ministry

called Embrace Grace. And this is where when a young lady is trying to

make a decision whether or not to have an abortion, and then she decides

to keep the baby, then we get a contact and we walk with her

through twelve weeks of Bible study, and then after her twelve weeks of Bible

study, we throw a baby shower for her. So this week we were

super excited because we got our first girl, and then by the end of

the week we got five and that's pretty awesome. Yeah, so we were

not expecting five. So that brings me to the next line item. We

need. We need a lot of you who like the shopping party ladies to

sign up to be a part of this ministry. Let us know in a

communicator car But basically we need a lot of people who just liked the party,

like to hang out and like to go and shop and just love and

encourage young ladies. So I think it's exciting, So please let us know

if you can be a part of that ministry. Lauren will be in contact

with you about what role you can play or maybe you know are just the

upcoming dates. Hopefully it's not all five on one weekend. I would assume

not, but it'll be spread out over a season. Also, the Gomez

family did officially arrive here this week, and this is the family. It's

gonna be starting our Hispanic service here in a soon, and so we're gonna

first begin praying and then letting the community know then we'll be launching a service.

Please be praying for them. Now, here's what's going on with their

kids this week. They have an elementary girl, a junior high boy,

and a senior high boy. All three obviously they're from you know, a

different country, but they've been living in America their whole life. But now

they're gonna have to all three go into a new school system this week.

So don't you think we should pray for them? So please be praying for

them. And then one of the big things that I'm super excited about this

week too is the race starts next week for our youth group and so twenty

thirty forty kids will come in as guests. We want them to come to

Christ and so we're gonna be asking God to save their souls. And so

we're gonna pray for them here in a minute. But we're after service today.

We have a couple elders like Nader and Don Courtey and a couple other

elders who are up for nomination. We would love for you to meet them.

So after service you can go out in to the lobby meet some of

our elders who are up for nomination. And if you have any questions about

our budget, and I want to encourage you guys. You guys gave close

to one hundred thousand more this year than you did the year before, so

thank you so much for your faithfulness. But if you have any questions,

go to that after service. So before I preach, let's first of all,

let's pray for the race, these kids who are going to be coming

in and hearing the gospel. So the youth group next weekend, during the

first service, we'll be sitting in this section, so let's all kind of

point our hands towards this section and pray for salvations. Let's do this.

Let's go. God. We just pray right now for the guests that will

be coming in over the next five or six weeks. And God, we

pray that as they hear the God spol their life will be dramatically changed.

We pray for our students as they, you know, I don't know,

get the nerve to ask somebody, and some of them will be rejected.

So God touch their heart helped them to understand that's just part of it.

But also to the friends that say, yes, they're gonna have to figure

out rides and all this other stuff. So God, we just pray for

all of our students as they go out and they just try to reap a

harvest over the next month. Pray for our leaders. We pray that every

student who is new coming in for this next month, that every interaction they

have in this church with every person will be like an interaction with Christ.

And so God, we just put all that and here's what we ask.

We want to see kids saved. And we all pray this now in the

mighty name of Jesus. We all say amen, all right, Well,

have you ever got to that point in your life well you're like, man,

it's just one more thing goes wrong, I'm done. Or if you

ever just got to that point in your life where you're just done, but

you don't even know why you're done. You just have nothing left in the

tank, nothing in you. It was about eleven twelve years ago I was

in youth ministry in Pittsburgh and I was having, what I could hear,

my most favorite season of youth ministry. The youth group was growing we had

multiple campus of youth ministry. It was going awesome. Kids were coming to

Christ and I felt like, man, I'm in my early thirties, I'm

working out, I'm eating healthy. A long time ago, and I was

feeling great, feeling great about the ministry. And then I got up one

morning and I couldn't get out of bed. And then this went on for

weeks. I could barely go up a flight of steps, and we got

really worried. We were going to this doctor and this doctor, and this

doctor and this doctor. So when a thirty two year old, thirty three

year old man, all of a sudden just can't do anything, you get

real concerned. So few of the doctors were very concerned that surely you got

some type of disease, you got cancer, you got something, and you

know, a lot of people the church was praying for me couldn't figure out

why I couldn't work while I couldn't do anything. And then finally one of

my doctors, after checking all my chemicals, they found out that I had

what you would call just physical burnout, or as they call nowadays, occupational

burnout. And this is where I've been working seventy sixty seventy hours. For

too many years. I loved my job, I loved what I was doing,

but I just got to the point where, you know, for years

I try to do everything, be everything, and just take care of everything

and control everything. And by the way, this is a very humbling,

painful experience. My wife and I had a lot of conversations about me leaving

ministry after that experience. And so for close to a year, I had

these chemicals that some of them had to be rubbed into my shoulders, and

all these chemicals I had to take, so they literally had to put the

chemicals of life back into my body so that I could just function normally.

And it took me about a good year to recover from that physical exhaustion.

And so for those of you this morning who feel like, man, you're

I'm on the edge, I'm exhausted, I got a lot going on.

Hey, you're not alone. You're not alone. And I just want to

stop here right now, because people, whenever we talk about stress or burnout,

for some reason, people can think about it's about a specific age group.

I want to break it down and tell you how I'm seeing this in

every age group. First of all, the teenagers in our church. Some

of them are doing multiple sports and trying to get straight a's, and they're

overwhelmed. They're stressed all the time. Our college kids, We've got a

lot of our college kids who's trying to get straight a's, set themselves up

for a career nerd, working one or two jobs. So we see a

lot of them in trouble or you know, stressed out, feel like they're

going to be burned out. And when I go and see all of our

families, we're a fertile church. And when you go over to right I

just went over to the nursery, Holy smokes, you can't even walk through

the nursery. It's like, how many kids are you guys gonna have?

And then this morning I've seem at least six more pregnant ladies, and it's

just like we're gonna have to like get a double decker. I don't know.

We're running out the room, and it's I guess it's a good problem.

But what I'm saying is these parents come in and their eyeballs they just

look like they haven't slept for a week, and they're like, I don't

care what you do if this kid just take them and and I'll be back

in a few hours. And we're stressed out, But I have always stopped

growing up that uh, burnout and stress was for middle age people. You

know, you got the kids in college, you got the kids still in

school. You got to worry about your iras and your retirement. And now

you're working jobs. You've been promoted to the point where you don't even know

how to do your job, and and and you just have all these and

so what do men do? What do they call it midlife crisis? You

get your motorcycle, your Porsche, and you know, change your hair,

do all this other stuff, and and get a tan. He know,

I mean, but guy gets a tan for the first time at forty five.

Throw the flag. Okay, people, But anyways, but that's not

the only age group. Here's who I'm noticing A lot with a lot of

us are dealing in this room with aging parents. That's very stressful. Of

all the things I saw, my mom and dad do have multiple jobs,

multiple things going on in their life. That seven or eight years that they

took care of my mamma before she passed away, and my mamma was a

delight. But anyways, even though she was a nice one. They were

so burned out, so burned out, so burned out. And I see

a lot of us who are taking care of our spouses and or we ourselves

are dealing with an illness, and so burnout is in. Stress is not

for a specific age group. It is for all age groups. And the

way, if you're not going through it right now, there's a chance that

you're going to come upon a season where you will go through it. So

here's what I want to talk about today. We're talking about stress and burnout.

By the way, again, if you feel this way, you're not

alone. They took a survey recently, half of America. Half of America

the workforce says that they feel burned out. So feeling burned out is a

normal thing. And by the way, work for a lot of us,

that's the easy part. And by the way, burnout is not just working

long hours. It's a combination of mental, emotional, and physical exhaustion.

So how does it happen? Well, it could be the social pressure.

I gotta be there for everybody. I gotta live up to everybody's expectations.

I gotta say yes, I gotta be available. I gotta serve, I

gotta give, I gotta be positive. And then there's those of us who

are trying to keep up this the image, and it's like, hey,

everybody needs to know my life, look at it on Facebook or social media.

And my family is doing seventy six events this week because my family is

awesome, and you've done seventy six events that week and you are miserable.

So we're trying to image. We're trying to keep it other people where we

have a financial crisis. Man, I don't burn you out. Here's a

big one for Church of the Crossing. Grandparents and parents. I gotta be

at every kid activity. If not, I'm a bad parent. So you

make it to everything and you wear yourself out. And by the way,

again that's not just for the younger enough, meaning again those dealing for aging

parents, those of healthful issues, doctor's appointment, health insurance, stressful work

environments. In all way, Maybe I don't know, here's another one half

of our world hates the other half of our world. That's kind of stressful

right now. And then there's what about this the spiritual guilt. I'm not

doing enough, I'm not being a good enough Christian. And I'm not living

up to God's expectations. I'm not living up to my own expectations. And

it's all too much. And it's really kind of crazy because if somebody walks

into our office tomorrow and they got a cast on what happens, Everybody's like,

Oh, cool, you gotta cast, We got to hear the story.

Can I sign your cast? And when people walk in with a broken

bone, people are like, oh, what happened? Can I sign it?

But if somebody comes in for a broken head and they've had a mental

breakdown, we're not like what do we do? We're like stigma, stigma.

See, we're not allowed to have broken minds. We're not allowed to

be an exhaustion, especially for Christians, because you know what, if we're

if we were good enough Christians, we would never be stressed. Who hears

hurt? I'm too blessed to be stressed. I'm too blessed to be stressed.

Like, man, show me that, show me that, show me

that my kid's a blessing, most stressful thing on this earth. You are

a blessing. I'll stop there. But you know we have these Christians sayings,

you know, too blasted to be stressed. Are people like, just

just hand it over to God. You're like, man, if I hear

one more person telling me to hand us over to God, I'm personally gonna

hand you over to God. We deal with stress weird. We deal with

burnout weird. So today I want to look at some scripture and show you

a better way. First thing we need to do is figure out if you're

dealing with stress or burnout. So I want to break down a difference.

Okay, number one, what's the difference between those two? Stress is generally

short lived? Okay, So let me give you a typical. Here's my

stress. Every week on Tuesday morning, I wake up and by Wednesday,

end of workday, I have to have a sermon done in manuscript sent off

so you know the PowerPoint team can have it. So I'm stress a lot

on Tuesday until I get done on Wednesday. Then when I finished and I

sin. When I hit SIN on Wednesday, it's the best feeling all week.

And I'm upstairs, I'm I'm gonna go get some sushi. I'm gonna

go get some tie. I always reward myself off a fancy I'm always excited

and and but that was temporary stress. So I was stressed, then I

hit send button stress over. Does that make sense? So stress is a

temporary thing we deal with, like our kids and our grandkids. Having a

trouble or issue that's a temporary stress a lot of times, or maybe it's

a project or an event we have coming up. You know, those of

you who's had to help plan a wedding in the last year or the last

couple of years, Yeah, that's a lot of stress. But then the

wedding's over, and then then they're married, and that's their stress problem,

you know. And but you know it's something that can be solved. Now

when it comes to burnout, burnout is chronic stress that doesn't feel like it's

ending. So going back to my parents taking care of my grandma when they

started doing that, you know, sevent eight years ago, there's no end

date. You're just doing this every day. This is your life now,

So that brings up on stress. Burnout feel like the there's no relief in

sight. Now. Here's the interesting thing. Stress you feel all kinds of

things, Anxiety, anger, When someone stressed out becau anybody when they're stressed

out. I can't imagine anybody in our congregation doing this. But do you

ever snap at your spouse? I mean, like, I can tell if

anybody in my households stressed. They don't think my jokes are hilarious, you

know, and I don't get it, but anyways, they You can tell

when someone's stressed. So when you stress, you're like a ball of emotions.

Burnouts A little different. Burnout is some people would say, I don't

feel anything. I feel dead inside. I feel hopeless on the inside.

So that's a big difference between those two. So here's what I want to

do. I want to show you a man, a guy in the Old

Testament, prophet name Elijah, who had a lot of the same feelings we

have. First of all, he was a person who was loved by God,

and he's a powerhouse for God. And he battled with anxiety, depression,

exhalustion, and burnout. So I want to throw this out to you.

Remember, if you're struggling, that doesn't make you a bad Christian,

that makes you a human. I'm not mad at you again, but that

should have been amen. I'm gonna do that again. All right, here

we go, Come on, people, you gotta help me out here,

all right? If you're struggling. That doesn't make you a bad Christian,

that makes you a human. All right, church, we're learning how to

do church week by week. Well, Grek, they're gonna get there,

see it. Elijah, this guy, I mean, he was so close

to God. He was a powerhouse of faith. Can I just give you

a little bit of his resume. Let me tell you about his resume.

First of all, he confronted the most evil man and most powerful man in

his region, King Ahab. Check out this scripture. King Ahab goes at

him, he says, when he saw Elijah, he said to him,

it is at you, you trouble or of Israel, And he goes,

I have Then Elijah replied, I have not made trouble for Israel, but

you and your father's family. Have you abandoned the Lord's commands and have followed

the bell. Now you could read that like you read scripture, or you

could read that like a human being. Elijah, You've been causing a lot

of trouble for my kingdom. Elijah's like, Nope, I'm not the troublemaker.

You're a sinner. Your dad's a center, your mama's a center,

your grandma's a center. Your whole family's nasty. They're bad people. I

mean, that's like you see that when you bring in scripture. There's a

scripture where he brought the dude's parents into the fight. Like that's pretty bad

when you bring mama and dad up into a fight, like do their fighting

words right. He's like, Hey, I'm not the center. Your mama

nasty woman. But they courage. And then he said, because this sins

the king's evilness was gonna be a drought for three years, and there was,

and you're in this drought. Okay. They sent these people to try

to kill Elijah. Okay, and so he's on the run for three years.

And then check this out. God miraculously provided bread and meat from none

other than Ravens. If you were here last week, this is the redemption

of the Ravens. Okay, Raven's got trash last week. Listened to the

message. But God was with him. God comforted him, God's strengthened him.

And then on top of all this, at one point he's hanging out

with this widow and her son dies and he raises his son from the dead.

That's pretty awesome. Then another time he went up against eight hundred and

fifty false prophets, and they said, all right, let's speak of you

know, let's find out whose god's a real god. And guess what.

Elijah's God was a real god and brought fire down from heaven. Then after

that happened, he went to war and he killed the eight hundred and fifty

prophets. Now, so again, let's talk about his resume. This dude

stopped rain for three years. This guy, okay, he took on eight

hundred and fifty prophets and he killed them. He raised a kid from the

dead. That is a spectacular resume. My resume says I've been employed for

twenty four years. I haven't been fired. That's pretty much all it says.

This dude has God. This guy's with God. Man, everybody knows

he's with God. Then one day Ahab's wife looks at Ahab. Her name

is Jezebel. She says, listen, buddy, if you can't take care

of this problem, I'll take care of this problem. So here's what she

says. Check this out, and this is where the story changes. Now

Ahab told Jezebel everything Elijah had done, and now he had killed all the

prophets with the sword. So Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah to say,

may that God's dealt me, be it ever so severely, if by this

time tomorrow I do not make your life that of one of them. Now,

I wan't you think about Elijah for a moment. He's experienced NonStop protection

from God, provision from God, the glorious and powerful presence of God,

the almighty power of God. He stood down eight hundred and fifty men,

and then one person, one person, causes him to flip, freaks him

out. You know, it's amazing what we can endure. You can get

criticized. You're like, all right, kids, calls your problem, that's

okay, dress at work. I can handle it. Financial pressure, we'll

get through. The Lord provide get a bad health report, all right.

The Lord is faithful. And here's what we do in life. We handle

it. We handle it, We handle it, we handle it, we

handle it, we handle it. And then all of a sudden, one

day it's just one little thing, one little thing, like the trash bag

falls out at the bottom, and all of a sudden we're like, that's

it, that's it. The world is against me. God is against me,

and we flip out, don't we do that because we get to a

certain point where we just can't handle it. Man, And this is where

Elijah was at. Man, He's just been fighting so many spiritual battles and

then then that was just one too much. And by the way, all

she did was make a threat. We don't have any scriptural evidence that she

ever went after him or sent any men. She just made a threat.

No army, no mercenaries, no ferocious ninjas. Nothing. Listen, and

he crumbles because Satan uses his most powerful weapon, and that's fear, and

fear can make us fall apart. Look how we can see ourselves in a

story. Let's look again. It says Elijah was afraid and he ran for

his life when he came to Beersheba and Judah. He left his servant there

while he himself went a day's journey into the wilderness. He came to a

broom bush, sat down under it, prayed that he might die. He

said, I've had enough, Lord, take my life. I'm no better

than my ancestors. Then he lay down under the bush and he slept.

Where we see here this is exhaustion and depression big time. We see stress,

we see burnout. And let me tell you something. Stress and burnout

is all think on a manifest itself in one of three ways. Okay,

let's look at the first one, physical fatigue. The first thing you might

realize this is physical manifestations of stress. In other words, you're low on

energy, you do a normal task that your body doesn't recover. And then

here's the thing that really starts to happen. When you're stress for prolonged periods

and you're exhausted, what happens is we start to lose sleep. When you

lose sleep, you wake up the next day, and this goes on for

a few days. You start to have headaches and body aches. When you

have headaches and body aches, you start looking in your pantry for cure,

and so sugar and food is often cured. So we get into the cycle.

We're all of a sudden we're war out, but then we're eating just

to have the energy. Let me tell you something. You can watch my

weight and tell how stressed out I am, beginning of the pandemic, trying

to reorder our church, making decisions that no matter what I said, half

y'all liked it. The other half didn't like it matter fact, well the

half that liked it, you're still here. Love you anyways. And I

could watch myself on the video because I would watch the videos on Sunday morning,

I could watch myself gain weight. And by the way, that is

the worst thing you can ever do in your life. Like, man,

who's that new stay? Oh that's me. And then you know I've shared

this before, but you know we had a big food shortage in Hamilton County.

That's because I ate it all. I took it. So wait is

a stress gage for me. But for some of you. Alcohol is for

some of you as prescription drugs, pornography, for some of you as the

abuse of just any type of drug. We're going to find a way to

try to make our bodies feel better. Number two, we experience mental fatigue

and when we have stress and burn out. Two different things happen to our

brain when we have mental fatigue. Number one are amigela enlarges. Now what

you're amigala? You're Amigela. It's a small little almond shaped thing in your

brain that basically it's your fight or flight. Okay, this is where it's

that center of your brain that says you're in trouble. You're in trouble,

you're in trouble, watch out, or this is where you have anxiety,

and this is a place that your brain that kind of gets real active.

Well, when you stay stressed and burned out for a really long time,

this enlarges. And so what happens is you actually can't jump off the stress

train, so you start stressing out all day, anxiety all day, worrying

all day, thinking all day, and all of a sudden you become addicted

to this thinking. So because it enlarges, it actually takes over a portion

of your brain and it says, all you're going to do now is think

about the things that are stressful, and that is not a good thing.

The second thing happens is that your prefrontal cortex weekends. Now. Your prefrontal

cortex that's where we make law of our decisions. And so maybe you go

from a person who can make strong, decisive decisions and then people at work

are asking you for simple decisions and you're like, man, you just give

me a minute. I can't even fain. You can't even make the simplest

decisions. Or you start to have a loss of memory, you know,

if you've seen people who are like in like an emergency situation and things are

going nuts, and they might ask the spouse, they say, hey,

what type of meds is your husband on? But because they're in such a

stress moment, they go, I can't think. And so what happens is

your prefrontal cortex as it weakens and all that stuff, you start to have

memory loss and your brain weekends. Number three, you experience emotional fatigue.

And this is when you battle a stress and anxiety to the point where you

almost get burned out and you're not motivated. And here's what happens in this

season. This is really interesting. You have a total loss of self confidence.

Total. You start to doubt yourself. You feel like a failure.

I don't have what it takes. I'm not good enough. You start to

isolate yourself. If you're miserable, you start to not like anything. I

don't like my job, I don't like my marriage. Only like those two

kids, but I like these other two kids. I mean, you start

thinking, you know, I don't like my life, and you slip into

cynicism. You become bitter, and if you're a person of faith, you

get disconnected from God, and you're like, God, where are you at?

I thought you're supposed to be with me and take care of me,

and you're just not doing good. I told you eleven or twelve years ago.

I dealt with a physical exhaustion. But about fifteen fifteen months into the

pandemic, I got to this spot where our church was in a really weird

place, about fifteen months into the immock, and people weren't coming back yet,

and we didn't know who was coming back. And still no matter what

decision I made, half agreed, the other half did not agree. And

as a person who wants to make everybody happy, that's a nightmare. And

by the way, this is normal for every church in America. Yeah,

I felt like I tried everything I could and nothing worked. And the crazy

thing is I was working more hours than I ever had. We had to

have a video produced by Wednesday, so we were producing all these videos,

and then we were still doing all of our services. And then I got

to that point where I maybe that part of my amygdala just kind of got

too large, and I started thinking about the church all day long, all

evening, and then I tossed and turned all nine so I could not turn

it off, and probably my expectations were unrealistic, and they compounded after one

disappointment after another. And so I remember we were in a personnel committee meeting

and they were doing my yearly review, and we were talking about the church

and how hey, we're in the middle's pandemic. Things are crazy, and

they're talking about all the things we've tried to do, all the things we

were doing. And I said to them, I said, hey, I

need you to know that I'm noticing a big trend. There's a certain group

of churches that are recovering like that, almost like the pandemics over for them.

And I'm looking at a lot of these churches and the one thing they

have in common is they all got a new pastor. So a lot of

churches, so a lot of pastors retired or left their job during a pandemic.

The church, we get a new pastor, and all bygones were you

know, who cares about mask, who cares about this? Who cares about

that? Let's all go be act like nothing happened, and we'll come back

out and check out the new pastor. And so I said to the personnel

committee, I said, to be honest and again, this church is not

about me, because if the church was about me, then I would preach

every single weekend. I would do all the announcements, and I was seeing

half the songs. Listen, the church isn't about me, and I realized

it's my job to serve the churches. So I said to our personnel committee,

I said, listen, this won't hurt my feeling because it's not about

me and I'm just a servant here. But maybe the best thing for our

church is for you to just get another pastor. And I left that up

to them. I said, hey, my family will be fine. I'll

go to another church, find another church eventually, but maybe the best thing

is for Church of Crossing just to get a new pastor, so you just

have a new start over. What are you here? There? Total lack

of self confidence. You're listening to burnout. You're listening to somebody who is

emotionally emotionally done. So how do we get there? How do we get

there? We want to look at scriptures see how we get there. Because

Elijah made some of the same mistakes I made, and some of us we

do these same things ourselves. So let's look at how to burnout Number one,

you run yourself into the ground. Okay, you just go and you

go, and you go and you go until you completely run yourself into the

ground. And this is what Elijah did. In verse three, let's look

at it says Elijah was afraid and he ran for his life. Now,

fountain, knowing how far he ran. This probably doesn't mean much to you,

but throw up this map. This guy ran from Mount Carmel where he

had this battle, okay, and he ran all the way down to Beersheba.

Now that might not seem like a big deal to you, but you

gotta understand that's one hundred miles. That's four marathons. Okay, he kept

running and running and running. This dude Forrest gumped the Middle East. He

ran four marathons. And man, that's what a lot of you do.

I gotta be you just keep running because I gotta live up to all these

expectations. Gotta be the perfect mom, perfect dad, perfect grandparents. I

gotta provide for my family. I gotta be every single event because everybody expects

me to. And you say yes, because you can't let anybody see your

weaknesses. You gotta be strong, and no one can see that you have

emotional needs, and so we make the mistake and we run ourselves into the

ground. Number two, you try to do it all on your own.

You don't let people in. We see Elijah do this. What does it

say verse three, second part? It said that when he came to Beersheba

and Judah, he left his servant there. He left his servant there,

he left his wing man, he left his best friend, his most intimate

friend, and then he decided to do battle on his own. And let

me, let me help you understand us that if you are living in limited

Christian community, you're in trouble. You're incredibly vulnerable. The Bible says,

iron sharpens iron, that we're supposed to pray for each our love one another,

and do life together. And I know times have changed, just a

pandemic. And am mostly speaking right now to the online community. And I'm

not speaking to anyone with scheduled conflicts, disabilities, or you have some handicaps.

I'm not talking about that at all, Okay, But what I'm trying

to help you understand is that the Church of God is not just watching a

video. And I think we've moved into this period now where if the video

is the first option for many people. But the Church of Odd is people

interacting with each other, loving on each other, and working together. And

so for those of you who've been watching online again, I'm not talking to

anybody for disability. I'm just simply saying this. It's time to get back

into the body. It's time to get back into the body, and let's

love each other and let's work together and see because when you try to do

it on your own and you're thinking, I can't let other people in,

seating begins to whisper in your ear. Don't let anybody know what's going on

in your life. You'll be embarrassed. And so you run yourself in the

ground. And then you try to do it all on your number three.

You dwell in the negative. You dwell in the negative, and there may

be a lot of good going on in your life, but also on all

you can see is the wrong. And this is what Elijah does. Let's

check this out. He came to the broom bush, sat down under it

and pray that he might die. I've had enough for it, he says,

take my life. I'm no better than my ancestors. Now this is

weird. He sits down under here, He's like, God, kill me.

And then he starts to think about his ancestors, like, man,

if my mama and Papa we're here right now, they would be so disappointed

in me, Like that's weird, right Who's Like, man, if my

great great great grandpa knew about to stay, he'd be so ashamed of Elijah.

And he starts thinking, and what's he doing? He compares himselves to

other people. He starts comparing himself to his heroes. And see, that's

what happens sometimes when we get burned out, we compare ourselves to everyone else's

life, and that's why we run ourselves silly. I'll never have a marriage

like that, I'll never have a house like that, I'll never have a

car like that, I'll never have a family like that. So we do

everything we can, and we about kill ourselves trying to have these lives that

God did not call us to have, and then we become miserable. Okay,

And let me tell you, and what I want to show you right

here is so personal and so powerful. And this is one of those parts

of the scripture where I am indescribably thankful for our God. Do you know

what our God does next. Check this out. God came to him.

This dude wants to die, he wishes he was dead, and God came

to him. God came to him. God came to him. Who initiated.

God initiated, Who moved? God moved, and he came in the

form of angel. Here's what happened, he says. All at once,

that angel touched him and said, now, pay attention to what the angel

did not say. The angel did not say, Hey, loser, why

are you hiding under a bush? Are you scared at Jezebel? Hey,

you know this is a prayer problem. If you just prayed more, you

wouldn't be here today. Or if you just send last you wouldn't be here

today. Now the angel got very practical. Check out how practical the angel

got. All at once, the angel touched him and said, get up

an eat. He looked at Elijah like, you're angry. You just need

to eat something, buddy. And he looked around and there by his head

it was some bread baked over hot coals in the jar of water. And

he ate and drank, and then he took a nap. He told Elijah

to eat and take a nap. God of Heaven came to earth and said,

bro, you need a snack and a nap. What's he really talking

about. Sometimes the most spiritual thing you can do is rest. That's why

God gave us a sabbath. Sometimes you need to eat a donut and take

a nap on your day off, or a protein bar for some of you,

green tea and avocado toasts, whatever your vibe is, I don't know,

and then take a nap. And at the moment, at the minute

you start to do this, your spiritual enemy, Satan's gonna start whispering your

ear and saying you can't take time off. To me, people depend on

you. And here's what I want to tell you today. Don't let your

mind bully your body. Don't let your mind bully your body, because we

are just simply called to follow a commandment. History by the way it sets

it out. I've told you this before that during the French Revolution, the

French try to get Christianity out of France. And so what they did was

they stopped the sabbath and they said, no, you're gonna work for ten

days straight, then you get a day off. So they did this for

three years and here was The idea was that the church wouldn't have a regular

day to meet every week because you would go ten days in a day off.

Well, after three years, because the health of the nation plummeted,

they had to reinstate the sabbath. See, God's ways are always the best

way. What does he say in Exodus and Exodus He says, hey,

remember the Sabbath. Keep it six days. You should work, but on

the seventh day rest. Think about this, This is how important us resting

is. He says, don't murder, don't sleep with your neighbor's wife,

and take a nap. But that's a loving God saying to you who you

are matters more to me than what you're doing. And also, I just

need to remind you every week that I can run this universe without you.

Can you let me take care of you one day a week. The Sabbath

is a weekly is a weekly love message from the Lord, you know.

So let's go back to that personnel committee meeting. And this is why when

we put people on committees, we need godly, godly people, not popular

people, not people who are connected, not people just because they've been around

for years or they're cool people. This is why we need godly, godly

people. As I sit there and said, hey, maybe the best thing

for the church is for you to get a new pastor, they looked at

me and they said, you know what, our last two pastors right here

combined forty two years and the Church of the Crossings, we just don't give

up on our pastors. And he said, we're not that type of church,

and we don't give up easy. We're not that type of people.

And we're with you. We're with you. Man. When they said that

to me and affirmed that that meeting, it was like blood re entered my

veins. And then guess what I did after that? I rested. I

went to our national nine, and then I hung out with our youth for

a few days on the mission trip. And then instead of taking my vacation

in November, I moved it all the way to July. And all I

did was I did. I spent some time with the Lord, and I

rested time with Jesus, and I arrested. So guess what the two steps

are for recovery from a burnout? Number One, you gotta rest, You

gotta take your sabbath. You gotta take your sabbath and for those of you

used, maybe it's just one day a week or a half a day a

week where you're just doing something so different than what you normally do. You

know, you guys know that, like most of the year, I'm using

my mind to make decisions, to do research, to write. So the

month of November, by the way, worst pastor in Indianapolis than I am.

November, I'm gone I go hunt for a month. I just had

to go play in the woods. I gotta climb trees, I gotta cut,

you know, brush down. I gotta come up strategies. I gotta

try to kill something. I'm just I'm just out there and I'm just playing.

Why Because once a month or once a year, I just need to

do something so different. You need to figure out what that is, get

out of that rhythm that you're in and do something different. So I'm gonna

say something that maybe he has never been said from a pulpit. Maybe husbands

golf is the most spiritual thing you can do this week? Can I get

an amen? Can I get an amen? And ladies, maybe you just

need to go shopping and get a pedicure and a manicure. Still not getting

enough amens? I gotta keep going. You gotta go see a movie.

We gotta take time. We gotta take time. But most importantly, we

gotta have encounter at the presence of God. Okay, and that's what we

need more than anything, as being his presence. Let's look at this last

scripture to say, as we close up, and the word of the Lord

came to him, and the Lord said, go out and stand on the

mountain, and the presence of the Lord, for the Lord is about to

pass by. Then here's what happened. Then, a great and powerful wind

toward the mounds apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord. But the Lord

was not in the wind. After the wind, there was an earthquake,

but the Lord was not an earthquake. After the earthquake came a fire,

but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a

gentle whisper. And when Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his

face. He went out, and he stood the mouth of the cave.

And then a voice said to him. God was not in the fire.

He was not in the wind. He was not an earthquake. Where was

God? He was in a whisper? And here's what I want to tell

you today. The reason God whispers to us, it's because he's always close

to us. But we just gotta take time to listen. We just gotta

be able to stop so we can be in his presence. Your father loves

you, He cares about you. And so we're started to school year back,

and here's what I know. I know that our rhythms are going to

be crazy, and today you might be in that situation where you're burned out.

But I wanted you to know that if you're broken hearted today, God

says, I'm close to the broken hearted. If you're overwhelmed, he's the

one who protects those and builds those up have been crushed. If you're hurt,

he says, listen, I'm gonna help you. If you're discouraged,

He's the God who says I am the God that there's always hoping. He

says, I will never leave you, I will never forsake you. What

do you need today? The Lord wants to give it to you. And

I promise you this above everything else you need Jesus. So here's the question

I have for you. We're brat ready to enter back into the fall,

which is super busy season, right, parents. So, parents, here's

what I would encourage you to do before the sun sets this evening. I

want you to mark down a few sabbaths for yourself. Okay, I want

you to mark down a few days. And by the way, a sabbath

does not include taking your kids to the zoo. That is unholy sabbath.

It's not a sabbath that is torture. Okay, that is I don't anyways,

I'll stop, but I'm talking about something for you. But it's where

you can get spiritually filled up and go on a day and get refreshed,

take a nap. Now, if you're at that age, you're like,

oh my gosh, this is and apply to me at all, because you

know I'm free. I'm free as a bird at this point. Maybe,

just maybe, the one thing you could do, the most spiritual thing you

can do in response to this message is talk to one of these young families

and say, hey, how about we take the kids for an evening.

See talk about being a church to God. This is how we're to Church

of God. We don't just pray for each other and encourage each other.

Sometimes we serve each other. And so those of you. You know some

families who just need a day off, offer that up. And so this

is how we can be So today, I here's what I want to do.

If you're stressed out, I'm gonna pray for you right now, and

then if you're burned out, we're gonna have a prayer after that. So

if you're stress, let's pray God. For those who are dealing with stress

today, it might be a financial thing, it might be a temper everything,

it might be something that just popped up. And God, maybe it's

just where they need your provision. They need your help. They need you

to take care of something. So God, I'm gonna ask you to provide

for them, to take care of them. And God also helped them to

cast our anxiety upon you because your worst says, we can cast our anxiety

upon you because you care for us, so we cast our anxiety upon you.

Secondly, for those who are dealing with burnout, first you got to

maybe go see a counselor. Because one reason we run ourselves into the ground,

there's probably other things going on that's beyond the surface for why we feel

like we have to run ourselves to the ground and why we feel like we

do things on our own. But God, they need rest They need you

to provide a way for them to get restored. So God, for those

who are on the edge of burnout, I pray for total restoration today.

God, may our church be a church that honors You that we work hard,

we serve hard, but we also still follow your commandments. And God,

let us not all forget that. This message today, it's just a

it's just a love letter from you. You just want to take care of

us. You just want to take care of us. You love us,

So today will you just receive His love in Jesus name. Amen,