christian living on Burnout

Burnout is the disease of our age. Time magazine had an editorial way back in the 1980s about “the burnout of just about everybody.” I concluded that the metaphor of burnout was not quite right, parti...

Aren't you like me, hoping that some person, thing, or event will come along to give you that final feeling of inner well-being you desire? Don't you often hope: "May this book, idea, cou...

We pastors don't drive fancy cars or rake in the dough (most of us, anyway). But there is still a temptation to a skewed version of "holy success" that we need to watch out for, the idea...

Jesus says, “Are you tired? Burned out? Worn out? Come to me.” He promises rest. When we come before God and confess our sins, We are not only handing over those burdens, We are asking Jesus to give...

Adapted from Ch 4 of On Getting out of Bed. Why is Existence Good? Living for the sake of living—doing things so that you can continue to efficiently do things—begs the question, Why live? To live...

Lord Jesus Christ, you reveal God to us, yet we are sometimes repulsed, bored, or exhausted by what we see. We become jaded to your work in the world, and our eyes glaze over rather than getting excit...

Jesus, Lord—because you took on flesh, You know what it’s like to be us. You know what keeps us awake at night, or yanks us out of sleep in the early morning. You know what it’s like to have good days...

Spirit of the Living God—Fall afresh on us this day. Spirit of God present and powerful, Spirit of God fruitful and faithful, Spirit of God filling and fulfilling us as children of the Father and foll...

Too Busy for God? American work culture is all-pervasive. For many members of your congregation, it can be a real fight to get actual time off—and cell phones and the internet has made it possible to...

In his highly book, Inside Job , Stephen W. Smith shares the importance of finding balance, even as life seems to pull us in different directions: Overextending yourself is stretching your physic...

Too many Christians are broken in a destructive way—so badly broken that they cannot carry out the great commandment of loving God and neighbor. Their inner turmoil prevents them from carrying out God...

Restlessness keeps the pedal to the metal. To offer a suggestive analogy in this vein: several years ago there was a recall on some Toyota vehicles. Evidently the cars would be given to sudden and unc...

In the sport of cycling, one of the most important things necessary to be successful in a race is the ability to manage the timing of when “to burn a match.” This is a phrase that all bike racers know...

If I rest, I rust.

A New York Times story reports on the positive impact school recess has on academic performance. Here’s how it begins: “The best way to improve children’s performance in the classroom may be to take t...

We must embrace pain and burn it as fuel for our journey.

Looking into his life and out to the wider world, Kenneth Gergen writes about The Saturated Self: Dilemmas of Identity in Contemporary Life, arguing that “social saturation brings with it a general lo...

In his highly insightful work, Inside Job , Stephen W. Smith shares the sobering truth of what happens to many leaders when they climb the “ladder of success”: The ground at the foot of the ladde...

Thomas Merton describes those who never experience the gift of a contemplative life. His explanation for why some people never experience this can be found in his book, New Seeds of Contemplation: [T...

Sometimes the most urgent and vital thing you can possibly do is take a complete rest

In his highly insightful work, Inside Job , Stephen W. Smith shares the importance of finding ways to rest and relax as part of a healthy, balanced life: I once read a book in which the author sa...

If you don’t come apart for a while, you will come apart after a while.

The missionary doctor Albert Schweitzer wrote in his memoir, “In everyone’s life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should...

Without a balanced approach to spiritual disciplines, we run the risk of cultivating a one-sided spirituality that will disintegrate under pressure from the part of us we have left undeveloped.

Every now and then go away, have a little relaxation, for when you come back to your work your judgment will be surer. Go some distance away because then the work appears smaller and more of it can be...

A typical response to threat and burden is to want to flee it. It’s evacuation as the cure for trouble. If only I could get away is our mantra. Then I would be safe. Then I could enjoy my life. But wh...

In this short excerpt, pastor and author Austin Fischer describes a surprising dynamic that sometimes occurs in the life of a Christian: believing so strongly in a loving God that one cannot fathom th...

I might not be the best person to be writing this.  After an eleven-year career in business in my twenties and early thirties, I’ve been an ordained pastor now for nearly twenty-seven years. There are...

One of the dangers of living in a constant state of distraction is that we never go to the bottom of our pain, our sadness, our emptiness, which means we never find that rock-bottom place of the peace...

In this tragic world, we are surrounded by discontented people. Every minute of the day, it is possible to see evidence of this restless discontentment in the way people respond to circumstances. Peop...