Experiencing Burnout (Part 2)

In my previous blog, I talked about two reasons we experience burnout in our leadership. This blog covers a final, and very important, cause of burnout.

3. The (perceived) demands on you are greater than your (perceived) resources

This is tricky because on one hand we need to know our limits as leaders, but on the other hand the situations Jesus calls us to often initially push us past our limits to trust God.

“I’m sending you out like lambs among wolves.” Luke 10:3
“Don’t take a moneybag or knapsack.” Luke 10:4
There are 5,000 people, 5 loaves and 2 fishes and Jesus looks at the disciples and says, “You give them something to eat.” Mark 6:37

Seems like Jesus has big demands when there doesn’t seem like much resource. However, the promise of God is to be with us…always. And if He is for us, who can be against us? What demand is there on earth that heaven does not have a resource for?

The truth is God wants in this place of insufficiency. He wants to take us to the end of our rope to show us the beginning of His. Abraham was approached by God to be the father of multitudes at age 75 when it was highly improbably, but then didn’t follow through on the promise until 25 years later when it was impossible.

“It is not God’s intention that we should be in ourselves adequate to our tasks, rather He wants that we should be inadequate. If we only accepted tasks that we think that are adapted to our powers, we are not responding to the call of God. This church is always in a crisis and always will be. Difficulties, problems, lack of people and money, a menacing outlook, endless misunderstandings and misrepresentations. We are not just suppose to go forward despite these things, they are precisely the conditions requisite for the doing of them.” – Tim Keller

Questions for reflection

What are you pursuing that are good ideas and what are you pursuing that are God ideas? Ask God for wisdom on what you should let go of. 
What God ideas are you relying on your own strength to accomplish? Spend time leaning into God’s strength.