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I got saved when I was eight years old. It was 2:30 a.m. on a Sunday morning when I should’ve been sleeping, but God had other plans. Occasionally, I would stay up late so I could see my Dad after he worked second shift. This night, we played video games, ate pizza, and talked about Jesus. The late night concluded with me accepting Jesus into my heart. Research shows I’m not the only one to ask Jesus into my heart at such a young age.
According to Southern Nazarene University, 83% of American Christians get saved as children and early youth, with ages 4-14 being the most dominant age. Sadly, the likelihood of becoming a Christian only decreases with age. But today, I’d like to focus on something a little different: What happens when you’ve served God your whole life, but suddenly, you’re tired of the Christian grind? Showing up, serving, and believing are important to you, but you’re facing faith fatigue. How can we learn to find rest without walking away from what saved us and gave us life?
Meet Charles Stanley and imagine this scene.
You still go to church, but your heart and mind are on autopilot. You mean to be sincere, but typically feel out of it. Your social media is full of Bible verses, but you struggle to think they’re true for you. You indeed believe in God, but you’re too tired to pursue a deeper relationship with Him. Sound familiar?
As a Pastor, Charles was facing tremendous burnout. Weekly, he was in charge of the Sunday service and two other programs. After three hospital visits in one year, the doctors recommended that he take a step back and stop doing so much. Instead of listening, he convinced himself he couldn’t (and wouldn’t) stop. Charles was nearly on his deathbed when he realized this: “One of the primary reasons we suffer spiritual burnout is, we have a wrong view of the gospel.”
Everyone, to some extent, faces fatigue and weariness, spiritual or not. What I want you to know is that this isn’t about losing faith, being weak, or less than; it’s about feeling drained within faith. There’s a big difference between spiritual dryness and disconnection caused by our views about God versus ignoring and avoiding Him altogether.
If you’re feeling overcommitted, spiritually numb, and running on empty, I want to encourage you with two things: 1. You’re not the only one, and 2. Jesus doesn’t want you to live life this way.
Why Does Spiritual Burnout Happen?
As beautiful and transformational as the Christian faith is, sometimes we can get confused. We trade Paul’s words in Ephesians 2:8-9 for the pressure to perform. Instead of trusting that God saved us by His grace when we believed, we often treat faith like productivity. We check spiritual disciplines off our to-do list without another thought and move onward in the busyness of life. Has your quiet time, church attendance, and commitment to spiritual practices just become another check?
Even worse, while we’re called to bear one another’s burdens (Galatians 6:2), we’re running ourselves dry. We’re carrying everyone’s backpacks without setting limits, and then wonder why we’re so tired. So, what does Scripture show us about these things?
Growing spiritually tired is normal. Again, you’re not alone in this struggle. Elijah, Moses, and David all felt this way from time to time. Even Jesus often withdrew to rest. Spiritual burnout isn’t new or uncommon. But how to recover might sound like it.
How to Recover from Spiritual Burnout
Unlike Charles in the example I shared above, don’t wait to tend to yourself and your needs until you’re in the hospital and exhausted, on the edge of death. Burnout might not cause you to go brain dead, but it can certainly cause your mind to not function as properly as it should.
Psychology Today notes: “Burnout steals more than just your energy, it robs you of your intelligence and problem-solving. Burnout harms memory, focus, verbal skills, multitasking, impulse control, and executive functioning. Cortisol changes from burnout disrupt neurotransmitters, shrink the hippocampus, and reduce neuroplasticity. The cognitive decline from burnout can persist even after exhaustion symptoms improve.”
While there’s a lot of science behind burnout, today I want to give you some practical spiritual practices for recovery. Not things that sound good, but are spiritual fluff. No, here are real tools I’ve used in my own seasons of spiritual recovery: