Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / February 26, 2023 | Beating Burnout - Rely on Me? Rely on Thee

Transcript

February 26, 2023 | Beating Burnout - Rely on Me? Rely on Thee · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Good morning.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's good to be back with you.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: Last week, Jim got us started on a brand new series.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: We finished 1 Corinthians.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: Last week, Jim got us started on a new series called Beating Burnout.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: With burnout kind of being that feeling that we have all experienced at one time or the other, sort of characterized by physical exhaustion, apathy, indifference, sometimes just a total lack of engagement.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: And it's normally characterized, or well, I should say, some of the experts would say that it is caused by an intense load of stress that's being unsuccessfully managed.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: But you and I both know that that's that's a little too simplistic, right?
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: Because it's not always about managing stress.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: It's not like you can just kick back and watch a football game or bake some cookies or whatever it is, and then you get over your hurdle.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: It's normally a serious life situation brought on by some kind of long-term problem, right?
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: And so whether that's happening in your job, in your family, in some other duty or responsibility that you've got, other relationships, you know that it's not as easy as just saying, okay, well, I need to find, you know, I need a good long weekend and then I can get over this hump.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: And so we wanted to look at this topic, look at it from a couple different ways, and see what it takes for those in the Bible to overcome burnout when it was affecting them, and how God walked them through that.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: Last week, right, we looked at the story of Elijah.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: Elijah, who was he was a prophet of the Lord, and uh, but he was under the reign of a wicked king and a wicked queen, Ahab and Jezebel.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: And he was sort of one of the few people, or at least he thought, that was fighting for the Lord's causes in Israel.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: And so he had these amazing moments, these literally mountaintop experiences on Mount Carmel, right?
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: Fighting the prophets of Baal.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: But then he thinks he's won, but he hasn't, and so he runs away, feeling defeated, like a total failure, and the Lord comes to him in that quiet, still voice and gives him rest.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: And that was sort of our first lesson last week, right?
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: Was that rest and rejuvenation is important.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: Taking care of our physical bodies is absolutely a part of overcoming burnout.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: And when we try and just put the pedal to the floor and go for as long as long and long as possible, and we do that without any rest, we know that we're heading towards burnout anyway.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: But oftentimes we can rest in the things that the Lord has for us and we can overcome burnout.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: So this morning we're going to be looking, though, at a different situation and a different solution to burnout.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: And if you would turn in your Bibles with me to Exodus 18, which is where we're going to be looking at the story of an individual we are going to be learning a lot about this spring as we head into the book of Numbers here in a couple weeks.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: We're going to be talking about Moses.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: Moses, um, just to get us up to speed, make sure we're all on the same page, right?
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: We are Exodus, we're in the second book of the Bible, right?
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: Moses has already brought the Israelites out of bondage, out of slavery, 400 years of it in Egypt.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: And so Moses, as their leader, has now brought them to the foot of Mount Sinai.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: Mount Sinai is going to be a really significant place for them, and we'll get to that here in a second.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: But really what we're looking at this morning is what was causing Moses to experience burnout.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so we'll start a couple verses in here, in verse 5, chapter 18.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: Moses' father-in-law, Jethro, along with Moses' wife and sons, came to him in the wilderness where he was camped at the mountain of God.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: He sent word to Moses, I, your father-in-law, Jethro, am coming to you with your wife and her two sons.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: So Moses went out to meet his father-in-law, bowed down, and then kissed him.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: They asked each other how they had been, and went into the tent.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: Moses recounted to his father-in-law all that the Lord had done to Pharaoh and the Egyptians for Israel's sake, all the hardships that had confronted them on the way, and how the Lord had rescued him.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: So you might recall in the story of Moses, right, he spent forty years in Egypt growing up in Pharaoh's house.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: And then he killed the Egyptian, right, for mistreating, uh beating the Israelite slave.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: And so he goes on the run.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: He's on the lamb, and he spends 40 years out in the wilderness then, right?
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: And it's at the end of those 40 years, when he's about 80, is when he sees the burning bush.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: But in that 40-year period where he was wandering in the desert, he was a shepherd, he met, he was around the area of Midian, and he met a woman named Zipporah, and they had two sons.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: And so Jethro is his father-in-law, as it says.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: But when it came time for Moses to go back to Egypt to, you know, the whole let my people go, all that stuff, right?
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: When it came time for him to do that, to emancipate the Israelite nation from 400 years of slavery, he left his wife and kids at home.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: He wanted to make sure that they would be protected, that they would be safe, and so he left them with their father, or their grandfather, rather.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: So now that he's come back, okay, he's got a whole train of Israelites, thousands of tens upon thousands, okay, an entire nation that has followed him.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: We've done the crossing of the Red Sea.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: The Egyptians have been defeated, and now we're sort of into this new chapter where he's dealing with a whole nation of people, okay?
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: And and um as he's doing that, he has brought them the first place that they go to is the foot of Mount Sinai.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: Mount Sinai is where Moses is going to go up and down a number of different times to receive the law that the Lord is going to present to him.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: The law that is going to be the defining characteristic of the Israelite nation, how they should be run for more than the next thousand years.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: And so Moses is here, and it is also there at the foot of Mount Sinai where some problems begin to spring up.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: As we go on, we see that first, though, this encounter with Jethro had a very positive tone.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: Jethro rejoiced over all the good things the Lord had done for Israel when he rescued them from the power of the Egyptians.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: Blessed be the Lord, Jethro exclaimed, Who rescued you from the power of Egypt and from the power of Pharaoh?
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: He has rescued the people from under the power of Egypt.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: Now I know that the Lord is greater than all gods, because he did wonders with the when the Egyptians acted arrogantly against Israel.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: Then Jethro, Moses' father-in-law, brought a burnt offering and sacrifices to God, and Aaron came with all the elders of Israel to eat a meal with Moses' father-in-law in God's presence.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: So what's interesting here is that Jethro is noted as being a priest of Midian, okay?
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: And Midian, if you keep going in the Old Testament, they don't always get along with Israel.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, they're normally enemies.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: And so the fact that Jethro is sort of coming here, it's a bit of a peace delegation.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's his son-in-law, true, but Moses is about to go through the land of Midian.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: And so Jethro comes, bringing his family.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: But the question becomes like, what was Jethro a priest of?
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: Because what happens here is what is really significant.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: That Moses greets Jethro, tells him all the things that the Lord has done in rescuing them, and then Jethro has this exclamation of faith.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: He says, Now I know that the Lord is greater than all gods because of what you told me that he has done.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: So Jethro kind of has this conversion moment, which is then evidenced in verse 12 when he brings out this burnt offering, right?
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: They are going to sacrifice to the Lord.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: So Jethro's there.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: He is kind of newly converted.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: We don't know if he's got the whole thing down yet.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: He's probably still got some idols back home that he's worshiping, but he understands the work that the Lord has done.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: And it's significant, right, the way that he found out about this information.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: Not only is it from Moses, but the way that it says that Moses was talking to him.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: Moses is going through all of the events that just happened.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: Jethro would be very familiar with the greatest nation in the world, Egypt, that was in his back door.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: And he's probably listening with bated breath as Moses is recounting all the different plagues and the things that happened so that God would bring them out.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: But Moses doesn't just tell Jethro about the events.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: He makes sure to connect it with the fact that God was the one who was doing it.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't just the fact that there was a plague or that Pharaoh said, Let me, you know, you can finally take them leave after the death of their firstborn.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: No, it was that God was working the entire time.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: That is going to be really important as we keep going on.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the next day, uh Moses has, bring your father-in-law to work day, okay?
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: The next day Moses sat down to judge the people, and they stood around Moses from morning until evening.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: When Moses' father-in-law saw everything he was doing for them, he asked, What is this you're doing for the people?
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: Why are you alone sitting as judge while all the people stand around you from morning until evening?
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: Moses replied to his father-in-law, Because the people come to me to inquire of God.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: Whenever they have a dispute, it comes to me, and I make a decision between one man and another.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: So Moses is sitting in the role of judge, and there are thousands upon thousands of people who are coming to him because wouldn't you know it?
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: The Israelites, after being saved from this 400 years of slavery and bondage and death, they come out and they are instantly upset with Moses.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: Where's our food?
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: Where's our water?
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: Where's our meat?
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: And in fact, many of them end up saying that they should actually go back to being slaves in Egypt because, hey, at least we had better food there.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: It's better than this manna stuff.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: And so Moses has got a lot of problems that he's dealing with.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: On top of that is all the bickering and fighting that happens when a bunch of people are, you know, hangry walking through the desert.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: So all of these individuals are coming to Moses.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: And here is where the burnout begins to happen, right?
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_00: Jethro is witnessing this situation.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: And the burden is upon Moses to impart to the nation of Israel the law and the way of God that they have simply forgotten.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_00: We have Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, right?
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: We have the patriarchs, but then we have the story that goes on in Egypt, where for 400 years they had been in bondage, they were still connected to the Lord, they were still worshiping him, they were still faithful to him to an extent, but they had forgotten many of the ways of God.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: And so each time somebody would come to Moses, it wasn't just handling the dispute.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_00: As it says there at the end, it comes to me and I make a decision between one man and another, I teach them God's statutes and laws.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: So on an almost individual basis, Moses is having to bring up and teach this nation of Israel what it means to follow after God.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's a heavy task, and it is he is furthermore burdened by the fact that he is the only one who is doing it.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: What you're doing is not good, Moses' father-in-law said to him.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: You can't do it alone.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_00: Now listen to me, I will give you some advice, and God be with you.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_00: You be the one to represent the people before God, and bring their cases to him.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_00: Instruct them about the statutes and laws, and teach them the way to live and what they must do.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: But you should select from all the people able men, God fearing, trustworthy, and hating, dishonest prophet.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: Place them over the people as commanders of thousands, hundreds, fifties, and tens.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_00: They should judge the people at all times.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: They can bring you every major case, but judge every minor case themselves.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: In this way you will lighten your load, and they will bear it with you.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: If you do this, and God so directs you, you will be able to endure, and also all these people will be able to go home satisfied.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: So here's what I think is funny about this passage is that Jethro came to work with Moses for one day.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_00: And instantly he was like, What you're doing is not good.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: Now, depending on your relationship with your in-laws, that you know, feedback might be interpreted differently.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: What you're doing is not good, Jethro says, but he has the utmost care for Moses in mind.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: Moses, I can see after like three hours of watching you deal with all these people, and I can see the line that is extending or the horde that is extending, right, out beyond, you're not going to be able to reach all of these people in one day.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: And there were a lot of problems that were actually coming about because of the way that Moses was handling this problem.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it's really relevant to say it's not that Moses was doing anything wrong, right?
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_00: He was teaching the people the word of the Lord, right?
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_00: He was trying to handle their disputes in a fair and a just way, and he had this system, probably the best system he could think of in the moment, to try and work through all of the problems.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_00: It probably didn't start out with a whole horde of people.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: It was the first individuals, you know, probably with Egypt still in sight, who had a problem about the marching order or something like that, and he handles that.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_00: And over and over and over it begins to build and build and build until he has a full day's worth of appointments and many, many, many people who can't even fit in his calendar.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_00: There are four problems that I think were leading to Moses' burnout.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: The first is that it says, Jethro says, the task is too heavy for you.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_00: Literally, the problem of judging the entire nation of Israel is too much for you to bear.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's not that you're weak, it's not that you're not talented or a gifted administrator.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: The task is simply too heavy for you to do on your own.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: Or at least it's too heavy for you to do on your own indefinitely.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: Second, the people were frustrated, and that should not be discounted.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_00: The fact is that because it was only Moses who was, you know, walking people through this situation, people were going away dissatisfied.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_00: They couldn't see Moses in a day.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_00: They would be waiting in line, they had gotten their ticket number, um, but they were never called.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_00: And so, because of that, there were conflicts that weren't being resolved, there were problems around.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: Third is Jethro recognizes whether it was happening or he's sort of forecasting and saying, eventually, Moses, you're gonna wear out.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_00: You are gonna burn out.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_00: You are not gonna be able to do this much longer.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_00: And that's gonna be a huge problem because you are the one leading the people through the deserts.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_00: You are the one before this time, they were just heading, I don't say, we'll get to this in numbers, but they had not yet begun to wander for 40 years.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_00: At this point, it is simply we are following the Lord and his path to the promised land.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: And they need a leader to do that.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_00: And Jethro says, You're not gonna be their leader very long if you keep doing this.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_00: Fourth, the plan was based on self-reliance.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: And it's again, I say I don't think that Moses was necessarily ignorant in this regard.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's probably just the beginning stages, it's the first stop that they had.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_00: But at the same time, we have to recognize that the problem here was that Moses was taking all the weight of the people, all the weight of the leadership, all the weight of the burden of the situation that was far too heavy for him, and he was the one wearing it solely upon his shoulders.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_00: And so, what does Jethro say?
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_00: Well, he says, you need to appoint other people to do it.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: You need to ask other people to help you out in this situation.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that we need to be careful, right, that like the main takeaway from this is not that delegation is how we get out of burnout.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_00: There are a number of situations that could have worked so that Moses would be able to come out of this, right?
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_00: This is the situation that Jethro and his wisdom suggested.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_00: What I want to point to, though, is the far greater lesson, which is the fact that both Moses and Jethro recognize that the Lord is the one that they are going to for their strength.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: If you look back at this passage, you see the number of times that God is mentioned, right?
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_00: Even before this, when Moses was telling Jethro about how they got out of Egypt, right, and every single thing is the Lord did this, the Lord did this.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the Lord provided the solution.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_00: The circumstances that were surrounding Pharaoh and bending him so that he would eventually let these people go and be free, God brought about each of those circumstances.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_00: And so it is in Moses' mind, it is in Jethro's mind now, as he was so impressed, right?
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_00: The reason he converted to faith is because he says, wow, how great is God that he did all of these things in Egypt.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_00: So now we take it to this situation, and we have to maintain that same thought.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_00: It is the Lord who is working in their life.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: It is the Lord who is bringing about this situation, it is the Lord who cares for Moses, it is the Lord who wants to see him avoid burnout, it is the Lord who provides a solution, and Moses is simply wise enough to recognize that Jethro is the conduit that it's being delivered through.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_00: And so I think it's good for us, right, to keep in mind how we are so often falling into the same footsteps of Moses.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: We find a situation that is far too heavy for us.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes we've brought it upon ourselves, and sometimes it just hits us straight smack in the face, and we just have to deal with it.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_00: But we find a situation that's too heavy for us.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_00: People, the people around us who see us walking through this by ourselves, they begin to grow frustrated and irritated.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_00: That's probably especially true if this is some kind of workplace conflict, or you know, maybe you're have a boss that you can't stand at a job that you desperately need, and people are becoming weary because somebody is experiencing burnout.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_00: Not to mention you're becoming weary.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_00: But then ultimately, and this is where the main part of our lesson today is coming from, is that at the foundation, one of the problems with burnout is that we are always trying to solve the problems by ourselves.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_00: We are always trying to find the solutions and the ways out, the pathways by ourselves.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_00: And it might be that we're asking other people for their help.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_00: It might be these kinds of things, but we're simply looking on a horizontal plane.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_00: And what I'm saying that Moses through Jethro was doing is he's looking on a vertical plane.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_00: That is really our point.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_00: Moses listened to his father-in-law and did everything he said.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_00: So Moses chose able men from all Israel and made them leaders over the people, as commanders of thousands, hundreds, fifties, and tens.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_00: They judged the people at all times.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_00: They would bring the hard cases to Moses, but they would judge every minor case themselves.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_00: Moses let his father-in-law go, and he journeyed to his own land.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_00: And that is where that is the system that they end up running with from then on.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_00: This was a change that Moses made, and because of it, because he recognized that the Lord was the one who was working through Jethro, because the Lord was the one who is directing him, he was able to avoid this burnout.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_00: So what do we take away from this story?
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_00: Well, in order to beat burnout, you have to rely on God instead of yourself.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_00: And you might hear that and say, well, that I don't know, Connor, that's kind of a pithy statement.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_00: Like, well, of course I need to rely on God.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_00: The problem is that we often walk into burnout, and then we are f we recognize that we're in it, and then we come to this point, if we've known Christ, right, and we understand our relationship with him, we say to ourselves, okay, well, now I should go to God.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_00: I should rely on him.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_00: But the failure that we make is then we expect that because we have sort of completed this transaction, okay, Lord, I come to you.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_00: Now what's the solution?
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_00: Give me the solution.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_00: Where's my Jethro?
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_00: Where's my and we have this anticipation, not so much that we can just trust on God to get us through the situation, but rather that God is going to lay out this like eight-step framework plan to bring us out of whatever it is that we're going through.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_00: And then when that does not immediately happen, when our burnout is not immediately resolved or within, as we would think, a reasonable time frame, then we become dissatisfied with God.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_00: Then we become frustrated with him because we say, God, where where are you in the midst of what I'm going through?
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_00: How is it that you can say that I can trust on you and you're not immediately delivering me from my situation?
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_00: We end up having a transactional relationship with God.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_00: Like we have given him attention, and therefore he is supposed to give us a solution.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_00: And friends, God is not a vending machine.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_00: We can't shake him and expect something to roll out the bottom, right?
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_00: In order to beat burnout, you have to rely on God instead of yourself.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_00: And that trust has to simply be based on the fact that you know that the problem, the situation that you're in, is too heavy for you, that you cannot do it on your own, but God is big enough to handle your problem.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_00: The means in which He will handle your problem, leave that up to Him.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_00: It could come in many, many different ways.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_00: So, what does this look like in practical terms?
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Some of you might uh if you were here last week, you heard Jim mention that I was excuse me, I was down in Florida because my wife's grandfather, Francis Gardner, turned 100 years old, okay?
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_00: And uh he was a pilot on a B-17 bomber in World War II.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_00: He was specifically a tail gunner over in the European theater.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I want to share with you um, we were going through some of his things, right?
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_00: And um he he had a journal, a diary that he had written to his wife, and he was explaining one of the situations that he had encountered while he was over um fighting in Europe.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_00: And I want you, as I read this story to you, and uh, you have to forgive me, I'm gonna need to read it here, I don't have this memorized, but the I want you to be thinking about what it means to be somebody who is facing a situation that is far too heavy for them to endure on their own, and how he chose to rely on God instead of himself, and what that looked like.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_00: It was soon afterwards, I was traveling to my last camp in the States and on my way to England to join other airmen for the Battle of the Skies over Europe.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_00: I was taking Jesus with me and was going to put my trust in him forever.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_00: I remember one morning in May 1944, our crew went to the briefing room to receive information for the day's mission.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_00: It was the Big B, as we called it.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, this was Berlin, Germany.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_00: One could hear pin drop, and then chills and fear would run through our bodies because we knew that danger and a possible death was ahead.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_00: I knew that there was one answer for a safe mission, and that to trust in Jesus and commit the day's mission to my Lord, that he would be with me all the way, and that his will be done.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_00: The time came for takeoff, and our plane was soon into the air and onward to bomb the enemy from the sky.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_00: Two and a half hours passed, and our ship was in formation and the planes ready to cross into enemy territory.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_00: I took time out from my work back there in the tail of the plane to talk to Jesus, that he would ride with me and guide us all on our trip in the air.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_00: I love my Lord and knew that Jesus would go with me all the way.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_00: It was not too long when a few miles away from Berlin and one could see the flak coming up as the men looked for enemy fighters.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_00: The flak was breaking all around us as the bomb bay doors came open.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_00: Any moment now the signal for the bombs to go down would be given.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_00: A few seconds passed and bombs away.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_00: The anti-aircraft fire was getting closer, and ships were being hit and going down in flames in a matter of seconds.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_00: The flak had broken up our formation, our plane was hit, and one of our engines knocked out.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_00: Then fighter attacks coming in at all angles.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_00: Our plane was losing altitude, and we had to leave the other planes and go by ourselves.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_00: Soon our ship was attacked by fighters coming head on.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_00: The gunners in the nose fought them off, and two enemy fighters went down.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_00: Things were plenty hot and the earth was five miles below.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_00: I realized only Jesus could help us as we were alone in the sky, fighting for life.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_00: The enemy had got one engine, and now a twenty millimeter shell hole was in our wing, big enough for a jeep to drive through.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_00: And then another engine went out.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_00: A fighter came around the tail, and I had to trust God to help me beat the enemy with my two machine guns.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_00: I cried to Jesus for help as he came closer, and I opened up and he went plunging down to the earth.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_00: Soon we had done away with the enemy, and our problem was to get back to base, get back to our base in England, about 600 miles away with a crippled plane.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_00: The tears rolled down my face as I called on God for help.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_00: I then pushed the interphone button and told the fellows I was asking God for help.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_00: They told me if I ever prayed hard to do it now.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_00: I prayed and trusted God all the way.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_00: The Bible says Jesus saves.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, the Lord brought us over many miles of water and back to our base in England.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_00: I knew God to be closer than a brother, dearer than a friend, and knew that all things are possible with God.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_00: I love my Savior more than ever for a near miracle in the wild blue yonder during a combat mission over Germany.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_00: So for a teenager fighting Nazis, right?
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_00: The situation is too heavy to handle by himself.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_00: And so what does Francis do?
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_00: But he goes to the only one that he knows can handle that situation, and it's his Lord.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_00: So you might say, well, is that burnout though, right?
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_00: How how long did they have to deal with that?
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_00: Well, this was 30 combat missions that he went on with his team.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_00: This is uh, these are actually the uh, he wrote this down on a one-pound note, and you'd see um Berlin here, that's what we just read about.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_00: But then his second to last one, it says invasion, and that was D-Day.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_00: 30 missions over four months.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_00: What was the outcome?
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_00: He said this as a tail gunner, if anyone came on in on the tail, I'd get shot at.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_00: I never got injured.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_00: There were ten of us.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_00: We all started together and finished together, and nobody was wounded and nobody was killed.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_00: It was a miracle.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_00: The guys used to say the plane came back in one piece because I was the preacher.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_00: I figured it was all part of my job.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_00: We wanted to take care of the Germans and get the war over with.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_00: I did a lot of praying back then.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_00: So Francis, you would not be surprised, ended up becoming a pastor.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_00: And this was the story, though, that he would tell, amongst many others.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_00: I picked one story, right?
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_00: But what is so amazing to me about this is that no matter the situation that was coming up there, it was just too heavy.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_00: And he wasn't going to God, you know, anticipating some specific way that the Lord was going to help him.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_00: He just said, Lord, this is too much for me.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_00: And when the enemy is bearing down, he just yelled out to Jesus.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_00: I think that it's so important for us to recognize what it means to truly rely on God and not just rely on him because we think something's going to happen, right, as this transaction, but to truly rely on him and have faith that he is going to come out.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_00: He is going to handle our situation.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_00: And here's the truth: is that I don't know how your situation, how your burnout is going to be solved.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_00: There are thousands of different ways in which you could become burnout, and even more thousands of ways in which the Lord can fix your situation.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_00: What I do know is that the Lord is big enough to handle whatever problem you're going through.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_00: I do know that the Lord can handle the heaviness of your situation, and if you choose to rely exclusively on yourself to get out of this situation, you're going to get burnt out and grow weary.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_00: And the people around you are going to get burnt out and grow weary.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_00: And ultimately, you're going to suffer physically, you're going to suffer emotionally, and you're probably going to suffer spiritually.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_00: Because you know if you're in burnout, one of the main signifying marks of it is that you feel a whole lot of indifference and apathy.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_00: You just say, What's the point anymore?
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_00: I've been going through this situation for so darn long that I can't see the end in sight.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I'm sure when Moses was looking at the people and the line of hundreds of individuals that he was never going to get to, he needed somebody to come along and say, Hey, maybe there's a different way here.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_00: We need to trust on the Lord to be able to handle our situation.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_00: So, in summary, I would say there are many ways that the Lord is going to fix and help you walk through your burnout.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe he is going to bring a jethro into your life, somebody who can give you wise counsel, somebody who can give you a very practical solution to this, in Moses' case, logistical problem that was present.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe that's how the Lord's going to do it.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe, like last week, the Lord is going to come alongside you and give you an almost supernatural kind of rest.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_00: Something to help you through a hot bread and a nap, like he did for Elijah, so that you could continue on to finish the mission.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_00: Or maybe what the Lord is going to provide for you is simply the faith, an amazing faith, to be able to trust that he's going to get you through to the other side whenever that is.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's what I see in the story of Francis.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_00: God got him through, and he wasn't particularly concerned with how it happened, but he trusted on the Lord the entire way.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_00: So as we close this morning, um, I actually wrote out a prayer that I think um sort of encapsulates all of this.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_00: And so I'm going to read the prayer, and I would encourage you to just kind of, in your mind, read along with me and think about your own situation.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, this situation is too heavy for me to handle on my own.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_00: I am tired, weary, and I need help.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_00: I know that you are the only one who can truly provide relief because you are bigger than all of my problems.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_00: I am guilty of relying on myself far more often than I rely upon you.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, whether your aid comes in the form of my own jethro, an amazing faith, or some other means, I trust that my problem is best left in your mighty hands.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_00: Will you give me encouragement to endure this hardship?
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_00: Will you protect me from weariness, heartache, and discouragement?
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, thank you.
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_00: I think that this is the kind of attitude that we need to have.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_00: And so my encouragement to you is that if you're in this period of burnout, maybe you can see, like Jethro saw to Moses, that you're heading towards it, that you would already begin to start developing that relationship with God that says, I trust in you full stop.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_00: I don't trust in you because I anticipate a solution, even though I have faith that it will come.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_00: I trust in you full stop because I know that you are good and you are mighty and you can handle it and you will.
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_00: That is the level of faith that we need to have in God.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_00: And that is the thing that will help us to beat burnout.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father, we come before you one more time, and I simply say, Lord, please help us.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_00: Please help us as we're walking through burnout.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_00: Please help us as we are trying and often have been trying our hardest to simply pick ourselves up by our bootstraps and get it done.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_00: Except, Lord, that's not enough.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_00: The situation is too heavy.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's too much, and we can't bear it on our own.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, I pray that you would help us by the power of your spirit to have this kind of faith that Francis had, to have the kind of faith that Moses and Jethro had, to be able to say, Lord, we trust in you.
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_00: Whatever the solution is, Lord, we trust that you're going to bring it.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_00: And Lord, even if the solution doesn't look like what we planned, we still trust in you.
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_00: Father, it is weak of us to rely upon ourselves.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yet it is in our weakness, Lord, your strength is shown when we rely upon you.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_00: God, we love you and we thank you.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's in Jesus' name we pray.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks, everybody.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_00: Have a great week.