Burned Out? Overwhelmed? Tap Into the Strength That Never Fails

[Charity] beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. Charity never faileth (1 Corinthians 13:7–8a).

Something that goes along with being patient is not quitting.

And that goes back to your relationship with the Lord. Because God doesn’t have any quit in Him, if you are truly in fellowship with Him, there shouldn’t be any quit in you either.

God is never bummed out. The Lord is never wringing His hands, thinking, There’s no way I can solve this problem. So, if you feel like you just can’t take it anymore and you’re ready to quit, that’s an indication that you aren’t really in fellowship with the Lord. You’re more focused on the problem than you are on the problem solver.

In these verses, when the Apostle Paul is talking about “charity,” he’s talking about the characteristics of God’s kind of love. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things. God’s kind of love never fails.

That means if you say, “I just can’t bear any more of this,” you are actually saying that God’s kind of love is not working in you. God’s kind of love can bear anything. If you don’t believe that things will work and you’ve lost hope, you aren’t operating in God’s kind of love. You’re operating out of your own flesh.

If you aren’t plugged into the Lord, you aren’t drawing on His power. But if you are really in relationship with God, He infuses you with the kind of love that bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things, and never fails. That’s because the Holy Spirit gives you supernatural strength to overcome.

The spirit of the Lord came upon Samson, and he would perform all these feats of strength like carrying away the city gates. If you ever see movies about Samson, they portray him as a big guy who looks like a bodybuilder. But if you read the Bible, it says that people wanted to know what his secret was.

If Samson had been this massive hunk of muscle, nobody would have wondered what his secret was. It’s more likely that he had an average physical build, but he could do these supernatural things. There was an anointing on his life that enabled him to do it.

If what you are doing is truly ordained of God—meaning, you heard from the Lord and you’re just obeying Him—you will be infused with supernatural strength. For example, when David was a young shepherd, I believe an anointing came on him when he killed the lion and the bear with his bare hands. (1 Sam. 17:34–36).

Some people may think he used a sling, like he did with Goliath. But the Scripture says he took a lion by the beard. How could a teenager overpower and kill a lion? It was the spirit of might that came upon him.

A Spirit of Might

He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might he increaseth strength (Isaiah 40:29).

Through a spirit of might, you can do things you wouldn’t be able to do in your own strength. I’ve had things happen to me that I look back on and think, How in the world did I ever do that? But it was because I was in communion with God and His presence manifested in my life.

The Bible says, “as thy days, so shall thy strength be” (Deut. 33:25). If you come into a crisis situation, the Lord will just anoint you. If you are really in fellowship with God the way you should be, there won’t be any quit in you. That’s because the Holy Spirit will rise when things seem hopeless, and you will have a supernatural ability to respond.

A person who is burned out and ready to give up isn’t plugged into the Lord. There is no lack of power in God. As Christians, that power is available to us, but we aren’t drawing on it. For example, I’ve heard that 80 percent of all people who enter the ministry quit within five years. And of the 20 percent who stay, 80 percent are nearing burnout.

That means only 4 percent of ministers last more than five years and are still thriving, instead of just surviving. That’s a terrible statistic, but I can believe it’s true. I’ve seen countless ministers come and go and others struggle just to keep their noses above water.

It’s not because they aren’t doing good things. It’s that they are doing those things in their own strength. They’re trying to meet the needs of people out of their own strength and ability. One of the tricks of Satan is to get people so busy doing ministry that they don’t have time for God.

Since 1968, when the Lord touched my life, it’s been rare that I’ve gone a day without getting in the Word of God and spending time in fellowship with the Lord. Recently, more demands have been put on me because of our television network. My recording schedule has tripled, which means I’m busier than ever. At some point, I realized that I’d gone two days without opening my Bible except to minister the Word. That’s not healthy!

I had to tell my staff that we needed to slow down. They were shocked, but I had to put my relationship with God first. I need to fellowship with Him on a daily basis. And I really believe that’s why I have kept going strong all these years. There’s nothing special about me. I just recognize that I can do nothing without God and His strength.

The Need for Rest

And he said unto them, Come ye yourselves apart into a desert place, and rest a while: for there were many coming and going, and they had no leisure so much as to eat (Mark 6:31).

God never intended the ministry to be tough on people. If you think about it, most people would never take a job where they’re on call twenty-four hours a day. And yet, I can name many ministers who haven’t taken a vacation in years.

They work all day long, serving people. Then, they wake up in the middle of the night to take a phone call from someone seeking ministry. They just have to be available all of the time. And it’s a good desire to minister to people, but they aren’t putting limits on themselves.

Remember, pastors are a gift from God to the church (Eph. 4:11– 13). But that’s not always the way people treat them. I heard about a pastor who hadn’t taken a vacation in seven years. He had scheduled a week off, loaded his family in the car, and as he was locking the front door, he heard the phone ring.

His wife told him not to answer it. This was in the days before mobile phones, so he could have just left, and nobody would have been able to contact him. But this pastor said, “I’ve got to answer it because it could be urgent!” As it turned out, the chairman of the deacons’ board had died and it was the church calling to say, “Pastor, we need you.” So, this man canceled his family vacation and stayed to minister to the people.

Sometime later, I was speaking to a ministers’ group in Colorado Springs about the need to rest. I told them they had to put limits on themselves as leaders and take time off. I used the example of Jesus, who called His disciples apart into a desert place to rest for a while (Mark 6:31–32).

After hearing those things, the minister who had canceled his family vacation returned to his church and told them, “From now on, Monday is my day off. I don’t care what’s happening. I don’t care if someone dies! I am not available. You can call somebody else in the church.”

As you can imagine, that caused no small stir. Afterward, a woman came up to this man and said, “Pastor, the devil never takes a day off.” So, he responded, “Well, if I don’t take a day off, I’m going to be just like the devil!”

You see, a leader can only run on an empty tank for so long. You can’t give from what you don’t have. If you don’t take time to rest and draw on your relationship with the Lord, you’ll get frustrated, burned out, and be tempted to quit. But like God, a godly leader doesn’t have any quit in them.