Sermon Title: Spiritual Recovery: When I’m Running On Empty
Scripture: 1 Kings 19:1-14 ESV
Introduction
We’re continuing our series on Spiritual Recovery. The condition we’ll be looking at is called spiritual exhaustion or burnout, that feeling of running on empty until you feel like there’s nothing more to squeeze out of you, or like you’re burning the candle on both ends.
This is something experienced in all walks of life and not just in the church. But this is particularly true of anyone serving in ministry and in each person’s faith journey.
Spiritual burnout is not about not loving Jesus anymore, it’s about having poured out your own without properly being replenished. My prayer is that if you are feeling spiritually burnt out, that the Lord would heal you as we spiritually diagnose the life of the Prophet Elijah and recognize this condition in our lives and how God heals and restores us.
The Context
Elijah first appeared in chapter 17, kicking down the door of the palace and marching up to King Ahab. I don’t know how he got past the palace security, but he did. He’s there boldly in the power of the Spirit, delivers God’s word to King Ahab, and then he’s on the run as a fugitive from his own people.
This was a time of spiritual civil war between God’s people and those who followed the false pagan god Baal.
This spiritual civil war came to a direct confrontation on Mount Carmel in chapter 18 where Elijah faced off against 450 prophets of Baal. They set up altars with sacrifices, one for God and one for Baal, and whichever God answered by fire would prove to be the true God.
God sent fire from heaven. Elijah was victorious, God had been proven true in the sight of the Israelites and King Ahab, and God restored the rain He had stopped for many years. So it seemed to Elijah that things were about to change for the better.
We see this expectation when the hand of the Lord comes upon Elijah and he runs before Ahab all the way to Jezreel (1 Kings 18:46).
Running before Ahab is a reference to how attendants to a king would go ahead of the king to clear the way or announce the coming of the king. This entire time Elijah had been an enemy of King Ahab, but now Elijah is acting like Ahab’s servant, which shows us his hopes and expectations of a renewed Israel.
Elijah’s Diagnosis
But instead of repenting, Ahab goes sulking to his wife Jezebel. Jezebel sends a message to Elijah that she swears she will have Elijah dead by the next day, and Elijah becomes afraid and runs for his life (1 Kings 19:1–3).
In the past, this statement that he was afraid confused me. Remember, this is the Elijah who charged into Ahab’s palace surrounded by enemies. He faced off against 450 prophets of Baal. In the power of the Holy Spirit, he had seen God’s power supernaturally in his life up to this very moment.
He’s not a man that scares easily. What was he so afraid of?
First of all, just because you’re a person of great faith, it doesn’t mean you’re not afraid all the time. Not even if you’re Elijah.
However, his fear may not actually be the threat upon his life because he’s been there and done that. I think it was more about what Jezebel’s message implicated.
Despite this enormous victory, despite the signs of hope and good things to come, despite his expectations of a changed king, a changed nation and a transformed people, despite everything he had poured out his life for—nothing has changed.
And in one instant, all of that came crashing down upon Elijah’s head.
It was not just fear, but despair. Elijah sits underneath the broom tree and tells the Lord that he has had enough, asking God to take his life because he is no better than his fathers (1 Kings 19:4).
“I’ve had enough. I can’t take it anymore. It’s all over. I can’t do this anymore. I give up. This is hopeless. No matter what I do, nothing will ever change.”
We may not be fighting the same kind of fight as Elijah, but we too have our circumstances that cause us to become spiritually exhausted and burnt out.
Burnout can come when, like Elijah, you experience long and intense spiritual exertion where you are constantly pouring yourself out without being replenished.
Serving in ministry often involves enormous spiritual output: listening to others, caring for others, teaching, encouraging, resolving conflict, praying, organizing, carrying out responsibilities week in and week out, absorbing criticism, responding to emergencies. And all of these things are on top of whatever else may be going on in your life.
These are by no means bad things. They’re good. But when you are not replenished in your spirit, then you will find that you’re running on an empty tank.
Sometimes you’re in a mental and spiritual sprint, expending a lot of energy for a short period of time. You give it all you got because you think this won’t go on for a long time. But as time keeps going without any resolution or relief, what started as a sprint becomes a marathon that you are not equipped to endure.
Elijah had been on a sprint for years. Eventually, he hit his limit and collapsed during the marathon.
We also aren’t always aware of our God-given limits. We blur the lines between what God has called us to do and what people need us to do.
Because you have a heart to serve and help, you carry responsibilities you weren’t called to carry. Someone needs me. The church needs me. And even up to this point it is good, but then it crosses a line where you think, “If I don’t do this, no one will.”
Therefore, sometimes we can be dependent upon God but still fall into burnout because part of depending on God and receiving His provision is to stop.
And ministry can become our identity instead of our identity being in Christ. It becomes not about who I am in Christ but what I do in the church.
Low attendance? I’m failing. Someone leaves? I’ve failed. Someone criticizes me? Ministry isn’t growing? There’s something wrong with me. I’m not good enough.
Elijah says something similar when he says that he is no better than his fathers (1 Kings 19:4).
But God never said that to Elijah.
Elijah said it to himself.
We also see from Elijah that his expectations exceeded his reality. Whatever we do, whether it is inside or outside the church, in your schools or workplaces, we all sacrifice something. When we sacrifice, it’s difficult not to have expectations. But when those expectations are betrayed, we become disappointed and discouraged, which can make us vulnerable to burnout.
When vulnerable, you may begin to think and feel that you’re all alone, just like Elijah does when he tells God that he alone is left (1 Kings 19:10).
Of course, we know that what he says is not accurate. But we can see how spiritual burnout can distort our perspective and give us tunnel vision of our circumstances.
You get stuck in a cycle of being spiritually exhausted. You feel burdened. You feel all alone, like others don’t understand how you feel. You lose joy and serving God feels like work.
Burnout in the end occurs when finite people attempt to keep themselves sustained with a task that requires an infinite source. It is when we keep pouring out without depending on God to pour back into us.
And so Elijah gives up and runs away into the wilderness to die.
Funny thing about the wilderness: that’s where God’s people actually find life.
The Solution
So what does this mean for us? How does God help us recover from spiritual burnout?
The method through which God helps us recover is His presence.
And it was the presence of God that came to Elijah as he lay underneath the broom tree (1 Kings 19:5).
1. The first thing God does is allow us to rest.
God allows us to rest physically. To eat, to drink, and to sleep. Just as He designed us, because our bodies are connected to our spirit.
The amazing thing to me is that God doesn’t correct him, scold him, blame him, or question him about anything.
God never says, “How can you talk about dying and giving up? Is that the extent of your faith? I poured my favour upon you, I poured my Spirit and power upon you, and this is the best you can do?”
God never said any of these things to Elijah.
God’s first response to Elijah is simply His presence.
The angel of the Lord comes again, gives Elijah food, and tells him to eat because the journey is too great for him (1 Kings 19:7).
And that really is the whole point:
The journey is too great for you.
This journey, this walk of faith, is too great for us alone. It always was, it is, and it will be.
This is why, brothers and sisters, we need Jesus Christ. He is the eternal and infinite source whom we are to go to and be replenished daily as we pour ourselves out onto others.
Jesus tells us that He is the bread of life and that whoever comes to Him will not hunger (John 6:35). He also tells us that the water He gives becomes a spring of water welling up to eternal life (John 4:14).
2. God allows us room to speak honestly.
Having been strengthened by the food God provided, God leads Elijah forty days and nights to Mount Horeb, or Sinai, where Moses met with God for forty days and nights.
Elijah enters a cave, and God asks him, “What are you doing here?” (1 Kings 19:9).
God is not fishing for information. He is allowing Elijah to speak and to examine his heart.
What’s going on inside of you? How do you see this situation?
God is helping us to look deep within and helping us to pray.
Elijah makes his complaints to God. And it’s funny that Elijah ends up in a cave because right now his perspective is distorted and he has tunnel vision.
So God calls Elijah out of the cave to stand before Him.
3. God gives us a new perspective.
A powerful wind strong enough to destroy the mountain passes by, followed by an earthquake and then a fire, but the Lord is not in these things. Afterward comes the sound of a low whisper (1 Kings 19:11–12).
Sometimes it may be that you are searching for His presence in the places that you expect to find Him—in the wind, the earthquake and fire—searching and hoping to feel God through some powerful moment, sign or miracle.
But you may simply be missing Him because He is speaking to you through that still small voice.
Elijah recognizes God’s presence and goes out to meet with the Lord. They have the same dialogue where God asks him what he is doing there, and Elijah gives Him the same answer as before (1 Kings 19:13–14).
What we see here is that even though Elijah finds himself in the presence of God, his perspective still hasn’t changed.
And that is completely normal.
Instead, God addresses Elijah’s complaints and enlarges his field of vision with a new perspective.
God shows Elijah His plans: You say you are alone? There are still 7,000 who have not bowed their knee to Baal. Ahab and Jezebel want to kill you? I will take care of them. You’re the last prophet? Don’t worry, I’m raising another (1 Kings 19:15–18).
Elijah then gets up and walks in obedience to the Lord.
4. God gives us the body of Christ.
Lastly, the Lord gives us the body of Christ, your fellow brothers and sisters in Christ, to walk with you in your spiritual burnout.
Isolation is never the answer.
When you feel burnt out, like you’ve given everything you have and there is nothing more you can give, like there is nothing more you can do and there is no place for you to be—who decided that? You or God?
It may simply be that God is giving you a time of rest, to refuel, reequip and walk in obedience with renewed purpose according to God’s will and timing.
And to do this not alone, but surrounded with the people that God has given you in your life who love you, pray for you, appreciate you for who you are and not what you can do for the church.
Brothers and sisters, whether it’s through life groups, fellowship after service, or the various things we do as a church, may we as a family of Christ walk alongside each other in our seasons of spiritual burnout.
May we become the vessels through which the Holy Spirit speaks His still small voice. And may every encounter we have with God’s presence leave us sturdier and steadier than before, so that we may continue to walk this journey of faith being replenished by our Lord Jesus Christ day by day.
Reflection
Brothers and sisters, the Lord asked Elijah, “What are you doing here?”
And He asks the same question to us today.
This question can be asked in a different way:
Why are you relying on your strength and not mine?
I am the bread of life, the living water, the eternal and infinite source that never runs out.
So brothers and sisters, whether it’s ministry in the church or life out in the world, are you living by the power that comes from Christ the way we were created to be, being replenished daily by His presence?
For those of you who are in that season of burnout, the things that you hear in your heart—are those the words of God, or are they your own?
Brothers and sisters, may the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ refresh and refill your life, your spirit and your faith, so that you may once again rejoice and praise, knowing that your identity and place is in Christ.
