Ep.1117: How Do I Avoid Burnout? (Part II)
Finding the biblical pathway that leads us away from burnout
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CHAPTERS
Theme Scripture: Job 10;1
Burnout is nasty. As we found out in Part I of our two-part series, it can demoralize and diminish the efforts and quality of care from medical professionals and first responders. But it doesn't stop there. Even though the rest of us may not have other’s lives in our hands, burnout is more than capable of continuing to ruin lives...if we let it. The good news about this ever-growing and worrisome phenomena is that it can be handled. For regular people who get overly inundated with the unrelenting pressures of work, family and social issues, there are answers. Or, if we find ourselves feeling like we are drowning under the weight of Christian responsibilities, there are answers. The really good news is these answers have both biblical and medical foundations!
Our focus on burnout in medical professionals and first responders in Part I gave us a foundation. Part II continued building by focusing on you and me and the daily challenges we encounter through our jobs and life experience. We saw the exact same debilitating process at work.
Oour burnout heroes: Moses and Elijah
There is no better way to understand this power of burnout than to see it displayed in the life of some of your heroes. If they can be debilitated by its affects, then we are certainly vulnerable as well. Moses and Elijah were two Old Testament heroes of faith who stood head and shoulders above the people of their time. Moses triumphantly delivered over two million people out of slavery. He did it through faith, obedience and courage. They literally walked away from their captivity. Elijah faced off with an evil king, stood alone against 450 prophets of the false god Baal and walked away with a resounding victory for the one true God.
We love the heroism of these stories. What we often don’t pay attention to is the stories after these victorious events. God would continue to require more of these leaders, and they both experienced burnout in the aftermath. n fact, in the depths of their burnout experiences, both Moses and Elijah even despaired of life. This really shows us how insidious burnout can be. It can creep into and take over the lives of the most powerful, faithful and courageous heroes.
Lessons to fight back
The experiences of Moses and Elijah teach us profound lessons to help us fight back against burnout. Some of those lessons have to do with understanding our limitations and being open to receiving the right kinds of help. These things may sound easy to do, but they are the exact opposite. Observing the stories of our two heroes makes this challenge plain. When in the throes of fighting burnout, we become blind and deaf to the solution-oriented things around us. All we are capable of seeing is what our own mind is open to and what our own eyes can observe.
Check out our March 16, 2020 podcast, “How Do I Avoid Burnout? (Part II)” for more. There are concrete answers to this serious dilemma and we list them out. Moses and Elijah show us even higher levels of heroism as they each overcame their burnout experience. Don’t miss how this is done!
I work to avoid burn out I want to always be just as excited as I was in the the beginning about God and all the things He has done., Jesus and the Holy Spirit.
Thank you for your comment. Hopefully our 2-part series on Burnout has provided practical ideas and lessons from the Bible to help maintain zeal and passion without burning out. – Christian Questions