Mike Novotny - Burned Out? Physically
Burnout in Our Culture
It struck me the other day that you and I live in a culture that sets us up, chews us up, and then burns us out. I’m not just trying to be weak and whiny; I was actually thinking about the time in which you and I live compared to other times in the past. If you’re not watching from some distant country or culture, I’ve been thinking about the place and the culture in which you and I are living.
I think when you combine those two things, you might agree with me that you and I live in a time and place that sets us up, chews us up, and then burns us out. A culture where we’re not just busy, but as the average American says, «I’m busy, busy, busy.» You have to say it three times for it to count. Where there are not just occasional periods where we’re rushing and behind and kind of overwhelmed with everything on the to-do list—that’s not the exception. For a lot of us in the room today, that’s become the norm. The stress of having lots to do turns into the anxiety of «What if I can’t do all this?» which turns into feeling overwhelmed: «I’m never going to get this done, » which then leads to burnout for both body and soul.
The Recipe for a Burnout Culture
Now, I say that because I think you and I live in a culture that has the perfect recipe to burn people out. If you’re watching at home or here live, I’d love for you to grab a pen and write these three things down. Here’s what I think is the recipe for a burnout culture.
1. Modern Culture
First of all, we live in a modern culture. You might not think of this because you live within it, but in the days of Moses or in the days of Jesus or in the days of George Washington, before there was the light bulb and the laptop, most of life was governed by the simple rhythms that God built into creation.
There was day, there was night, there was light when you could do your work, and there was darkness when you couldn’t. There were times when you would walk to talk to other people, and when you went back to your home, you were physically separated. Most people didn’t violate that physical separation. If you were a farmer, when sunset came, there wasn’t much farming to do. But oh, how times have changed! First, Thomas Edison gave us the light bulb, so we weren’t bound by light and darkness. Then, people invented the internet and the laptop, so work didn’t exactly have to stay at work.
If you wanted to talk with your boss, you didn’t have to wait until Monday morning; you grab your cell, you text, you grab your laptop, and you email. The boundaries and the barriers that prevent burnout are totally off in a modern culture. How many of you own smartphones? If you do, your manager, your pastor, your brother, your sister, your son, your daughter, your mother, your father, your next-door neighbor, and a million marketers can call you, text you, ring you, ding you, ping you, and DM you to get your attention. When you think it’s your day off, it’s never your day off as long as that device is in your hand. Welcome to the modern world.
Then COVID happened, and more and more of us who used to leave work at work now shifted our work to our home. Before, when all the papers and the stuff and the device where you do your work were far away on the other side of town, now it’s in your office, which is in your home. The modern world has made it so easy to work all the time and so difficult to actually step away and rest. If that weren’t enough, then there are these devices, which convince us that rest looks like sitting down and scrolling. Based on everything the neurologists and our doctors tell us, it’s not actually good for providing peace and rest. Rest for our hearts—internet use and social media increases, if not skyrockets, levels of anxiety and depression.
You put all this together in the modern world, and you and I, what most humans, what Jesus himself didn’t have to deal with, we deal with every single day: no barriers, no boundaries, just constant work and a very rare ability to truly rest.
2. American Culture
Combine that with the American culture. Not every culture shares America’s passion, idolatry for bigger and better and progress and profit. I just read a study that the average American worker, in a year, compared to the average German worker, works 435 more hours a year. Forgive the stereotype, but I’ve never thought of the Germans as lazy. But the average American puts in 10 more weeks of full-time work compared to the average Japanese worker. The average American worker puts in 169 more hours every single year. You live in it; you don’t realize it.
Other countries have huge policies with maternity and paternity leave; not in America. Others have huge cultural times where people don’t work; they take holidays; not in America. We work because we want bigger, and we want better. I recently read a study showing that in the 1950s, the average American family was bigger than the average American family today; they had more kids. But on average, that family lived in a home that was—ready for this? —935 square feet. Have you ever driven around the original downtown of a city and seen the one-car garage and the small home? That was what bigger families than ours used to live in. But welcome to America; things get bigger. Now we need, you know, a two-car garage, or three, or the stuff doesn’t fit. Now we need the shed in the back for all the toys. We need the walk-in closet—not just our own. Who has enough closets? We have more storage units than we know what to do with, right? We’ve accelerated our need for consumption and materialism, and in the process, we’ve had to work more and more hours to afford it, to fit into it, to fill it, to pay for it, and to care for it.
This is the American culture. But it’s not just our houses; actually, it’s the callings that we have in life. A hundred years ago, what was expected of a pastor? You preached the Bible, you showed up when someone had a question or was sick; yep, that has gotten bigger. Now, there’s the church website and the church social media, and you’ve got to make videos, and you’ve got to edit this, and you’ve got to do this, and you’ve got to know how to do YouTube and Facebook ads, and reach your community, and have events, and trunk or treat, and Christmas and Easter and the stuff for the kids, and the Sunday school, and the teen group, and the mom’s group, and all the other groups. I bet that’s happened to you too. A hundred years ago, what would your profession have been? I would not want to be a couple about to get married in modern America. I mean, the expectations of what you need to do to plan a wedding—I would not want to be a new mom in modern America, where just being a mom is looked down on by some people. It’s like you have to have a side hustle on Etsy or a part-time job or a full-time job, or you’re not pulling your weight as an American woman.
We live in just a culture that pushes and pushes and pushes. Students can’t just be students now; they need language credits and music lessons. Kids used to be like 1% of athletes in traveling clubs; now every kid is in a club and goes to a camp and has to fiercely compete just to make the varsity team. Sports are different; music is different; motherhood is different; ministry is different; everything is different. Welcome to America.
3. Christian Culture and Personality
Finally, many of us are part of a Christian culture. And in America, that Christian culture has gotten bigger and faster too. We encourage people to come to church, right? Take time to work on your faith and read your Bibles—not just once in a while, but every single day, maybe at the start of the day and at the end of the day. Prayer is valuable, fasting can be valuable, journaling can be valuable. Oh, you should volunteer; get a T-shirt that says «You First.» And speaking of that, put other people first, serve your neighbor— which one of your neighbors? Both of your neighbors? All of your neighbors? Everyone is your neighbor, right? Jesus was sacrificial and selfless, and he served people, so if you’re going to be a Christian, you should be sacrificial and selfless and serve people. Say yes when someone needs help; if someone’s on the side of the road, stop and fix their tire; if your mother needs someone to move her furniture, go help and honor your mom.
There are all these commands, all these to-dos; we think that’s what Christian culture looks like. Modern plus American plus Christian equals… but I didn’t give the worst part. The worst part is the way some of you are wired. It’s a good part of your personality that, without real intention, can go too far and burn you out. How many of you are sitting next to someone who’s fairly compassionate? There are a few. In a time of need, compassionate people are amazing, and compassionate people have a hard time saying no, don’t they? It’s like your heart hurts so much for people who are hurting that you want to be there for him or her. You want to take, you know—not everyone is going to show up, but you want to be the one that shows up. And now, in a digital age, when everyone can ring you and ding you and ping you and on Facebook and Instagram, you see everyone’s problems, you overextend yourself, and there’s just not enough energy in your body or hours in the day.
How many of you are sitting next to someone who’s really responsible? They say they’re going to do something; they do it, right? Yeah, now that’s dangerous because you get interrupted by extra things, but now you’ve committed to all these previous things, and you can’t say, «I’m sorry, just life got too busy; I’m going to have to back out.» That’s anathema; it’s like to be damned—you say, «I just have to follow through; I have to be a person of my word.» How many of you are sitting next to someone who’s competitive? This is the person who got really grouchy when they lost at the board games over Christmas. Yeah, competitive people, like me, love to compete; we love to push; we love to excel; we love to set records and make resolutions and then break them. That means there’s always the next level to get to. You read 10 books last year; how about 15 books? How about 20 books? How about two books a month? How about a book every single week? There’s always more and bigger and better things to do.
You see, because of your personality, or the year that we live in, or the place that we live in, there is a current that is moving so fast in modern culture that unless you swim against it, it will burn you out. It will fill up your schedule and beyond; it will push you past the point where you want to be.
Why Burnout Matters for the Soul
Here, as a pastor, is why that matters so much to me. I’ve noticed in my life, and I’ve noticed in a lot of your lives, that when you are burned out, exhausted, and overwhelmed, you are rarely like Jesus, right? You can make it to church; you can squeeze in the Bible reading and the religious stuff, but are you joyful like Jesus? Do you have the peace of God that Jesus had? Are you patient and kind? In my experience, it doesn’t matter how much you go to church or how much you read your Bible; if you are overcommitted, it is so hard to produce the fruit of the Spirit.
Right? Same Christian goes to a very important meeting one day, and she’s 15 minutes early. She goes to the same meeting another day, and she is 5 minutes late. In which situation is she bound to be more like Jesus? When that sweet old lady is driving 17 miles an hour or honoring the school zone, right? It’s not what happens; it’s the pace at which it happens. Every stoplight becomes a moment of frustration. Every stupid city planner who made this 25 miles an hour—why is this 25 miles an hour? Like, you get mad when you wouldn’t be mad. You’re impatient, or you won’t be patient; you don’t have time for interruptions and sick kids and problems. Right? When we are burned out and running, running, running, rushing, rushing, we actually lose some of the incredible blessings that come from being a Christian—the joy of being forgiven, the peace of knowing that God controls the universe.
So I’m not just concerned about your schedule in this sermon series; I’m concerned about your soul, the blessings it has, and the blessings that it gives. That’s why we’re going to try to change that starting today. For the next few weeks, we’re going to talk about burnout from a physical perspective, a spiritual perspective, an emotional perspective, and a relational perspective. Really, for me, the goal of this series is a single thing: to help you run your race of faith. I chose that verb intentionally—run. I don’t want you to walk, right? It’s true some people in the church are lazy; they’re unreliable; they quit when things get hard—that’s bad. But I’m not going to talk about that in this series. Instead, I want to talk about the people who aren’t running their race; they’re sprinting at an unsustainable pace. They’re pushing so hard they’re barely getting by, and it’s going to catch up with them soon. So if this is you, if you just say, «Too much on your plate, » my goal is to slow you down—not too much, but just enough so that you can run a race of faith with peace and joy and love for other people in Jesus' name.
God the Creator Sets the Rules
Now, to get you one step closer to that, I want to start in the beginning. Literally. Today I want to teach you the first half of the first verse of the first chapter of the first book of the Bible, because in that one half of a verse is a truth that is actually so obvious when you think about it but so important for your life. So take note as we open our Bibles today to Genesis chapter one, verse one—just the first half of the first verse—which says this: «In the beginning, God created.» God created—verb: created; subject: God; object: you and the heavens and the earth and everything that they contain. In the beginning, the Bible says God created.
I had a chance to go from cover to cover in this book and read every verse that uses words like «create, » «created, » «creation, » and what I learned is that the Bible almost exclusively reserves the act of creation for God. It talks about humans, it talks about animals—that’s always the creation, and God is always labeled as the Creator. The roles are never switched; we don’t create God. We really don’t even create from a biblical perspective; we are just the creation that God created. Now here’s what that implies. I want you to write this down, and then I’ll explain it. It implies that the creator creates the rules. The one who creates something gets to decide how that something works, how it functions. If you’re a designer of a device or a product, you get to determine the details of what makes this work and what makes this break. Right? You agree with that?
So if you and I run an athletic company and we make those bouncy balls that kids use on playgrounds, we make that ball in a certain way with a certain material so that it can bounce. If you and I, on the other hand, work in a china company and we produce and create really fine china, well, you can’t swap the china plate with the bouncy ball—one bounces, the other doesn’t. Kids don’t get to decide how it works; the Creator gets to decide how things work. So in the beginning, the Bible says God created everything, and that means God gets to decide the rules of how everything works—what makes something thrive and what makes it wither and die.
So God made fish with gills to live in the water; he made beagles with legs to run on the land; he made eagles with wings to fly in the sky. The fish, the beagles, and the eagles don’t get to decide for themselves how their bodies work; they simply have to follow the rules that God created with their body. Right? So Fred the Fish says, «I’m going to be a beagle today, » and he jumps out of the sea into the park. What happens to Fred? Fred is dead. Alright, the creator creates the rules. If Benny the Beagle says, «I’m not a beagle; I’m an eagle, » and he jumps off a cliff, what happens to the beagle? Well, he is not an eagle; he tries to fly, and then he dies because the creation doesn’t get to make up its own rules.
Here’s what I want to be clear аbout: there’s no «my truth» in creation; there’s just the truth with which the Creator created it. Alright? You agree with me so far? Alright. Now guess who else that applies to? You. You and I, as part of the creation, don’t get to decide what the rules of our bodies are. Right? Just like scientists and doctors can study, «Well here’s how an eagle works and why it flies, » neurologists and nutritionists can study, «Well here’s how your body works and here’s what makes your heart work and here’s where your brain is functioning at a top level.» Here’s the thing: you don’t get to decide if you need sleep or not; that’s how God made you. Food and certain things with nutrition—you don’t get to decide what makes you run at peak performance. That’s been built into you by the Creator who created the rules. Whether you need exercise or not, you don’t get to decide that.
When you wake up in the morning, the Creator creates the rules, and God created you with a need to eat, to move, and to sleep. I’m guessing you already knew that, right? You didn’t fly; you didn’t climb up to your roof and jump off like an eagle and fly to church. No, your body wasn’t made for that. But if I could push you a little bit, I would ask, does your lifestyle reflect obedience to the physical rules that the Creator created? If I could look at your schedule, your lifestyle, and your habits, and compare it to what experts have found—like, «Yeah, here’s how people like you work"—how much obedience and how much rebellion to those rules would I see? I think one of the problems that we often run into in the modern world is because culture pushes and the digital age pushes and American business pushes, we sometimes forget we don’t get to decide how this works; it has already been decided for us.
Compromise, Compensate, Crash
When you and I ignore that, we put ourselves on a path to almost certain burnout. Grab a pen and write this down. Three things happen. First of all, we compromise. We kind of know the rules of how the human body works, but we fudge them just a little bit—just like we drive 32 in a 25 mile-per-hour zone. I know the doctors and those people say we should sleep, like, what, 7 to 9 hours, but I’m going to. And I know, I know, you’ve got to be careful with sugar and alcohol and everything else, desserts—it’s not good for your body; it messes with your heart, your brain doesn’t function, you crash, you can’t stay awake, you’re not alert. But I’m going to. I know exercise is supposedly good for your heart, your memory, and your mind and your sleep habits, but I just don’t. I don’t run. Right? I’ve got the sticker on the back of my truck that says 0.0—like, I don’t do any of it, right?
So we compromise. We know there’s a rule. And I’m not talking about fad diets or real detail, but we know this is just a general way the human body functions—we compromise it. Then, number two, we compensate. We start to reap what we sow. We don’t get enough sleep, and so we’re tired. So in the morning, what do we do? We don’t reach for the cup of coffee; we fill up a whole pot. It’s like a monster and a granola bar for breakfast. We’re not awake for the first hour of school because we’ve been up late playing games with friends. We can’t function like we’re supposed to function, so we compensate.
We push like a really stressful pace at work; we bring it home. There’s just no downtime. We’re checking emails until the time we go to bed, and we can’t sleep, so we compensate. You reach for a drink, maybe two. You pour whiskey, and you make it pretty stiff. You need a glass of wine; you need some extra time. There’s a pill, maybe two, just to sleep. You go to the doctor, and there’s some unnecessary medication to compensate for the compromises you’ve made. Or maybe just know: like you’re always stressed, you’re always on edge. I’m going to take a vacation. Sometimes a vacation is just compensation, right?
I’m always stressed, so this is going to fix it—not fixing the pace of my life; I’m going to slap a vacation on it for seven to ten days, all-inclusive, binge, and think it’s going to make it better. You know you haven’t been a kind person to the people in your homes. You compensate with a gift. I haven’t been there, honey, so let me buy you something. I haven’t been a great father this year; it’s been crazy at work, so let me splurge on something and act like it didn’t happen. We compromise, compensate, and then finally, we crash. It rarely happens right in the beginning; sometimes it doesn’t happen in the middle. But sooner or later, we crash. You just hit a wall, and you have a physical breakdown. It’s a panic attack. It’s the depression you’ve never experienced before.
It’s like you find it hard to function, or you just get numb. You go to church, but you feel nothing. You read your Bible, but you don’t get anything out of it. You crash when you get home; there’s just no energy left. So you take it out on the people that you really do love the most. It’s not just your heart and your lungs and your muscles that get hurt when we compromise and compensate; it’s our souls and the precious lives of the ones that we love.
So here’s a question: we know that when we’re really hungry, we can get angry; there’s a name for that. We know there’s a connection between physical habits and character choices. My question for you is, is it possible some of the things you’re struggling with, with your character, are not some mysterious spiritual battle, but just a physical reality? You’ve pushed too hard; you’ve used up your calories on all of these things, and now there’s none left for the energy to follow Jesus and love his people.
Jesus' Example of Rest
For 33 years, he worked 20-hour days serving everyone he met until he hit a wall and died on a cross.
You would be dead wrong. Jesus had seasons of intense work where he was up early and up late, where he poured himself out into people’s needs. But to assume that that was the way Jesus normally lived would actually be a biblical and doctrinal mistake. Let me show you a fascinating passage from the book of Luke, chapter 5. It says in verse 15 and 16, «Crowds of people came to hear Jesus"—hundreds, maybe thousands of people—and they came to be healed of their sicknesses. They were sick, struggling, desperate for a miracle. Notice the next word: «But…» You would think, «Crowds of people came to be healed, » and he healed them. Crowds of people needed relief from their sickness; therefore, Jesus—that’s not what the passage says. Crowds of people came, but Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed.
Is that fascinating? He worked to love people, and before the work was even done, he withdrew. Well, people say, «You just got to work until the job is done.» Jesus said, «Nope.» And don’t miss the adverb: Jesus withdrew often. It wasn’t like something he did once a year after a crazy time in ministry; he often, by himself and with his disciples, said, «Let’s get away.» We’ve loved these people for a long time; it’s time for a break. Jesus' lifestyle and his constant, often habit was to withdraw to lonely places just to be with his heavenly Father and rest.
Jesus wasn’t just part of our creation; he behaved like a creationist. It’s a fascinating thought. He pushed so hard, and then he pushed pause and didn’t do work at all, and he wasn’t bad, and his father wasn’t mad; it didn’t make him selfish or lazy or sinful when Jesus was just… What is Jesus doing? My mom has cancer; she needs to be healed. Yeah, Jesus knows he’s taking a nap; he’s praying. Well how long? Probably all day. Well, we need help. Mmm-hmm. Jesus needs rest. And if that’s shocking to you, I wonder if our American culture has shaped our view of the Bible, where we pick just some of the things that Jesus did and some of the things the scriptures say—work, serve, help—and we’ve ignored this constant theme that God has a great place for his people just to be still and let Him be God.
That’s why I asked one of my former seminary professors a very important question. I had been reading some of the Old Testament—kind of the calendar that God set for his ancient Jewish people, where there were religious holidays like Passover and Pentecost. I kind of noticed God had a lot of time when he gave his people off from their jobs. Right? If it’s Christmas week, you might get one day or two from your employer—not ancient Jews. They were given huge chunks of time. And I noticed this chunk and this chunk and this day and two days over here, and then I thought, «Well, if Jesus had to get all the way down to Jerusalem to celebrate some of those things, he lived like three marathons away, and he was walking, not taking a plane or a bus. How much time did it take him to leave behind the carpentry and the work and the chores at home just to be on the road to be with family and friends, to be with God?»
So, I sent an email to this professor I know; the subject line was «Jesus’s vacation time.» The professor, who’s like an expert in the Old Testament, here’s what he said to me: «In observant to Jew in Jesus’s day"—so someone who’s following the Bible—"would have had off 52 Sabbath days every Saturday, one day for the Festival of Pimm, eight days for Passover, two days for Pentecost, two days for the Jewish New Year, one day for the Day of Atonement, nine days for the Feast of Tabernacles.» In addition, Jewish men were supposed to show up in Jerusalem for Passover and Pentecost and Tabernacles, and it would have taken most of them quite some time to get there. Then the Old Testament says, «If you’re a farmer, your farm is supposed to lie fallow, unfarmed one year in every seven.» In other words, God said to hardworking Old Testament farmers, «You work hard for six, and then you take an entire year off.» A farmer sabbatical! Wisconsin farmers, can you even imagine that?
Also, the professor concluded, «Jesus’s time off was time off, not time to cram full of activities, digital distractions, and the NFL.» Unquote. Is that amazing? God, when he created the calendar, said, «I’m not mad, and you’re not bad if you take huge chunks of time to just rest.» Work hard, like how he worked and rested; it’s the love that he has for people who push too hard.
Jesus' Grace for the Exhausted
You remember that really dumb marathon that I ran? Boom, hit mile 16; I’m limping. I remember there was a water stop really late in the race that was in front of a Green Bay, Wisconsin news station. I think some of the employees and the anchor men and women were like handing out the water and the sports drinks, and there I come limping up.
As I approach, it’s Green Bay anchor man Bill Jart. Have you Green Bay folks know that name? I must look like The Walking Dead because Bill Jart sees me, and he starts walking right for me. He hands me the sports drink filled with electrolytes; he puts his arm on my sweaty, exhausted shoulders. He just walks with me, and he tells me I’m going to make it. He tells me to drink up; he applauds, he encourages, and I don’t die before the end of the marathon. Right? I think of that a lot like Jesus. Like some of you here today have made foolish choices with your schedule. It’s affected your body, your marriage, your relationships, and your faith. You can’t go back and run a new pace; you’re limping, trying to recover, and Jesus would have every right to wag his finger and judge. But he doesn’t. Instead, he sees you in all of your exhaustion, and with love, he puts that pierced hand around your shoulder in forgiveness, and he hands you his grace and his mercy.
He says, «Drink up, » and he promises with words of encouragement and grace that he’s going to fill you with the Spirit, that he’s going to give you wisdom, he’s going to help you in your time of need. He doesn’t trip you up; he doesn’t come to condemn you or tell you to pick up the pace. Instead, he comes not just as an example but as Redeemer and a perfect Savior. Brothers and sisters, we believe that God is our Savior and our Creator. Today, I pray that you believe in your salvation, and with the help of God, you behave like his creation.
Prayer
Dear Lord, thank you so much for the surprising things in your Word that maybe we haven’t seen before. In those pages of the Old Testament that some of us skipped, there’s just a rhythm of work and rest, of pushing and then pushing pause. I pray that in our culture, we could swim maybe a little bit against the tide and not need to grow and progress at the cost of our soul. God, what good is it if we gain the whole world and yet give up our soul or our marriage or this precious time with our children or the one and only body that you have given to us? So, we’re praying today both for your grace and for your wisdom. God, help us not to live with regret and shame because of the past. Help us to take all that to the cross and help us now, to the best of our abilities, make decisions and change our schedules in the way that we need to that we can be just like Jesus, full of joy and peace and love. That’s a big change for some of us, God, so we need your help, and we’re so grateful that you are right here to give it to us. We pray all these things in Jesus' beautiful name. And God’s people said, «Amen.»