Common Ailments - Fatigue
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We are dealing with common ailments - things that as church people, we go through more often than we probably should.
We understand that the church resembles a medical facility. One of the reasons it exists is to provide care for the people that show up. We know that our first attention is to Glorifying God, to making his name great, and then it is to the care of ourselves and those around us.
Just like any other medical facility, we have a few things that we come across more often than other things. It is flu season - there are a lot of people showing up to get tested for the flue. We are still afraid of covid, so people are getting tested for that. So those facilities develop streamlined treatments for those things, to allow for the care of other things.
We can get overwhelmed with the stuff that is common, to a point that we aren’t able to deal with anything else.
So some of this, we have to streamline.
Some of this stuff that we deal with - we all have to get good at taking care of.
As a church we are all responsible to minister to the needs of one another. So we look at these common ailments, we train to see them - and to treat them, in ourselves and others.
We have gone through a few things already :
Identity Crisis
Unforgiveness - Like a poison.
Unchecked Pride.
Two more in this series - Fatigue, and greed. From there we will turn our focus to the celebration of Easter.
Baseline:
Healthy is a christian who feels equipped and rested, ready to accomplish the things that God calls them to. They are able to adapt to new things, because they have head room for things to move around.
Healthy is a christian who is nourished by the Lord - who maintain’s strength in the season of life that they are in, as they pour out to others what God has given to them.
Diagnosis:
Fatigue comes with serving the Lord. Because we serve the lord, the adversary of the lord is against us too.
There are times of peace, and those times are wonderful. There is also time of conflict - and in during and after conflict there is fatigue.
We experience fatigue - usually - because of one of these five things.
Loss
Conflict
Lack of Control
Sickness
Unmet Expectations
Some of these things are easy to spot, some of them are more difficult. When they come up though there is usually a fatigue that follows, because we put so much effort into making things right even if that is just coping with the problem.
Biblical examples:
Elijah and David
Martha became upset, because there was more work to do.
Peter took his eyes off of Jesus and sank.
1 Sam 30:1-4
Treatment:
1 Ahab told Jezebel everything that Elijah had done and how he had killed all the prophets with the sword.
2 So Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah, saying, “May the gods punish me and do so severely if I don’t make your life like the life of one of them by this time tomorrow!”
3 Then Elijah became afraid and immediately ran for his life. When he came to Beer-sheba that belonged to Judah, he left his servant there,
4 but he went on a day’s journey into the wilderness. He sat down under a broom tree and prayed that he might die. He said, “I have had enough! Lord, take my life, for I’m no better than my ancestors.”
5 Then he lay down and slept under the broom tree. Suddenly, an angel touched him. The angel told him, “Get up and eat.”
6 Then he looked, and there at his head was a loaf of bread baked over hot stones, and a jug of water. So he ate and drank and lay down again.
7 Then the angel of the Lord returned for a second time and touched him. He said, “Get up and eat, or the journey will be too much for you.”
8 So he got up, ate, and drank. Then on the strength from that food, he walked forty days and forty nights to Horeb, the mountain of God.
Rest. Physical - actual sleep.
Divine Touch - Holy Spirit involvement, scripture, etc.
Nutrition. Food and hydration.
Worship
Sabbath.
God deals with Elijah in two fronts - Natural and Spiritual - to handle his exhaustion/fatigue.
Charles Spurgeon - battled depression for most of his life. He said this - in a lecture he titled “Minister’s fainting fits”
Let a man be naturally as blithe as a bird, he will hardly be able to bear up year after year against such a suicidal process; he will make his study a prison and his books the warders of a gaol, while nature lies outside his window calling him to health and beckoning him to joy.
He who forgets the humming of the bees among the heather, the cooing of the wood-pigeons in the forest, the song of birds in the woods, the rippling of rills among the rushes, and the sighing of the wind among the pines, needs not wonder if his heart forgets to sing and his soul grows heavy.
A day’s breathing of fresh air upon the hills, or a few hours, ramble in the beech woods? umbrageous calm, would sweep the cobwebs out of the brain of scores of our toiling ministers who are now but half alive.
A mouthful of sea air, or a stiff walk in the wind’s face, would not give grace to the soul, but it would yield oxygen to the body, which is next best.
Heaviest the heart is in a heavy air,
Ev’ry wind that rises blows away despair.
The ferns and the rabbits, the streams and the trouts, the fir trees and the squirrels, the primroses and the violets, the farm-yard, the new-mown hay, and the fragrant hops—these are the best medicine for hypochondriacs, the surest tonics for the declining, the best refreshments for the weary.
For lack of opportunity, or inclination, these great remedies are neglected, and the student becomes a self-immolated victim.
Rest. Physical - actual sleep.
Divine Touch - Holy Spirit involvement, scripture, etc.
Nutrition. Food and hydration.
Worship
Sabbath.
Prevention:
When you see one of those five things creeping up in your - or someone else’s life, start treating fatigue before it sets in.
Loss
Conflict
Lack of Control
Sickness
Unmet Expectations
God’s call on our lives: Everything that we are, everything that we have, everything that we do.
8 The Lord opens the eyes of the blind. The Lord raises up those who are oppressed. The Lord loves the righteous.
5 “Go back and tell Hezekiah, the leader of my people, ‘This is what the Lord God of your ancestor David says: I have heard your prayer; I have seen your tears. Look, I will heal you. On the third day from now you will go up to the Lord’s temple.
22 Cast your burden on the Lord, and he will sustain you; he will never allow the righteous to be shaken.
28 Do you not know? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the whole earth. He never becomes faint or weary; there is no limit to his understanding.
29 He gives strength to the faint and strengthens the powerless.
30 Youths may become faint and weary, and young men stumble and fall,
31 but those who trust in the Lord will renew their strength; they will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not become weary, they will walk and not faint.
Let our church be a place - where we are restored in these ways.
Where we can come in, beaten. Downtrodden. And we meet the lord. And he does a work in us.
Communion:
35 “I am the bread of life,” Jesus told them. “No one who comes to me will ever be hungry, and no one who believes in me will ever be thirsty again.
17 Now in giving this instruction I do not praise you, since you come together not for the better but for the worse.
18 For to begin with, I hear that when you come together as a church there are divisions among you, and in part I believe it.
19 Indeed, it is necessary that there be factions among you, so that those who are approved may be recognized among you.
20 When you come together, then, it is not to eat the Lord’s Supper.
21 For at the meal, each one eats his own supper. So one person is hungry while another gets drunk!
22 Don’t you have homes in which to eat and drink? Or do you despise the church of God and humiliate those who have nothing? What should I say to you? Should I praise you? I do not praise you in this matter!
23 For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: On the night when he was betrayed, the Lord Jesus took bread,
24 and when he had given thanks, broke it, and said, “This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.”
25 In the same way also he took the cup, after supper, and said, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.”
26 For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.