“I will hasten to my place of refuge
from the stormy wind and tempest.”
Sometimes I just get weary of it all. There are times when the stress and pressures of life exhausts my strength and I grow tired in both body and spirit. I find myself feeling just like King David did when he said, “Oh, that I had wings like a dove. I would wander far away. I would lodge in the wilderness. I would hasten to my place of refuge from the stormy wind and tempest.” Psalms 55: 6-8. Have you ever felt like that?
“The best bridge between hope and despair is often a good nights sleep”
One of the problems of being human is that our strength is exhaustible. We are not like the Ever-ready Rabbit that keeps going – and going – and going. Our bodies do run down. Our physical and emotional strength becomes depleted and we grow weary and tired and we want to withdraw from everything and everybody. We’re tired of giving and we’re tired of doing and we’re tired of serving. The joy of it all seems to be gone. In Southeast Missouri, we use to refer to this as, “The creek running dry.” In the church, it’s called the “The well-doers burnout.”
“The first rule of holes: When you’re in one, stop digging”.
There are two ways we can grow weary in life:
First – there is the weariness that automatically comes with growing old. Those of us who have passed the prime of life know this to be true by experience. The younger generation is in the process of learning this. They are at an age now when they think that they’ll always look as good and feel as strong as they do right now. The older generation knows that feeling because we too once had that same mindset. Like the youth of today, we gave no thought to the fact that youthfulness is a stage of life that quickly passes. Eventually there comes the time when youth gives way to age and the energy level of the body starts to diminish and it starts to experience aches and pains that weren’t there before. Where we use to greet each new day with, “Good morning, Lord,” we find ourselves now greeting it with, “Good Lord, it’s morning.”
Second – There is a weariness that comes to us that has nothing to do with our age. It’s a weariness that is the result of our taking on the demands, the responsibilities, and the obligations of everyday living. This weariness can come to young and old alike. It doesn’t consider age for a requirement for it’s presence in a person’s life. Most people discover early that there is no pathway in life that does not have its share of troubles and trials, discouragement and difficulties, detours and delays, any of which can cause us to lose heart in life and grow weary in well doing.
The Apostle Paul gives us a word of encouragement in this area with these words in Galatians 6:9, “Let us not lose heart in doing well, for in due time we shall reap if we do not grow weary.”
“Don’t park by your weariness”.
Any surrender to this weariness is dangerous to our physical and spiritual health for two reasons.
It causes us to become extremely vulnerable and open to enemy attacks. The story of Absalom’s pursuit of King David in II Samuel 17: 1-2, is an illustration of this truth. Absalom’s advisor Ahitophel is saying to him concerning David, “Please let me choose 12,000 men that I may rise and pursue David tonight. And I will come upon him while he is weary and exhausted…” Ahitophel knew that when a person gets weary, their defenses come down and they become a candidate for defeat. A weary person encounters feelings of despair and depression which, if not overcome, will eventually bring that person to the place of throwing up their hands and giving up on life.
“We are pressed on every side by troubles, but not crushed and broken. We are perplexed because we don’t know why things happen as they do, but we don’t give up and quit. We are hunted down, but God never abandons us. We get knocked down, but we get up again and keep going.” II Corinthians 4: 8-9 (LB)
Weariness causes us to lose our true focus on what is and what is not important in life. In our weariness, we find ourselves more concerned about our physical and emotional needs than we are about our spiritual needs. We begin to look at what’s happening through our physical eyes and not the eyes of faith. We look at the solution to our problems in the light of our own resources and not God’s resources. In our weariness, our circumstances become bigger than our God.
“Blessed is the man whose strength is in thee” Psalms 84:5.
This kind of weariness is escapable. We don’t have to learn to live with it. God has a remedy for it and it’s given to us in Isaiah 40:31, “But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run and not be weary; and they shall walk and not faint.”
What does it mean to wait on the Lord?
There is a place that God has appointed to be a waiting place, and that place is our prayer closet. It’s God’s spiritual spa for those who are weary and tired in well doing. We go in weary and tired in body and spirit and we come out renewed in strength. It’s God’s great exchange room. We enter it to exchange our strength for His.
“For since the beginning of the world, men have not heard now perceived by their ear, neither hath the eye seen O God, beside thee, what He hath prepared for him that waiteth on Him” Isaiah 64:4.
- “their strength shall be renewed...” God imparts his strength to those who wait on him. Psalms 27:14, “Wait on the Lord; be of good courage and he shall strengthen thine heart, wait I say on the Lord. Philippians 4:13, “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.”
- “they shall mount up with wings as eagles.” We will be given the strength to rise above the problems and circumstances that weigh us down, and we will look at them from heaven’s perspective and not ours.
- “they shall run and not be weary, and they shall walk and not faint.” Whatever pace God sets for us in our journey in life will pose no problems because with the renewed strenghth He gives us we can do it.
Weary free living only comes when we spend time waiting on the Lord.
“The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life; whom shall I be afraid” Psalm 27:1.