How can I overcome ministry burnout?

… In connection with your work, dear brother, seek the Lord's face and lean on Him. When the body is not robust one is in danger of doing it as a task, as an obligation, and the spirit becomes a little legal; or one yields to weariness, and is discouraged before God. Work is a favour which is granted us. Be quite peaceful and happy in the sense of grace; then go and pour out that peace to souls. This is true service, from which one returns very weary, it may be, in body, but sustained and happy; one rests beneath God's wings, and takes up the service again till the true rest comes. Our strength is renewed like the eagle's. Ever remember, "My grace is sufficient for thee, and my strength is made perfect in weakness." May communion with God be your chief concern, and the sweet relationships in which we are placed with Him. All is well when we walk in them; then we discern and judge everything, day by day, which hinders communion, and so the heart does not become hard nor the conscience blunted, and we readily enjoy those communications of grace which give strength. Yes, seek, above all, personal communion with the Lord.

In connection with your work … seek the Lord's face, and lean on Him. Work is a favour which is granted us. Be quite peaceful and happy in the sense of grace; then go and pour out that peace to souls. This is true service, from which one returns very weary it may be in body, but sustained and happy; one rests beneath God's wings, and takes up the service again till the true rest comes.

We are told that they who wait upon the Lord, shall renew their strength. How often we have experienced this. Moments of depression come, weakness asserts itself, circumstances seem too difficult for us to grapple with. In our feebleness we wait on the Lord, we bring our depression and feebleness into His presence, and they pass away, they cannot remain in such an atmosphere. We rise up from our knees, our strength is renewed, not perhaps physically, but spiritually, though even a cheerful mind is good medicine for a sick body.

There may be difficulties, trials, weariness and dangers, and dependence upon the Lord with prayerfulness will be needed every day, but Isaiah 40:31 cheers us on: “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.” None need be discouraged! Beginning with mounting above the trials, we may grow stronger still and run through them; and, finally, so learn of Him who “fainteth not, neither is weary” (v. 28), that we, too, may walk and not faint, as we tread the heavenly road with steady steps!

"Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall." "But they that wait on the Lord shall renew [or change] their strength they shall mount up with wings as eagles [rise triumphant over every difficulty and depression], they shall run and not be weary [be untiring in their errands of ministry and mercy for the Lord to others]; and they shall walk and not faint," tread steadily and with endurance the upward way to "the hope that is laid up for them in heaven, whereof ye have heard before in the word of the truth of the gospel."

Many a saint runs on for a while (just after his conversion, perhaps), in the eagerness and zeal of the flesh, doing right things, but not in the spirit of dependence on God; by and bye his energy flags, and he feels as though he were entirely useless, as though God could never again employ him in His service. Now this is a profitable lesson, though a deeply humbling one. The Lord often trains an individual thus, for much after usefulness in the Church.

You see it, too, in those that have assayed to serve in the gospel or in the church. The energy of the heart which pushed forth the young man as a servant, fails, he breaks down, he is coldly received, or the like. If there is gift from Christ, the thing was right and of God; but the energy was self — unbroken. Painful lessons followed (than which there are few more so), but if we watch that man’s after history, if he walk with God, he will come forth brightly in useful service to the Lord: God doing by him what he assayed to do himself in vain.

There was such a blessedness in the gospel, when the Galatians first heard it (Gal. 4:15), that no self-sacrifice was thought too great, so that they might testify their value for it. But when they listened to those who would pervert the gospel, and dim their perception of its rich grace, weariness supervened. They became busied about ordinances and their own salvation, and thus became weary in well-doing, They needed to have the great doctrines of grace again ministered to them to stir up their earlier zeal. Scripture and experience alike show the tendency in the believer to "leave his first love." When first the light of the gospel bursts on the soul, it is so blessed that hardly any thing appears a sacrifice. Little does he know the deadening influence of all around him, or the deceitfulness of his own heart; and weariness in well-doing ensues. Our apostle, in another place, shows us the need of the reiterated application of the doctrines of grace to the heart and conscience, in order to "maintain good works." (Titus 3:4-8.) We may be disappointed in our expectations for the present; "but in due season we shall reap, if we faint not." The Lord's own ministry seemed to be 'in vain' (Isa. 49:4); but it only seemed. He was not discouraged; and now that 'the due season' has come, what an abundant harvest is gathered in from that one "corn of wheat which fell into the ground and died." The ministry of Paul seemed to end in failure (2 Tim. 1:15); but we are witnesses this day that his labour in the Lord was not in vain; while we get strength, comfort, and refreshment from his writings. "Let us, then, not be weary in well-doing." This is our time of 'opportunity.' In heaven we shall have no sick to visit, no widows and fatherless to comfort, no backslider to reclaim. Our hearts should be enlarged to all human suffering, "for our heavenly Father is kind to the unthankful and the evil;" but the "household of faith" has claims on our highest sympathies. And we know, that for the most part it is a tried, tempted, and suffering household. Alas! on a retrospect, how many lost opportunities present themselves to our view.

Not only do the various services, whatever they may be, form one whole because they have but one goal and one object, but it is worth noting that one individual's service calls for the service of the other, as it were. From one end of this account to the other each agent goes to work as stirred up by the preceding one. Often in moments of weariness and spiritual discouragement we complain how those who follow us in serving the Lord lack the eagerness to serve Him effectively, to risk something — be it comfort, gain, or reputation — to maintain our Master's rights over against the world. Such complaints are ineffectual, and are much like Elijah's cry: “I am left, I alone!” What we need to do is to redouble our zeal, an unfailing zeal to serve the Beloved. Like sound waves, light waves, and heat waves this activity will soon make itself felt beyond our restricted sphere.

But we have to pass through this sin-defiled world, and we are liable to pick up defilement, and this has to be removed. And we also need to have our hearts and minds refreshed and invigorated by a ministry of Christ to our souls if we are to have any present enjoyment of heaven, for we are liable to become tired, footsore, and weary of the way, even when there might be no sense of defilement, and therefore unable to rise up to the full height of our privilege, and perhaps a sense of distance has come in between us and the blessed Lord, and this service of the Lord is required to set us in the enjoyment of all that into which He has entered.