Burning Out for God

One of my favorite heroes in the Old Testament is Moses. What a story his life makes: Born into slavery, hidden beside a river, raised in royalty, drawn into murder, chased into hiding, pushed into leadership, and blessed by God. God teaches us many valuable lessons from the life of Moses! One of those lessons is the danger of unbalanced over-commitment. When Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt, he was so committed to his work and his people that he became a workaholic on the verge of burnout.

Exodus 18 tells us the situation:

Moses sat to judge the people; and the people stood before Moses from morning until evening. So when Moses' father-in-law saw all that he did for the people, he said, "What is this thing that you are doing for the people? Why do you alone sit, and all the people stand before you from morning until evening?" So Moses' father-in-law said to him, "The thing that you do is not good. "Both you and these people who are with you will surely wear yourselves out. For this thing is too much for you; you are not able to perform it by yourself. "Listen now to my voice; I will give you counsel."

Knowing that many listeners relate immediately to Moses' problem, I'm going to tell you a contemporary story today - and it's also true. It's about a young man we'll call "Larry."

"I'd rather burn out for God than rust out!" the pastor boomed from the pulpit. "How about YOU?"

Larry leaned back in his seat and reflected for a moment. "That's right," the college senior agreed silently. "Count me 'In.'"

Larry had worked hard to get through college. He knew that if he wanted to go to college, he had to shoulder both the studying and the funding responsibilities. And he did. He worked part-time in a local business, won a partial scholarship from the university and also qualified for an educational loan, since he was headed for a teaching career.

After graduating and receiving his teaching credential, Larry began his new life. Larry sensed a "call" to teaching as a professional ministry. He was highly motivated to prove himself. He had great expectations of the youngsters, whom he envisioned would be radically transformed by his teaching and personal influence. Pumped up, he literally threw himself into this new challenge.

The junior high school in which Larry taught was staffed with a very supportive group of people. The office secretaries were helpful, the custodial staff was friendly, other teachers shared their secrets of success and the principal was very encouraging. Everyone made him feel welcome and special.

Students often stopped to talk with Larry between classes. Some of them were even polite. He was on his way, a future "Teacher Of The Year" for sure.

During his second year, district budget cuts suddenly took away his Teacher's Aide. That forced him to give less attention to individual student needs. It also added to the hours of after-class work, such as grading papers and preparing teaching tools.

Still, Larry knew that many came from broken and/or dysfunctional families, and he had a deep desire to be known as a caring and helpful teacher. He poured himself into the kids, letting them interrupt anything he might be doing before or after class, before or after school or during lunch breaks. The students responded to his accessibility and after awhile there was no escaping them. Some were troubled students, to whom Larry gave himself tirelessly as a surrogate father, friend and counselor.

Then he discovered that one of them had lied to him about the situation he was trying so hard to help resolve. Another was suspended for drug use and a third student just didn't care about anything anymore-including Larry.

"If that's how they are going to respond after everything I tried to do to help them," he concluded angrily, "forget it. I don't have time for this." Gradually his availability to students shrank. Eventually, Larry saw them only by appointment.

Let me interrupt this story with a few comments. Burnout sometimes follows the feeling that we failed to make our world a better place to live. We haven't really helped the needy. We begin to believe that those in authority over us will just keep resisting all our attempts to make a worthwhile impact. We think our dedication and labor were wasted.

When we get to that point, we feel as if we don't have the energy it takes to do what we promised ourselves we would do. We become convinced that we have nothing left to give.

We often struggle against two barriers as we try to achieve our self-expectations. One barrier is inadequate authority: We don't have the say-so or the influence to make them happen. The second barrier, as was the case for Moses, is insufficient resources: We don't have the time, finances or personnel to achieve our self-expectations. No matter which obstacle is blocking progress, it leads to frustration, which in turn can cause us to burn out.

Larry found himself feeling physically de-energized, helpless and disillusioned. He no longer saw himself as the master teacher he had envisioned. For him, there was an almost visible dark cloud over the school, over his colleagues and over life in general.

In spite of this, he pretended that all was well. Of course, this pretending backfired. Others, who could have helped, didn't know he needed help.

Larry began to feel isolated. He looked at other educators in similar situations—but they, too, seemed to be doing fine. "I must be the problem," he concluded. Oh, the price of the games we play.... Larry felt like he was falling into the quicksand of despondency. Finally, he simply gave up. In his personal journal he wrote, "It feels like my soul is dying."

With wings of vision clipped and with spirit eroded, he ignored the students as individuals. It became much easier to simply put together lesson plans that covered the course requirements. He arrived at school each day at the last possible minute and left as soon as classes were over. Ironically, he gave up caring in order to continue his calling. It didn't last. Four years after entering education as a career, he closed up shop and quit.

© 2007 John Garmo. If you would be interested in using this article, please contact us at Info@MissionToChildren.org.