Reset (eBook)

Introduction

It was one of the most humiliating moments of my life. I’d just come through a successful winter cross-country season in high school, and spring track was getting under way. Our track coach started us off with a series of 800-meter races to split the middle- and long-distance runners into first and second teams. I didn’t train beforehand because I was used to far longer races in far worse conditions.

I knew I had to run a bit faster over the shorter distance, so I took off at the sound of the gun. By the time I was halfway round the first lap, I was a good fifty meters ahead of everyone else. “This is too easy,” I thought. I didn’t have my usual cross-country signposts to help me gauge my speed, but over such a short race in such beautiful spring weather, what could possibly go wrong?

By the end of the first lap, my lungs were beginning to burst and my fifty-meter lead had become twenty-five. Soon I was overtaken by one runner after another, until one of the poorest runners in my class padded past me with a snicker. At the 600-meter mark, I decided to get “injured” and collapsed in a heap at the side of the track.

I learned the hard way that pacing a race is one of the most important skills for track athletes to learn. Go too slow and we fail by never winning or fulfilling our potential. Go too fast and we fail by injuring ourselves or running out of energy before the finish line. Finding that perfect pace, that sweet spot between too slow and too fast, is vital for success and longevity as an athlete—and as a Christian.

Speed Up and Slow Down

In recent years, a number of Christian leaders have rightly called lethargic and half-hearted Christians to quicken their pace, to dedicate more of their time, talents, money, and efforts to serving the Lord in the local church and in evangelistic outreach at home and abroad. I welcome this “radical,” “don’t waste your life” message to up the pace, and I rejoice in its positive impact on thousands of Christians, especially among the younger generations.

There are others, however, many of them faithful and zealous Christians, especially those aged thirty-five-plus, who need to hear a different message: “Slow your pace or you’ll never finish the race.” As Brady Boyd warned in Addicted to Busy, “Ultimately, every problem I see in every person I know is a problem of moving too fast for too long in too many aspects of life.”1 I’m not proposing that we put our feet up and opt out of life and Christian service. No, I’m talking about carefully adjusting to life changes as we age, as responsibilities mount, as families grow, as problems multiply, as energy levels diminish, and as health complications arise. That’s what successful pace runners do. They are sensitive to significant changes in themselves and in race conditions, and they recalibrate their pace to avoid injury or exhaustion, ensuring a happy and successful finish.

I’ve discovered that such pacing skills are in short supply among Christian men, with the result that too many—especially those most committed to serving Christ in their families, in the workplace, and in the local church—are crashing or fading fast before their race is over. It’s not just a “Christian” problem though; it’s also a culture problem. Some 225 million workdays are lost every year in the United States due to stress; that’s nearly a million people not working every workday.2 The data on pastors is especially worrying, with high levels of stress, depression, and burnout leading to broken bodies, broken minds, broken hearts, broken marriages, and broken churches. (Burnout is responsible for 20 percent of all pastoral resignations.3) That’s hardly surprising, since surveys reveal that pastors relegate physical exercise, nutrition, and sleep to a much lower priority than the average worker.4 I’ve been there and done that—and suffered the consequences. But through painful personal experience, and also through counseling many others since, I’ve learned that God has graciously provided a number of ways for us to reset our broken and burned-out lives, and to help us live grace-paced lives in a burnout culture.

Although no two burnouts are the same, as I’ve counseled increasing numbers of Christians through burnout, I’ve noticed that most of them have one thing in common—there are deficits of grace. It’s not that these Christians don’t believe in grace. Not at all; all of them are well grounded in “the doctrines of grace,” and many of them are pastors who preach grace powerfully every week. The “five solas” and the “five points” are their theological meat and drink. Yet there are disconnects between theological grace and their daily lives, resulting in five deficits of grace.

Five Deficits of Grace

First, the motivating power of grace is missing. To illustrate, take a look at five people printing Bibles on the same assembly line. Mr. Dollar is asking, “How can I make more money?” Mr. Ambitious is asking, “How can I get a promotion?” Mr. Pleaser is asking, “How can I make my boss happy?” Mr. Selfish is asking, “How can I get personal satisfaction in my job?” They all look and feel miserable. Then we bump into Mr. Grace, who’s asking, “In view of God’s amazing grace to me in Christ, how can I serve God and others here?”

From the outside, it looks as if all five are doing the same work, but inside, they look completely different. The first four are striving, stressed, anxious, fearful, and exhausted. But Mr. Grace is so energized by his gratitude for grace that his job satisfies and stimulates him rather than draining him. Where grace is not fueling a person from the inside out, he burns from the inside out.

Also absent is the moderating power of grace. Alongside Mr. Grace, Mr. Perfectionist takes pride in flawless performance. If he ever makes a mistake in his work, he berates and flagellates himself. He carries this legalistic perfectionism into his relationships with God and others, resulting in constant disappointment in himself, in others, and even in God.

Mr. Grace’s work is just as high quality as Mr. Perfectionist, but grace has moderated his expectations. At the foot of the cross, he has learned that he’s not perfect and never will be. He accepts that both his work and his relationships are flawed. But instead of tormenting himself with these imperfections, he calmly takes them to the perfect God, knowing that in his grace, this God forgives every shortcoming and lovingly accepts him as perfect in Christ. He doesn’t need to serve, sacrifice, or suffer his way to human or divine approval because Christ has already served, sacrificed, and suffered for him.

Without motivating grace, we just rest in Christ. Without moderating grace, we just run and run—until we run out. We need the first grace to fire us up when we’re dangerously cold; we need the second to cool us down when we’re dangerously hot. The first gets us out of bed; the second gets us to bed on time. The first recognizes Christ’s fair demands upon us; the second receives Christ’s full provision for us. The first says, “Present your body a living sacrifice”; the second says, “Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit.” The first overcomes the resistance of our “flesh”; the second respects the limitations of our humanity. The first speeds us up; the second slows us down. The first says, “My son, give me your hands”; the second says, “My son, give me your heart.”

The multiplying power of grace is also rare in burned-out lives. Back on the assembly line, some of the Christian workers are driven by production targets. If they fall short of their daily quotas of Bibles, they go home totally depressed because “Every Bible we fail to print and package is a soul unreached.” As everything depends on their sweat and muscle, they work tons of overtime and hardly have any time for personal prayer.

Mr. Grace, however, works normal hours, and yet he has time and peace to pray for God’s blessing on each Bible that passes through his hands. He works hard, but he depends on God’s grace to multiply his work. He realizes that while one plants and another waters, God gives the increase. He goes home happy each evening, knowing that he has done what he could, and, as he leaves the factory at 5 p.m., he prays that God will multiply his work far more than his muscles or hours could.

The releasing power of grace has often been lacking when a person burns out. Mr. Controller, for example, thinks everything depends on him. He gets involved in every step of the production process, constantly annoying other workers with his micromanagement. He’s infuriated by any breakdown in production, yelling at people and even the machines when they mess up. He says he believes in “sovereign grace,” but he’s the sovereign and grace is limited to personal salvation.

In contrast, Mr. Grace realizes God is...