The following is a transcribed Video Q&A, so the text may not read like an edited article would. Scroll to the bottom to view this video in its entirety.
The world knows that burn out is very real. Not even just in the Christian world, but life in general. You have guys and girls that are working day in and day out and they're not resting and they get worn out. And they get burnt out and their marriages fail and they're not good with their kids and everything else crumbles. And so what we have to understand is that self-care is a huge necessity in the Christian life.
A lot of pastors, you know, we can justify working hard because we're helping people. I can justify staying up really late and working on sermons and ignoring my kids or ignoring my wife because I need to work on this message because it's going to help somebody. But what we have to realize if we don't ever give ourselves times to rest and we don't ever give ourselves time to take a step back… we have to realize even Jesus rested, right? Even Jesus rested that, you know, everything else could fall apart. And I think we've seen that over the last few years with a lot of pastors, whether it be a moral failures or just, you know, letting go of everything they had because they got so burnt out.
I mean, we have to take these situations that we see and we need to use them as wake up calls to go, "Man, if you don't take time to rest and to digest God's word the same word that you're pouring out onto others, you need to fill yourself back up, too." We can end up just like these other guys and girls who are, you know, failing and burning out.
Originally published Tuesday, 30 July 2019.
