WHEN THE BATTERIES
START TO RUN DOWN
Introduction
Have you ever noticed how subtly things catch up to us sometimes.
At the start of the year most people are pretty pumped up and ready to attack the new year with a vengeance.
- By the middle of the year it all starts
getting a bit frayed around the edges.
Often we don’t notice a tiredness creeping up on us, until suddenly it’s too late.
- Suddenly everything becomes a burden.
- Work becomes a total pain.
- Little annoyances become major catastrophes, small simple problems become unsolvable
hurdles.
- People come to you for help & advice
– and you find yourself groaning & saying “OH NO!! I’m just too tired
to help myself, let alone help anyone else”.
- It even becomes difficult to motivate
ourselves to praise & worship, we come to church because we have to
(we feel obliged to).
- Temptations become harder to resist.
- We don’t want people to know that we are
struggling.
- We don’t even want to admit to God that
we are having problems.
- It feels like BURNOUT IS JUST AROUND THE CORNER.
Let’s be honest here tonight, has
everyone here felt like that at sometime in the past, maybe your feeling it
now.
I have, - I have so much difficulty coming back
from holidays sometimes because I know the pressures going to be back on again
when I get back.
I hate to admit that I’m not keen on
pressure, but it is a part of life that we have to deal with in all areas of
our lives.
The stress and tiredness can make us
feel very isolated and alone as well.
- We can feel that God has abandoned us, friends
and colleagues don’t care, our wives or husbands just don’t understand or
care.
Even the disciples stressed out from
working with Jesus.
Mark
4:35-38 (-41)
35 As
evening came, Jesus said to his disciples, "Let's cross to the other side
of the lake." 36 He was already in
the boat, so they started out, leaving the crowds behind (although other boats
followed). 37 But soon a fierce storm
arose. High waves began to break into the boat until it was nearly full of
water.
(This I think would be a fairly stressful thing to
most people – it certainly would be to me, and
I used to live on a boat – and it definitely was to the disciples and
also remember that some of these guys were experienced
fisherman, rough seas were part of the job for them – when we listen in
context to the way they reacted – things were looking pretty serious.)
38 Jesus
was sleeping at the back of the boat with his head on a cushion. Frantically they woke him up, shouting, "Teacher, don't you even care that we are going
to drown?"
No matter how hard we try there are
always going to be things that frighten us and wear us down, it’s
part of living in a fallen world.
BODY
So what can we do about it?
Let’s look at the next 2 versus and see Jesus’ reaction to their
concerns, remember that through this terrifying experience for the disciples,
Jesus is asleep on a cushion at the back of the boat
Mark 4:39-41
39 When he
woke up, he rebuked the wind and said to the water, "Quiet down!" Suddenly the wind
stopped, and there was a great calm. 40 And he asked them, "Why are you so afraid? Do you still not have faith in me?"
41 And
they were filled with awe and said among themselves, "Who is this man, that even the wind and waves obey him?"
NLT
The disciples had been living,
travelling and working with Jesus, but still didn’t understand the power of
God.
It’s interesting to note in these
verses, it’s almost just a throwaway observation, but Jesus WAS ASLEEP, although He was fully God –
Jesus was also fully man, and as a man was subject to tiredness, hunger, fear,
temptation, anger, but the God side of Him made it all controllable.
Have you ever noticed how you can be
powering on one minute, then suddenly it’s “Wow I feel worn out & tired”
all in a matter of minutes.
I was using my battery powered razor
the other day, when suddenly it latched onto a whisker & stopped dead,
still clinging onto that whisker, it had got too tired to cut.
I never noticed that the batteries
were going flat particularly.
It had been slowing down over a
period of time, but it was subtle, and until it struck a difficulty, it had
kept going.
So I unattached it
from my face, and put new batteries in it.
It fired up and off it went again
with great enthusiasm, slicing off that whisker that had stopped it before when
the batteries were weak.
It made me think of just how we are.
We often accept a tired state of
living our secular and Spiritual lives without realising we’re doing it.
We don’t notice the slow and subtle
changes from being on fire to just being tired.
We accept second best because we’re
fearful to change, or we’re stuck in a rut and are prepared to just stay there
because our Spiritual batteries have gone flat.
That can affect our physical
batteries as well.
Sometimes it’s just too much trouble
to do something different.
We need to be prepared to spend time
in God’s presence, put our thoughts & concerns before Him, and trust Him
for an answer.
When Jesus was first looking for
disciples we read in Luke 5:1-11
5:1 One
day as he was preaching on the
(If
they were washing their nets, that meant that, that
was it for the day. They were out of there boats and getting ready to go home
[or down the pub or somewhere])
3 Stepping into one of the
boats, Jesus asked Simon, its owner, to push out a little into the water, so
that he could sit in the boat and speak to the crowds from there.
4 When he
had finished speaking, he said to Simon, "Now go out where it is deeper
and let down your nets and you will catch a lot of fish!"
5
"Sir," Simon replied, "we worked hard all last night and didn't catch a thing. But
if you say so, we'll try again."
6 And this time their nets were so full that
they began to tear! 7 A shout for help brought their
partners in the other boat, and soon both boats were filled with fish and on
the verge of sinking.
8 When
Simon Peter realized what had happened, he fell to his
knees before Jesus and said, "Oh, sir, please leave us-I'm too much of a
sinner for you to have around." 9 For he was awestruck by the size of
their catch, as were the others with him, 10 and his partners too-James and
John, the sons of Zebedee. Jesus replied, "Don't be afraid! From now on
you'll be fishing for the souls of men!"
11 And as
soon as they landed, they left everything and went with him. TLB
It was interesting to read in “The Word For Today” on Tuesday 1st
June how many of the people who had survived the destruction of the Twin
Towers, changed jobs almost immediately – not because their buildings had been
destroyed where they worked, but because it made them realise that life on this
earth is very fleeting – many of them went to far less stressful jobs that only
paid a fraction of what they had been earning, because they wanted a more
rewarding and fulfilling life that the stress of their old jobs wouldn’t allow.
It’s sad that it often takes a
tragedy to make us see that we are on the wrong track and need to get back on
track with the life that God had intended for us to live.
Why did Jesus tell them to “Launch
out into the deep”, To quote “The Word
For Today” and I’m doing that because I just couldn’t think of a better way to
word it :-
“When you want what you don’t have, you’ve got
to risk doing what you haven’t done yet”.
Only a fool will keep doing the same
thing over and over again and expect to get a different result.
In other words, if you’ve been
struggling with a problem for years, and have kept trying to solve it using the
same methods – you will keep getting the same results, so try something
different.
When we are tired and things are
just not working and we need help, take it to God in prayer, ask Him for
Wisdom, ask Him for help.
James 1:5-8
5 If any of you lacks wisdom,
let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach, and it
will be given to him. 6 But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for he who doubts is like
a wave of the sea driven and tossed by the wind. 7 For let not that man suppose that he will receive anything from the
Lord; 8 he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways. NKJV
When we ask – believe you will
receive.
Going back to Mark 4:39-41 again we
read;
39 When he
woke up, he rebuked the wind and said to the water, "Quiet down!" Suddenly the wind stopped, and there was a
great calm. 40 And he asked them,
"Why are you so afraid? Do you still not have faith in me?"
41 And they were filled with awe and said among themselves, "Who is this man, that even the wind and waves obey him?" NLT
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When we go into brainstorming sessions at work to solve a problem or come up with a new idea, there are just a few rules:-
- You don’t knock any body else’s suggestions no matter how ridiculous and far out they may seem – (sometimes the more way out the better – it triggers thoughts for other ideas) and it breaks down barriers with a good laugh
- You write down and consider every suggestion
- At the end you analyse & break down every suggestion no matter how weird, until you come up with a workable solution
- Then as a Christian – take it the Lord in prayer
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We need to keep our everyday lives
focussed on God’s promises for our lives, and the gifts he has placed in us, -
our musical talents, the wisdom he gives us, our ability to be friendly and
help others, even being able to give someone encouragement is a gift from God,
It’s amazing what a difference it can make to someone just to have someone give
a little encouragement.
We often lack faith in our strength as children of God – we think in our minds I know I should be able to do these things, but the Disciples were with Christ on earth, that’s why they could do them.
Christ didn’t suggest that He might
give us authority – He simply said “all authority has been given to me – and I
give it to you
When we were in NZ we went on this
vehicle designed for the Antarctic called a Hagglund – The driver told us all
about it, it weighed 5 tonnes – had tracks and was amphibious (floated on
water), and could traverse gaps up to about 2 metres
The driver told us all of the things
it could do – and that was nice – but he didn’t just tell us – we had to put
our faith in what he told us because we were going for a ride in it – it’s
fully enclosed, we got in , he locked the doors and
off we went.
Sure enough it climbed very steep
hills, crossed a 1.6 metre ravine and then splash – into a very deep muddy
waterhole for a swim – 5 ton of vehicle plus 12 people – no propellers – but no
trouble in the water – we just couldn’t open the doors if it got into trouble
because of the water pressure – it did have an escape hatch on the roof in case
we got into trouble though.
This is a bit like us – we can read all about the
things God promises, but we need to get into the vehicle and drive with them –
that way we can KNOW they are true.
God often builds our spiritual
strength and our faith in Him little by little, each new victory strengthens
our faith and our ability,
little by little and each victory gives us a little more
spiritual energy to build on.
God stretches us continually to lead
us to new levels of faith and strength in Him.
Read The Gospels – the tremendous
promises God gave for us:
John
14:12-14
12 The Answered Prayer
"Most assuredly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do he will do also; and greater works than these he will do, because I go to My Father. 13 And whatever you ask in My name, that I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. 14 If you ask anything in My name, I will do it.
NKJV
We have tremendous authority in
Christ – but we do need to have faith that we have it.
When the body is starting to flag a
little, and our faith is running low – we need to get those batteries on the charger,
plug into God’s promises for us.
Set time aside to
spend time with God, LISTEN, - when we read the Bible – Listen to what
God is saying to us through His word.
CONCLUSION
- Let’s do a battery test on ourselves tonight?
- Have things been slowly creeping up on you?
- Do you feel you have lost your Spiritual edge tonight?
- Satan wants nothing more than to wear us
out & tear us down so that we cannot build the
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