Spiritual Fatigue Archives

1. Life Isn’t Easy Until We Are in Heaven

Rutherford addressed the common desire for things to go easy. We all desire an easier life and when things get difficult we can act surprised. Rutherford’s response was to point out that life isn’t easy until we are in heaven. In heaven, when the victory is complete, then we can sleep. He said, “if I sleep, I would desire to sleep faith’s sleep in Christ’s bosom”.

Rutherford knew that like the disciples who slept as Jesus was in Gethsemane (Mt 26:43), our natural selves, “loveth not the labour of religion”. Rutherford was telling the Kilmacolm church that they needed to admit that their desires for “a break” when it came to church controversies and biblical obedience, was a natural temptation to choose sleepy ease in this life, rather than the rest that resides in heaven alone.

2. Worrying About Staying Faithful Can Show a Lack of Faith

It is a common feature in churches that people’s complaints reveal the things they aren’t trusting God for. Caring about doctrine is too hard. Loving the unlovable is too difficult. Submitting to authority is too chafing. Yet in each case, the complaint that a call to obedience is too much, reveals that a person doesn’t think God can give the grace needed to obey.

Rutherford made the observation that “Sorrow for a slumbering soul is a token of some watchfulness of spirit”. By this, he meant that because people actually cared about doctrine, obedience, and faithful witness, it would lead to spiritual fatigue. He said that this willingness to “care” was a grace. But this caring, he said, “as a grace in us is too often abused”. Worrying too much about the difficulties of staying faithful can show a lack of faith in God who keeps us faithful (Phil 1:6, 2 Tim 2:13). The fact that Christians get tired of obedience and ‘suffering outside the camp’ (Hebrews 13:13), shows that they may not be trusting God for the strength to persevere.

3. Weakness invites Christ’s comfort to you.

Our weakness is evidence that we are not in heaven yet, but it does hold promise that Christ will comfort us until we get there. Rutherford explained this comforting idea to his correspondents when he said, “To [lack] complaints of weakness, is for heaven, and angels that never sinned, not for Christians in Christ’s camp on earth”.

Rutherford pointed out that one of the defining characteristics of the church is its weakness. He said:

“I think our weakness maketh us the church of the redeemed ones, and Christ’s field that the Mediator should labour in. If there were no diseases on earth, there needed no physicians on earth. If Christ had cried down weakness he might have cried down his own calling. But weakness is our Mediator’s world: sin is Christ’s only fair and market.

Letters, 156-157

So when we are feeling especially weak, we can trust that we are clearly qualified to receive comfort from God. As we share in Christ’s sufferings, we share in his comfort too. (2 Cor 1:3-7). Paul received comfort when he learned from the Lord, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” (2 Cor 12:9). This was the overarching truth that Rutherford was sharing.

Rutherford knew that when we are weak, our strength must come from the Lord. And so, Rutherford said, “we are carried upon Christ’s shoulders, and walk, as it were, upon his legs”.

As many Christians grow fatigued in their walk of faith, they need to realize that an easy life on earth is not the answer. Rather it is to find the help of Christ’s legs to carry us on. That was Rutherford’s counsel on an August day in 1639 and it applies directly to us today.

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Christians are a busy bunch. And they get physically tired. Tired of work, schedules, commitments, and expectations (Or maybe that’s just me!). But there is a surprising secret that Christians don’t like to admit. They’re tired in another way. They’re spiritually fatigued.

Spiritual Fatigue Illustrated

I’ve seen this now for a while in my church and others. There can be a sense of fatigue in a believer’s heart. It’s a fatigue about preaching, about holiness, about the power of God’s grace and more.

Recently this fatigue was illustrated to me when I read an interview with Josh Harris. Harris is the former Sovereign Grace pastor who influenced many people through his books. The recurring theme that I got from the interview was that Harris had become spiritually exhausted. The Word of God seemed all but meaningless to him now. In fact, he expressed doubt that any meaning could be concluded from the bible. He wasn’t even able to position himself into the non-evangelical, ‘progressive Christian’ camp which the interviewer wanted. Clearly, Josh Harris was tired of it all.

The Threat of Spiritual Fatigue

That kind of fatigue is the greatest threat to your walk with God. It is the fatigue that prevents you from growing when there is a bit of testing. It is like the parable of the soils, when someone is rootless, even initial joy can be reversed. Then a person will ‘fall away’ (Luke 8:13). The problem reveals itself in that scenario, that the soil wasn’t good to start with.

When this fatigue sets into a person’s life, it will start to justify itself by multiplying preferences. They might begin preferring different music, happier sermon themes or an inclusive style of ministry. Yet this spiritual fatigue can also start to despair that anything can change. That fatigue will have low views of God. It won’t see God’s goodness, his power to change things, and his free desire to do his people good. The result is that the spiritually fatigued person will be tempted to give up. They will quit on God, the church, friends and spouses.

Pain and Fatigue

Of course, we normally get spiritually sleepy when we are comfortable. A bit of conflict, some job reversals, or a medical diagnosis can suddenly wake us up to our need. As CS Lewis said in The Problem of Pain:

“We can ignore even pleasure. But pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”
CS Lewis, The Problem of Pain

Pain will come and it will stir us from our fatigue. Yet long before that God’s Word can do the rousing and can make us better prepared for the painful days. We can be awake to them, self-aware and alert to God, even when we feel physically worn out. As David said, “I am weary with my crying out; my throat is parched. My eyes grow dim with waiting for my God.” (Psalm 69:3). Physical fatigue is part of our outer self “wasting away” (2 Cor 4:16). But our inner self is “being renewed day by day” as we receive God’s good, correcting and awakening Word.

Fatigued by Jesus’ Demands?

Still, the great danger is that comfortable fatigue. How scary is it to get too tired to listen to God, the Scriptures, or his people. If Jesus is Lord, then our claims to follow him require that we do what he says. His demands are completely within his rights over us. But when people give in to spiritual fatigue, they start to view Jesus’s demands as onerous.

Fatigued and Disillusioned

In a column for The Gospel Coalition Canada, I wrote about how disillusionment and deconversion are connected. This comes out in the Josh Harris interview too. One of the saddest descriptions he made was how he talked about his church. He said that his church and those like it were “high demand religious environments”. He spoke of “a culture that places high demand on the execution of [biblical ethics] and creates structures of accountability, reward for those that do it well, a sense of shame for those that don’t do it well”.

Now certainly there could be legalistic, graceless, unloving applications of the biblical ethic. All faithful churches seek to shun legalism, and live by God’s forgiving grace in Christ. Yet Jesus is Lord. He is the one who creates a “high demand religious environment”. When he summoned the first disciples, it was with the all-encompassing demand “Follow me”. John Piper wrote a whole book summarizing Jesus’ high demands which was logically titled, What Jesus Demands From the World. So churches that seek to follow Jesus will heed the instructions which Paul gave to Titus:

The saying is trustworthy, and I want you to insist on these things, so that those who have believed in God may be careful to devote themselves to good works. These things are excellent and profitable for people.
(Titus 3:8)

Words like “insist”, “be careful” and “devote” are not sleepy words. They are words of awakening to the fatigued. Of course if there is no gospel-power, it’s useless. Gospel power is the animation of the Holy Spirit to apply undeserved favour of Christ’s love to the sinner’s heart. Sadly the natural man starts to think it’s all a waste of time. And he or she is too tired to bother with it (cf. 1 Cor 2:14).

The Trumpet and the Yoke

Friends, let us pray that God’s word will trumpet in our ears with his Spirit-empowered Word. Pray that God would do this when we get too sleepy to care what God thinks. Then, when we listen to our Lord Jesus, we realize that the demands of his yoke are easy and his burden is light (Matt 11:30).