Most of us encounter people every day that are hurting, lonely, and desperate for answers for their pain, yet we are oblivious to the depths of their suffering. On the outside, they seem content and satisfied with their lives, but internally they are struggling. Many of these individuals are people of faith. Even some of our Biblical examples of courage and strength also dealt with extreme sadness and anguish. King David, the psalmist, wrote about the emotional toll of constantly running for his life and dealing with his enemies. Not only was he fearful, but he was heartbroken that King Saul wanted to take his life. Job suffered tremendous loss, so much so that he cursed the day he was born. There are many others in the Bible that struggled at some point with seasons of emotional distress. Like many of us, they were tired of wrestling with anxiety and fear, and they prayed that God would bring a solution to their pain.
Although our modern conveniences and technological innovations are amazing, they have not advanced humanity emotionally. We’ve endured emotional struggles and exhaustion throughout the ages, and although some might argue that it is a more complex issue today, God’s remedy has not changed. It is just as effective as it’s always been. God’s remedy to our emotional struggles is delivered through our faith in Jesus Christ. This seems harder today for believers to accept than perhaps any other time.
If we were to strip our emotional exhaustion down to its core, we’d probably find a mixture of fear and doubt, with maybe a little bit (or a lot) of impatience in the mix as well. On top of this is a sense that we can’t do anything to control what is being done to us, and this can really run us ragged. Wanting control, trying to have it over our circumstances, and then ending up with frustration after frustration when nothing is cooperating, this is the thing that is most likely to cause exhaustion.
1John 4:18(NIV) tells us, “There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.” Our Heavenly Father wants us to untangle our emotions from our faith. For far too long, we’ve allowed our emotions to determine whether or not we will believe God. If we feel good and optimistic, then we consider our faith to be intact. But if we’re not feeling in control or that things are going our way, we will say and feel that our faith is down or that it has taken a hit. We allow our emotions to dictate whether we consider ourselves in or out of faith.
In this state, many of us close our ears to the spiritual instruction and guidance that will help to increase our believing. We’re disillusioned and have become too tired to rise to the level of optimism and enthusiasm. We can’t bend any more, or refuse to, because we feel there’s just too much that’s out of our control, and we can’t put ourselves at risk anymore. The thing that sometimes escapes us is that whenever we see faith as a risk, it’s no longer faith.
The thing that you and I must understand is that God MUST receive our full faith and focus. Anything other than our total faith would be less than He deserves. Our complete trust must be in Him, and Him alone through the Lord Jesus Christ. We can never be in a position as believers where we place more faith in our emotions and feelings than we do in His power, ability, and willingness to bless us. Imagine the state of the body of Christ if the majority of believers were overcome with doubt and paralyzed with anxiety. Imagine if very few were fully persuaded in God’s goodness and that people could not even rally themselves to pray fervently and give honor to God. Surely in this scenario we could see that the devil will have made strides in getting believers, sons and daughters of God, to nullify the Cross of Calvary. We would be behaving as if Romans 8:37 were not true, as if we do not have overwhelming victory through Christ who loves us. We must not be misled, for the devil is a liar, and indeed we are more than conquerors through our Lord!
The only way to demonstrate our love for God is to have faith in Him, to trust Him no matter what. This means that we must stand on the authority and power of Jesus Christ and begin to repeatedly confess what the Word says. Many of us haven’t done this because we are disappointed with God’s timing. And because we are, our resentment against His timing shows up in our refusal to feel joy. We will often let ourselves become comfortable in sinking low in our emotions because His timing is not on our schedules. God has promised us blessings, but we want them on the double. Faith requires the element of time not because God is slow but because it takes us a while to transition our priorities. Our priorities must be shifted so that God is number One in our hearts instead of the blessings we want from Him or our need to control things.
Our trust in God paints a portrait that all of heaven sees. Its beauty cannot have us looking, feeling, thinking, or behaving in fear. Instead, it must reveal our hope in Christ! Hope is the emotion that the enemy is trying to steal from us. Ephesians 6:12 makes it clear that we are wrestling against principalities, rulers of darkness, and evil spirits that want to inhabit our emotions so they can sit in the place of authority and power over our lives. We must plead the blood of Jesus Christ and invite the Holy Spirit to do a work in our minds and hearts as we read and study God’s Word.
The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Truth. He comforts, teaches, and guides us. He testifies of Jesus Christ, and our invitation to allow him to lead must be in the form of our effort to let truth guide us instead of the lies that satan tries to whisper in our ears. Many of us have been trying to protect the wrong thing. We are in spiritual warfare for our emotional well-being, and sometimes, rather than protecting our joy, hope, and faith, we surrender our entire focus to disappointment, rejection, and sadness.
Many sisters in Christ have become emotionally rigid. They’ve anesthetized themselves against hope, and consciously or not, they have locked the Spirit out and kept him from moving in their lives. They will let everything else have a seat at the table; social media, toxic people, and all manner of unGodly influences, but they will not avail themselves to replace that stuff with more reading and studying of God’s Word.
God blesses His Word and elevates His Word above His name. His Word must be the dominate influence over our emotions and thoughts. Heavenly Father’s answer never changes. It’s the Word, the Word, the Word! His Word is life to us, and the only reason that we are not leaping with overwhelming joy in every aspect of our existences is because we don’t believe in the power of God’s Word and will not invest our believing in it. We become emotionally exhausted because we are allowing our emotions a role they were not created to have. They cannot rule, and when we allow them ruler-ship, they are overtaxed and overwhelmed.
The way to deal with emotional exhaustion is to at the very least give half as much energy and effort into knowing God’s Word as we do the world’s devices. Recognize that the Holy Spirit desires to help us navigate through the challenges and difficulties of life so we have confidence in the victory of Christ. God never told us to let our emotions have the driver’s seat of our existences. We are commanded to renew our minds to His Word, to give our bodies totally to Him, and to let the example of Christ rule our entire lives. He wouldn’t have told us to do it if it couldn’t be done.■
Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.
“Dealing with Emotional Exhaustion” written by Reverend Fran Mack, edited by Kim Times, for Sundie Morning Sistas ©2021. All rights reserved. All done to the glory of God through Jesus Christ, our Lord!