Overcome being overwhelmed
How tired are you today? Would a quick nap fix your tired eyes?
Or do you need three weeks alone on an island?
Maybe OVERWHELMED is a better word to describe how you feel ? Or have you reached a place where you feel burned out and wish there was no more work to do?
If you find yourself saying, “there are just not enough hours in the day!”, consider the number of hours we work; both paid and unpaid. Add to that the time we spend taking care of our homes, families, self-care, volunteering and perhaps even a second job, and it can certainly feel that way. We are spending most of our waking hours working and it can become a grind. I can also accidentally spend hours each day on my phone. Is it any wonder we are exhausted?!
And yet the bible tells us in Ecclesiastes 3:22
There’s nothing better for a person than to enjoy their work.
If that is true, and we are working so much of the time, then why are we not full of joy? Is the Word of God out of touch with our modern culture? Of course not! The problem is not with our ability to have joy. The problem is with our perception of work.
The truth is, God created work, and what He creates is for our benefit.
In Genesis 2:15, we see that God created work in the garden, “The Lord God placed the man in the Garden of Eden to tend and watch over it.” Work was good! It glorifies God and it helps us to enjoy Him.
Whether it’s making breakfast and doing the dishes on a Saturday morning, or catching a train to get to a day filled with meetings, work is part of our lives. But for many of us, work often feels meaningless and without purpose. We become discouraged in our work and think of how hard, exhausting or annoying it is. It can feel like drudgery.
Or, we make work an idol, getting our identity from our work and thinking that we are what our job says about us. We allow our work, our title, or our income to define us, getting caught in the never-ending need to keep up. Idols lead us to overwork, to be ruthless or unhealthy. They look like worry or micromanagement and they fill our lives with anxiety, anger, and discouragement.
None of this is what God intended. Our value is not found in what we do but rather in knowing who we are. When we approach work recognizing that God does through us what we could never do on our own, our work changes from selfish, self-centered and competitive, to work marked by meaning and purpose; work that reflects God’s love for the world around us. There is purpose and meaning to our work. So why doesn’t it feel that way all too often?
When God gave work to Adam, he told him to tend or care for God’s creation, the garden. God gave Adam responsibility with authority. However, in Genesis 3, sin entered the world and ever since, everything in creation no longer functions as it was intended, including work, and we separate God’s work from the work we do to make a living. But the good news is that there is redemption. Because Jesus conquered sin and death, we are “The hands & feet of God.” We understand, in whatever we do, we are to “work heartily” as for the Lord and not for men. We get to choose to work with our whole heart, because inner work we are serving God and He is our reward.
“And whatever you do or say, do it as a representative of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through him to God the Father.” Col 3:17
God invites us to join him in His work.
He wants our work; our mental or physical effort, filled with His Spirit and His power, to achieve the purpose or the result He created us for. Every part of human life; our soul, our body, our praying, and our working, all of it was made by God, for God. And all of it was affected by sin.
Sure, there is no escaping that work can be hard. We can put mental and physical effort into something and feel like we did not achieve the purpose or result we wanted. Work can also be painful.
The curse on the fallen world is that labor can feel fruitless, pointless, and meaningless.
After the fall, God said to the woman “I will make your pain in childbearing very severe. With painful labor you will give birth to children.” He said to Adam, “The very ground is cursed because of you. Getting food from the ground will be as painful as having babies is for your wife. You’ll be working in pain all your life. The ground will sprout thorns and weeds. You’ll get your food the hard way, planting, tilling, harvesting, sweating in the fields from dawn to dusk.”
These great tasks of life-our job, careers, projects, childbirth (and with it, family life; marriage, raising children) and work are often excruciatingly hard. But just as childbirth is not a curse, neither is work a curse. But they can feel like a curse. But as Lysa Turkurst says “Feelings are indicators, but they are not truth”.
The truth is God invites us to join him-right here, right now, in His work.
As a young mom, much of my work took place at home. I can remember how my work felt fruitless because I spent hours putting away toys, washing dishes, making dinner, running baths and I would fall asleep exhausted each night. When I woke up in the morning there were only a few brief moments before the sink was full of dishes and there were toys on the floor, once again. There were many days that my work felt meaningless.
If you’re looking for success by the fruits of your labor as a young mom, you may come up empty.
But today, as the mom of adult daughters, I see the joy that those years contained. I have also poured myself into roles as a teacher and a pastor. Work that can also feel like there may not be any point to it. But then, a decade later-someone will point to a word I spoke over them and the impact it had on their life.
Work is not meaningless or purposeless.
However, work can feel meaningless. We are made on purpose for a purpose. But we can invest our life in what God created us to do, or we can chase feelings of happiness, meaning and purpose.
How many of us walk through life thinking that the next step in life is when we can finally be happy? Whether it’s getting into the college we want, landing a great job, getting married, having children, or buying a house, we are sure that once we obtain any of these, we will be happy and fulfilled. But it only continues. Oh, but wait, if we could just take that dream vacation, and save enough for a fun and meaningful retirement, that will do it! But as the writer of Ecclesiastes says, “The work that is done under the sun was grievous to me. All of it is meaningless, a chasing after the wind.”
Some days are so hard, and maybe that is your day today. SO HARD. Speak truth over your life.
Work is not meaningless or purposeless
Other days we get a glimpse of what work may have been if sin never entered the world and something inside us that knows we were created to make an impact. We were made on purpose for purpose. Live Fully and use those gifts that God has placed inside of you!
Sadly, we get confused about how to live out our purpose and we end up trying to make our name great instead of making God’s name great. We fill our life with things, forgetting that we were created to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. We love being recognized for our work or the feeling of accomplishment at the end of a day when we have worked hard and can fall asleep knowing that what we did really mattered and we confuse that rewarding feeling with purpose.
First Peter 1:24 says that “all people are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field; the grass withers and the flowers fall, but the Word of the Lord endures forever.” Anything we do for ourselves, by ourselves, will not last. But God has called us to partner with him to move His kingdom forward. There is a powerful shift in focus from us to God. If we realize that we are the hands & feet of God serving the community God has placed us in, we will believe that is it not a waste of our time, talent or treasure.
God can use you right now, wherever you are. Meaning and purpose for your life will only be found in God’s big story.
God has redeemed what sin stole.
Meaning in our life happens as we realize that Jesus Christ did the work for us – ALL the work for us - on the cross. And He offers us rest for our souls. Purpose and meaning will happen in work when God is in His right place and we are in ours. Because of Jesus we do not have to work for the joy of serving others and we don’t have to work to make a name for ourselves.
We have been given a name by Jesus. He calls us chosen, free, forgiven, loved, masterpiece!!
Revelation 2:17 says that “anyone with ears to hear must listen to the Spirit and understand what he is saying. I will give to each on a white stone, and on the stone will be engraved a new name that no one understands except the one who receives it.”
Just like Queen Esther in the Book of Esther, who surrendered her life to God’s purpose, each of us also stands here because the God who goes before us and is here with us brought us here, “for such a times as this.” Whether we work in our home or outside the home, God can, and will, use us. If you are retired and your work is to pray, know that is the most important work. If your work is to care for someone, that is the most important work. If your work is to study or lead meetings or file papers, that is the most important work. Know that we are each where today because God has put us here for such a time as this.
If work on its own is what brings our life its meaning, it will never succeed. It’s the hope of God within you that brings meaning to work. As men and women, we are made in the image of God. Jesus came to seek and save the lost, to have us place our life in his hands.
When we forget this, we put our hopes and dreams in the work of making a home, raising kids, building a bank account, getting to the next step on the corporate ladder or becoming known for our work. If our hope is built on anything other than Jesus’ righteousness, our work begins to feel meaningless instead of purposeful. We see our kids, our laundry, and our work as tasks to finish, rather than gifts from God.
The good news is that the gospel gives us a true, satisfying understanding of work by giving us a story for our work and helping us know that our faith allows us to partner with God as He loves and cares for our world. Mother Theresa said, “I can’t do what you do. You can’t do what I do. But we can make this world better together.”
As loved sons and daughters of God, we help people find their way back to God when we allow God’s purposes to be expressed through each of us and use this one life to glorify God and enjoy Him forever!
