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We humans are human, body-and-soul beings that God created to function in specific ways. In this message, Pastor MIke Novotny discusses recognizing this reality and organizing our lives according to it, which might require the painful work of doing less so that our bodies have energy for what matters most.
The episodes are the weekly sermons from 922 Ministries (St. Peter and The CORE) of Appleton, Wisconsin.
Burned Out
Week 1 - The CORE
Pastor Mike Novotny
Good morning, happy 2023 and welcome to a brand new sermon series called Burned Out. It struck me the other day that you and I live in a culture that sets us up, choose us up and then burns us out. I'm just trying to be weak and whiny. I was actually thinking about the time in which you and I live compared to other times in the past. And if you're not watching from some distant country or culture, I've been thinking about the place in the culture in which you and I are living and I think when you combine those two things, you might agree with me that you and I live in a time and place that sets us up, choose us up and then burns us out. A culture where we're not just busy, but as the average American says, I'm busy, busy, busy, get to say, three times for the count. Was that just occasional periods, where we're rushing and behind and kind of overwhelmed with everything in the to-do list. That's not the exception for a lot of us in the room. Today, that's become the norm. The stress of having lots to do, turns into the anxiety of what if I can't do all this turns into feeling overwhelmed? I'm never going to get this done, turns into burnout for both body and soul. Now, I say that because I think you and I live in a culture that has the perfect recipe to burn people out. And if you're watching at home or here, level of free to grab a pen, and write these three things down, is what I think is the recipe for a burnout culture. First of all, is the fact that we live in a modern culture.
You might not think of this because you live within it, but in the days of Moses or in the days of Jesus, or in the days of George Washington before, there was the light bulb and the laptop. Most of life was governed by the simple rhythms that God built into creation. There was day, there was night, there was lights. When you could do your work, there was darkness. When you couldn't there's times that you would walk to talk to other people. And when you went back to your home, you were physically separated and most people didn't violate that physical separation, right? If you are a farmer, when sunset came there wasn't much farming to do. But, O, times have changed. First, Thomas Edison gave us the light bulb. So we weren't bound by light and darkness. Then people invented the internet and the laptop. So work did exactly have to stay at work. I'm going to talk with your boss. You don't have to wait until Monday morning. You grab your cell, you text, you grab your laptop and you email the boundaries in the barriers that prevent burnout are totally off in culture. How many of you own smartphones? If you do your manager and your pastor, your brother, your sister, your son, your daughter, your mother, your father, your next door neighbor, and a million marketers can call you and text you and ring, you, and ding you, and ping you and DM you and get your attention.
When you think it's your day off, it's never your day off, as long as that device is in your hand, welcome to the modern world. And then Covid happened. And more and more of us who used to leave work at work now shifted our work to our home. Before, when all the papers, and the stuff, and the device where you do your work was far away on the other side of town and now it's in your office, which is in your home. The modern world has made it so easy to work all the time and so difficult to actually step away and rest. And if that weren't enough, then there's these devices which convinced us that rest looks like sitting down and scrolling. And based on everything, the neurologists and our doctors tell us it's not actually good for providing peace and rest for our hearts. Internet use and social media increases, if not skyrockets, levels of anxiety and depression. And so, you put all this together in the modern world and you, and I would most humans. What Jesus himself didn't have to deal with. We deal with every single day. No barriers, No Boundaries. Just constant work is a very rare ability to truly rest. Are you stressed in? That's the first one. That's the modern culture, combine that with the American culture.
Not every culture shares America's passion / idolatry for bigger and better and progress and profit.
I'm just trying to study that the average American worker in a year compared to the average German worker. Works 435 more hours a year. Forgive this stereotype but I've never thought of the Germans as lazy but the average American puts in 10 more weeks of full-time work compared to the average Japanese worker. The average American worker puts in 169 more hours, every single year you live in it, you don't realize it that we work. Other countries have huge policies with maternity and paternity leave not in America. Others have huge cultural times where people don't work. They take holiday not in America, we work because we want bigger, and we want better.
I recently read a study in the 1950s, the average American family was bigger than the average American family today. They had more kids, but on average, that family lived in a home that was ready for this. 935 square feet. Never driven around like the original downtown of a city and you see the one car garage and the small home, that was what bigger families than ours used to live in. Welcome to America. Things get bigger. Now we need two-car garage or 3 or the stuff doesn't fit. Now we need the shed in the back for all the toys. We need the walk-in closet, not just our uncle, who has enough closet, we have more storage units than we know what to do with. We've accelerated our need for consumption and materialism in the process, we've had to work more hours to afford it, to fit into it, to fill it, to pay for it and to care for it. This is the American culture but it's not just our houses. Actually, it's the callings that we have in life. A hundred years ago. What was expected of a pastor?
Preach the Bible. You show up when someone has a question or is sick. Yeah, that has gotten bigger. Now there's the Church website and the church social media and you got to make videos and you got to edit this and you got to do this and you got to know how to do YouTube and Facebook ads and reach your community and have events and Trunk-or-Treat, and Christmas and Easter the stuff for the kids in the Sunday School in the team, grew up in the moms group and all the other groups. And I bet that's happened to you two. A hundred years ago, what would your profession have been? I, I would not want to be a couple about to get married in modern America. With the expectations of what you need to do to plan a wedding, I would not want to be a new mom in modern, America. We're just being. A mom is looked down on by some people. Like you have to have a side hustle on Etsy or part-time job or a full-time job or you're not pulling your weight, as an American woman. We live in just a culture that pushes pushes and pushes students, can't just be students. Now, they need like language credits and music lessons. Kids, kids used to be like 1% of athletes to be in traveling clubs. Not every kid is in a club and goes to a camp as to fiercely compete, just to make the varsity team sports are different, music is different. Motherhood is different, Ministry is different, everything is different. Welcome to America.
Are you sure I said, some of the Don. This is one last thing. It's not just a modern culture, it's not just American culture. Finally, many of us are part of a Christian culture. And a Christian culture, especially in America, has gotten bigger and faster to we encourage people to come to church, right? Take time to work on your faith and read your Bibles. Not just once in a while, but every single day, maybe at the start of the day and the end of the day and prayer is valuable, fasting can be valuable, journaling can be valuable. Well, you should volunteer, get a t-shirt that says “you first” and speaking of that, put other people first, served your neighbor, which one of your neighbors, both of your neighbors, all of your neighbors, everyone is your neighbor, right? Jesus was sacrificial and selfless and he created Earth people. So if you're going to be a Christian, you should be sacrificial and selfless and serve people, say yes. When someone needs help, with someone's on the side of the road, stop and fix their tire. If your mother needs someone to move her furniture, go up and help and honor your mom is all these commands. All these two dudes. We think that's what Christian culture looks like, modern plus American plus Christian equals but, I think of the worst part of, blank the worst part is the way, some of you are wired. It's a good part of your personality that without real intention can go too far and burn you out. How many are you sitting next to someone who's fairly compassionate? They're few in a time of need. Some people are amazing and compassionate. People have a hard time saying no. Don't they? It's like your heart hurts so much for people who are hurting that, you want to be there for him and for her and you want to take it, you know, not everyone's going to show up. But you want to be the one that shows up and now in a digital age when everyone can bring you and DM you and ping you and on Facebook and Instagram. You see everyone's problems. You overextend yourself and it's just enough energy in your body or hours in the day. You're sitting next to someone who's really responsible, they say they're going to do something. They do it.
Yeah. Now that's dangerous because you get interrupted by extra things but now you've committed to all these previous things and you can't say I'm sorry, just life got too busy, I'm gonna have to back out. That's that's an estimate that's like to be damned. He said, just I have to follow through. I have to be a person of my word. I mean, if you're sitting next to someone who's competitive, Is the person got really grouchy when they lost at the board games over Christmas and it competitive people like me, We love to compete, we love to push, we love to excel, we love to set records and make resolutions and then follow through and break them. And that means there's always enough Next Level to get you. You read 10 books last year, how about 15 bucks? How about 20 bucks? How about two books, a month or two book, every single week, there was more and bigger and better things to do.
See that its moving so fast in modern culture that unless you swim against it, it will burn you out. It will fill up your schedule and beyond it will push you past the point where you want to be. And here as a pastor is why that matters so much to me? Because I've noticed in my life and I've noticed a lot of your life. So when you are burned out, exhausted and overwhelmed, You are rarely like Jesus.
You can't make it to church, you can squeeze in the Bible reading and the religious stuff. But are you joyful? Like Jesus, you have the peace of God that Jesus had. Are you patient and kind in a, my experience doesn't matter how much you go to church or how much you read your Bible. If you are over committed, it is so hard to produce the Fruit of the Spirit. Right. Same Christian. Goes to a very important meeting one day and she's 15 minutes early. She goes to the same meeting another day and she is 5 minutes late. In which situation is? She bound to be more like Jesus, When that sweet old lady is driving, 70 miles an hour or honoring the school's own, right? It's not what happens. It's the pace in which it happens, every stoplight becomes a moment of frustration. Every stupid city planner who made this 25 miles in our wisest 25 miles an hour. Like you get mad for, you wouldn't be mad, you're impatient, or you won't be patient. Don't have time for interruptions and sick kids and problems, right? When we are burned out and running running running rushing rushing. Rushing. We actually lose some of the incredible blessings that come from being a Christian, the joy of being forgiven, the peace of knowing that God controls the universe, right? So I'm not just concerned about your schedule in this sermon series. I'm concerned about your soul, the blessings, it has and the blessings that he gives
And that's why we're going to try to change that. Starting today. And for the next few weeks, we're going to talk about burnout from a physical perspective, and a spiritual perspective, and an emotional perspective and a relational perspective. And really for me, the goal of this series is a single thing, is to help you run your race of faith.
It shows that the verb intentionally, run. I don't want you to walk. It's true. Some people in the church are lazy. They're unreliable, they quit when things get hard, but that's bad but I'm not going to talk about that in the series. Instead, I want to talk about the people who aren't running their race, their sprinting at an unsustainable Pace, they're pushing so hard. They're barely getting by and it's going to catch up with him soon. So if this is you who just has too much on your plate, my goal is to slow you down, not too much but just enough, so that you can run a race of Faith with peace and joy and love other people in Jesus’ name. Now to get you one step closer to that. I'm going to start in the beginning. Literally, today, I want to teach you the first half of the first verse of the first chapter of the first book of the Bible. Because in that one half of a verse is a truth that is it's actually so obvious when you think about it. But so important for your life So take note as we open our Bibles today to Genesis 1:1, just the first half of the first verse which says this In the beginning. God created.
God created. Verb, created subject, God, object, you and the heavens and the Earth and everything that they contain. In the beginning the Bible says God created, I had a chance to go from cover to cover in this book and read every verse. That uses words like create created creation. And what I learned is that the Bible almost exclusively reserves the act of Creation for God. Talks about humans with talks about animals, that's always the creation and God is always labeled as the Creator. Rules are never switched. We don't create God, we really don't even create from a Biblical perspective. We are just the creation that God created. Now, here's what that implies. I want you to write this down and then I'll explain it. It implies that the creator creates the rules. The one who creates something gets to decide how that something works out, functions. If you're a designer of a device or a product, you get to determine the details of what makes this work and what makes this break, you're good with that. So if you and I run an athletic company and we make those like bouncy balls that kids use on playgrounds. We make that ball in a certain way, with a certain material so that it can bounce If you and I know other hand work and a China company and we produce and create a really fine china. We can't swap the China plates with the bouncy ball. One bounces, the other doesn't. Kids don't get to decide how it works. The Creator gets to decide how things work. So, in the beginning, the Bible says God created everything and that means God gets to decide the rules of how everything works, what makes something thrive and what makes it wither and die. And so God made fish with gills to live in the water, he made Beagles with legs to run in the land, he made eagles with wings to fly in the sky and the fish and the beagles and eagles don't get to decide for themselves how their bodies work. They simply have to follow the rules that God created with their body,Right. So Fred the Fish. As I'm going to be a beagle today. Jumps out of the sea into the park. What happens to Fred. Fred is dead? All right? The creator creates the rules. If Benny the beagles as I'm not a vegan, I'm an eagle and he jumps off a cliff. What happens to the Beagle. He's not an eagle, he tries to fly and then he dies because the creation doesn't get to make up its own rules. Here's what I want to be. There's no my truth in creation. There's just the truth with which the Creator created. It are you here with me so far? All right now Guess who else that applies to.
You, you, you and I as part of the creation, don't get to decide what the rules of our bodies are. Just like scientists and doctors can study. Well, here's how an eagle works and whiteflies neurologists and nutritionist can study well, here's how your body works. And here's what makes your heart work. And here's where your brain is functioning at a top level. Here's like sleep, you don't get to decide if you need sleep or not. That's how God made you food and certain things with nutrition. You don't get to decide what makes you run at Peak Performance? That's been built into you by the Creator who created the rules whether you need exercise or But you don't get to decide that. When you wake up in the morning, the creator creates the rules and God created you with a need to eat and to move and to sleep.
I'm guessing you already knew that. If you didn't fly, even climb up to your roof and jump off like an eagle and fly to church. No. My body wasn't made for that. But if I could push you a little bit, I would ask does your lifestyle reflect in obedience to the physical rules that the Creator created. If I could look at your schedule, your lifestyle and your habits, and compare it to what experts have found, like, here's how people like you work. How much obedience and how much Rebellion to those rules. What I see. I think one of the problems that we often run into in the modern world is, because culture pushes, and the digital age pushes, and American business pushes, we sometimes forget, we don't get to decide how this works. It has already been decided for us. And when you and I ignore that, we put ourselves on the path to almost certain burnouts. Grab a pen and write this down if three things happened. First of all, we compromised.
We kind of know the rules of how the human body works, but we fudge them just a little bit. Just like we drive 32 in a 25 mile an hour zone. I know the doctors and those people say we should sleep, like, what, seven to nine hours? But I'm going to and I know, I know, I know you got to be careful with like sugar and alcohol and everything else desserts. It's not good for your body and messes with your heart. Brain doesn't function, you crash, you can't stay awake, you're not alert but I'm going to. I know, you know, exercise is supposed to be good for your heart and your memory and your mind and your sleep habits. But I'm just doing that I don't run, right? I got to stick on the back of my truck that says 0.0, like I don't do any of it. Right. So we compensate, we know there's a rule and I'm not talking about fad diets or real detail, but we know this is just a general way. The human body functions. We compromise it. The number we compensate.
We start to reap what we sow. We don't get enough sleep and so we're tired. So, in the morning, what do we do? Well, we don't reach for the cup of coffee. We fill up a whole pot. It's like a monster and a granola bar for breakfast. What, we're not awake for the first hour of school because we've been up late playing games with friends, we can't function like we're supposed to function. So we compensate, we pushed like a really stressful pace at work. We bring it home. There's just no downtime when checking emails. Until the time we go to bed, we can't sleep. So compensate. It reached for a drink, maybe two. You pour whiskey and you make it pretty stiff. You need a glass of wine. You need some extra time. There's a pill, maybe 2 just to sleep. You go to the doctor and there's some unnecessary medication to compensate for the compromises you've made or maybe just know, like, you're always stressed. You're always on edge. I'm going to take a vacation, sometimes a vacation is just compensation. Right. I'm always stressed. So this is going to fix it, not fixing the pace of my life. I'm a slap a vacation on it for seven to ten days all-inclusive binge and think it's going to make it better. You know, you haven't been a kind person to the people in your home's, you compensate with a gift. I haven't been there, honey. So let me buy you something. I don't even been a great father. This year has been crazy at work. So let me splurge on something and act like it didn't happen. We compromised.
Yeah. It. And then finally, we crash.
Rarely happens right in the beginning. Sometimes doesn't happen in the middle but sooner or later we crash. Like you just hit a wall, you have a Physical breakdown. It's a panic attack. It's the depression you've never experienced before. It's like you find it hard to function, or you just get numb, you go to church, but you feel nothing, you read your Bible but you don't get anything out of it. You crash, when you get home, there's just no energy left and so you take it out. And the people that you really do love the most
It's not just your heart and your lungs and your muscles that get hurt when we compromise and compensate. It's our souls. And the precious lives of the ones that we love.
So here's it's a question, we know. That when we're really hungry, we can get angry. So named for that, we know there's a connection between physical habits and character choices. My question for you is is it possible? Some of the things you're struggling with with your character? Or not some mysterious spiritual battle. But just a physical reality.
You've pushed too hard, you've used up your calories on all of these things and now, there's none left for the energy to follow Jesus and love his people.
About a decade ago. I ran a marathon up in Green Bay, Wisconsin, and I tried my best to qualify for the Boston Marathon. It required a time of 3 hours flat for a man my age. There's just one problem with my goal. I was not personally qualified to qualify for the Boston Marathon. I hadn't trained. I hadn't run. I wasn't ready. Not even close. My lungs weren't ready for 3 hours. My legs weren't ready. My ligaments weren't ready. But for some crazy reason I got to the start line and I said, you know what? I'm going to qualify for the Boston Marathon. It's all in your head. Mike just run and don't stop just so that's what I did. I found a little pacesetter. He had a little sign that said three hours. I'm like, I'm not going to let this guy go. I'm gonna run with him. Running his pace, it'll be over in 3 hours. You'll be fine. You can rest later this week and so, boom, the gun goes off and I'm off like a gazelle, poetry in motion. I ran with this guy at a three hour marathon pace for the first mile.
Then the second mile, than two miles, third and a four miles and four into six, six and eight are in, ten miles at that pace. And I kept running. I hit mile 11, mile 12. Now, 13, mile 14. I was qualified for Boston at mile 15. I ran with this guy for 16 miles at a three hour marathon pace. Are you impressed? You should not be.
Because some of you know, a marathon is not 16 miles long. It's 26.2 miles long. And at Mile 16, I can remember like the bridge where it happened. I smashed into the wall. 10.2o miles from the Finish Line. I went from running like a gazelle to looking like your grandma after Double hip replacements, like I went from sprinting to walk in. Not slowing down, not catching my breath. I I didn't hit the wall, I left my outline in, I hit it so hard and for the next 10.2 miles. I cried and cramped and limped my way to the Finish Line. I remember at one point I was actually by Lambeau Field. Old and I was shuffling along and I saw a half-finished Gatorade on the curb. I was so thirsty, I stopped and I look at like this germ covered half-drunk Gatorade. That's been in the Sun for way too long and I reached over to get it and I got here. Mmm and my whole body cramps like and I wasn't sure if I could get up from this position. What did I do? Here's what I did. I tried to act like the Creator instead of the creation. I thought there are no rules for lungs and legs and ligaments. I'm gonna, I'm gonna determine what this is as I go. I don't need to respect. How much I've trained on bodies capable of, I'm just going to do it.
I rewrote the rules and then I had to reap what I had sown.
I'm not sure where all of you are today. If you're late at that kind of pace, you're feeling pretty good. You're doing it here. Five hours of sleep. Skip these workouts, you're not dead yet. Killing it at work doing more than you've ever done. Things are fine. But just going to tell you from the experience of people who are just as smart and just as driven and just as compassionate. As it doesn't matter, if you're a nurse or a dad or a pastor, doesn't matter what you do, you are part of the creation, you are not the Creator. And the Creator creates the rules.
That's going to tell you today about Jesus. You might be shocked to learn that two thousand years ago when Jesus took on human flesh, when he had a body just like yours with lungs and legs. If your impression is that because Christ was so loving and so selfless, which he was that for 33 years, he worked 20-hour days serving everyone. He met until he hit a wall and died on a cross, You'd be dead wrong.
Jesus had seasons of intense work or he was up early and, uh, plates. Were he poured himself out into people's needs? But to assume that, that was the way, Jesus, normally lived would actually be a Biblical and doctrinal mistake. Let me show you a fascinating passage from The Book of Luke chapter 5. It says in verse 15 and 16 crowds of people came to hear Jesus hundreds, maybe thousands of people and they came to be healed of their sicknesses. They were sick, struggling, desperate for a miracle. Notice the next word.
But, you would think crowds of people came to be healed and he healed them crowds of people needed a relief from their sickness there for Jesus. It's not the passage that says crowds of people came, but Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed. It's not fascinated, he worked to love people. And before the work was even done. He withdrew.
People who say you just got to work until the job is done. Jesus said, nope. And don't miss the adverb Jesus, withdrew often.
It wasn't like something he did once a year after a crazy time in Ministry he often by himself and with his disciple says, let's get away. We've loved these people for a long time. It's time for a break. Jesus lifestyle and his constant often habit was to withdraw, too lonely places. Just to be with his heavenly father and rest. Jesus wasn't just part of our creation. He behaved like a creationist.
It's a fascinating thought he pushed so hard and then he pushed pause and then to work at all. And he wasn't bad and his father wasn't mad, he didn't make him selfish or lazy or sinful when Jesus was just what is Jesus doing? My mom has cancer. She needs to be healed. Jesus knows. He's taking a nap.
He's praying. Well, how long? Probably all day. Well, we need help and Jesus needs rest.
And if that's shocking to you, I wonder if our American culture has shaped our view of the Bible. Where we pick just some of the things that Jesus did in some of the things, the scriptures say works, serve, help. And we've ignored this constant theme that God has a great place for His people just to be still and let Him be God.
That's why I asked one of my former Seminary professors are very important question. I've been reading some of the Old Testaments kind of the calendar that God set for his ancient Jewish people where there were religious holidays, like, Passover and Pentecost. I kind of noticed God had a lot of time. He gave his people off from their jobs. Right? If it's Christmas week, you might get one day or two from your employer, not ancient Jews. They were given huge chunks of time and I noticed this chunk and this Chunk in this day and two days over here and I thought, well, if Jesus had to get all the way down to Jerusalem to celebrate some of those things, he lived like three marathons away and he was walking not taking a plane or a bus. How much time did it take him to leave behind the carpentry and the work? And the chores at home, just to be on the road to be with family and friends to be with God. And so I sent an email to this professor, I know that was had the Decline, Jesus's vacation time. The professor who is like an expert, the Old Testament is what he said to me. Cool. An observant Jew and Jesus day to some who's following. The Bible would have had off 52 Sabbath days. Every Saturday, one day for the Festival of Purim, eight days, for Passover, two days for Pentecost, two days for the Jewish New Year. One day for the day of atonement, nine days for the Feast of Tabernacles. In addition Jewish men were supposed to show up in Jerusalem for Passover and Pentecost, and Tabernacles, and would have taken most of them quite some time to get there. Then the Old Testament, says, if you're a farmer, your farm is supposed to lie fallow, unfarmed, one year in every seven. In other words. God said, the hard-working Old Testament farmers. You work hard for six and then you take an entire year off a farmer sabbatical Wisconsin farmers. Can you even imagine that also? The professor concluded, Jesus's time off was time off. Not time to crammed full of activities, digital structions, and the NFL, Unquote. Isn't amazing. Like God when he created the calendar said, I'm not mad and you're not bad. If you take huge chunks of time to just rest, Work hard, but not for too long.
So here's my encouragement to you. God is not mad and you are not a bad Christian, if you rest It's not selfish modern me. Time to take a break. It's the ancient rhythm of Jesus. If you're the mom who gets away for a half hour or a half a day, Doesn't make you a bad mom. If you say no to a friend who wants to hang out, or another family gathering, or to the pastor, who need someone to volunteer doesn't make you a bad person, it makes you a creationist It means that you're someone who believes that God is the Creator and you can only do so much before things start to go very very wrong.
So write this down the answer to burn out. Is to behave like a creationist.
Don't just believe in creation. I believe in God, the Father who created the heavens and the Earth. No, behave like you're following the rules, the father built into your body.
So I hereby release those of you who are responsible and compassionate from the guilt and necessity of needing to run. I hereby Empower you in Jesus name to sit to take a nap to do nothing to pray. I'm along with you today in Jesus name to go to your cabin and not come back until Monday morning. I am giving you permission in the mighty name of Jesus to hear your phone being and paying and ring and ignore it. I'm giving you full permission to rest because Jesus wants a rest for your soul. I give this gift to you in Jesus name and all God's people said amen. Now, some of you did not say Amen right there and I know why? Because you're thinking noble Pastor Mike if I do that, what happens the next day? All right, if I put my phone away today, when I pick it up tomorrow, what's gonna happen? I'm gonna have twice as much as 200 twice as stressed. You're telling me that take a break, I shouldn't do this, don't work all the time, but if I actually rest, there's going to be more work, more phone calls, more emails, more stuff, more responsibilities more boxes that are check. I can't slow down if that's what you're thinking. You have to come back next week. Next week we're going to lean in and listen to Jesus. Who knows how deeply in our hearts. We want people to be impressed by us and like, we hate say, no. And disappointing people just going to fix that part of us and right-size our schedules. As he said, he'd come to me, if you're weary and I will give rest for your soul. But until you hear that next speaker, to tell you one last thing about Jesus It's not his example of how he worked and rested. Its. The love that he has for people who push too hard. You know, that really dumb Marathon that I ran
Its Mile 16, I'm limping. I remember there was a water stop, really late in the race that was in front of a Green Bay, Wisconsin news station. And I think some of the employees and the anchor men and women were like handing out the water in the sports drinks and there as I come limping up is Green Bay, Anchorman Bill Jartz. If you Green Bay folks, know that name and I must look like The Walking Dead because Bill Jartz sees me and he starts walking right for me. And Bill Jartz we've never met before. He hands me, the sports drink filled with electrolytes. He puts his arm around my sweaty exhausted shoulders. Just walks with me. And he tells me I'm going to make it, he tells me to drink up. He applauds, he encourages. And I don't die before the end of the marathon. I think that a lot like Jesus.
Like some of you here today, have made foolish choices with your schedule. It's affected your body, your marriage, your relationships, and your faith. You can't go back and run. A new pace. You're like, limping trying to recover And Jesus would have every right to wag his finger and judge, but he doesn't said he sees you and all of your exhaustion. And with love, he puts that pierced hand around your shoulder and forgiveness and he hands you his grace and his mercy. And He says drink up.
And He promises with words of encouragement and Grace that he's going to fill you with the spirit that is going to give you wisdom is going to help you in your time of need. He doesn't trip you up. He doesn't come to condemn you or tell you to pick up the pace and said he comes, not just as example, but as Redeemer and a perfect savior. Brothers and sisters. We believe that God is our savior and our creator. Today, I pray that you believe in your salvation. And with the help of God, you behave like his creation.