At one time or another, most of us have lived with the pressure to perform. This is the problem which lies at the heart of much of the counselling which I do and often, burnout is the only remedy. Glouberman’s words have an eerie ring of truth to them –

‘‘We won’t stop, so burnout stops us. We won’t make a space for ourselves, so we burn out and all we have is space. And it is out of that space that the joy eventually comes.”⁴

It is for this reason that the writer to the Hebrews said, “So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, for whoever has entered God’s rest has also rested from his works as God did from His. Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience.” [Heb. 4:9-11]. What a strange statement that we must somehow struggle to enter into His rest.

Despite knowing that it is in resting from works that we are saved (i.e. to come to wholeness), we will not stop. Instead, we insist on working out our salvation in and of our own strength. Because we steadfastly refuse to abide (i.e. to wait in Him), He is left waiting on us. Now, God will not violate His own immutable principle and thus, He waits to be gracious to us. In other words, whilst we work, He waits. However, whenever our efforts fail us and we cry out, He acts.

Why Christians Find it Difficult to Rest?

The main reason why Christians cannot rest is that they consider salvation to be a parole and not a pardon and consequently, live in fear of re-offending and have no peace. In order to find inner peace, every person must ultimately confront two fundamental questions –

If a believer should sin, what should he or she do about it? Simple. “Something and nothing”!⁵ Until this gnawing issue is resolved, the prospect of entering into the Hebrews 4 rest will elude the believer. Our understanding of acceptance must be the same as God’s. The Bible is clear – we are accepted by the Father in Christ [Eph. 1:6]. Sin has no impact on our being accepted.

Acceptance is based on one thing – perfection [Matt. 5:48] Whose? Not ours but Christ’s! It is not so much that we are in Christ but rather, Christ is in us. He has made us perfect forever [Heb. 10:14]. He is our life [Col. 3:4] and our righteousness [2 Cor. 5:21]. Jesus did not just live His life for you. He lived it as you. He died for you then so that He

could live in you now. Consequently, when the Father sees me, He sees Him [John 14:20].

Even those of us who purport to rest in the love of God have a tendency to secretly believe that God would accept us more if we were more like X, Y or Z. This unease is reinforced by our discipleship programmes which consist of somebody telling us what we can, cannot, should and should not do rather than just telling us who we are!

For a disturbing number of Christians, the jury is still very much out on the question of acceptance. Consequently, we dare not let up as the slogan on the T-shirt says, “Look busy, Jesus is coming.” We have no ability to interpret acceptance apart from works.

The reason for this is that prior to our rebirth in Christ, we had been trapped in a temporal appearance-based matrix in which we related to our world through the realm of our senses and feelings as opposed to through the prism of our spirit. We were, at that time, outer and not inner people. Even after we know Christ, we continue in this manner in relating to God, to ourselves and to each other out from that world view. In this paradigm, works are the currency of conditional acceptance and accepting, relating and relationship. In reality, I cannot be anything (or anyone) other than whom God says I am. However, if I do not know who I am from God’s perspective or worse, who He is, I am held prisoner in a paradigm of performance with no prospect of parole.

To escape from this paradigm of external performance requires a radical renewing of the mind [Rom. 12:2]. This renewal is and can only ever be the product of a Christ-centred mindset through which the believer is enabled to make a transition from selfishness to selflessness. Through the lens of selflessness, we are able to see with sufficient clarity, to discern between appearance and fact and to forsake the temporal world for when we do so, we come into that of which we were made, i.e. the eternal [2 Cor. 5:16-21]. We will have to enter onto the path of Divine Union with God which is the life hidden with Christ in God [Col. 3:4]. However, whilst clearly a desirable state to be in, Divine Union is also a disposition ordinarily entered into only after the exhaustion of all other attempts to relate to God, ourselves and others. The culmination of this process of exhaustion is what I call “Burnout”, truly a road less travelled.

In the New Testament, it is the Apostle John who adopts the metaphor of a person’s maturity to illustrate spiritual growth [1 John 2:12-14].

Beginning as little children, believers have only a modest grasp or consciousness of their faith. They only know that they are redeemed. In their teens, believers move into the cognition phase where they can be seen to be realising things about their identity. Finally, as adults, believers are resting in God and in who they are, i.e. as God’s new creation.

I believe that the real reason why Christians do not rest is that they neither understand the true nature of salvation nor the basis upon which they are loved and accepted.

As suggested earlier, burnout is the curse of the Approval/Acceptance Addict. The lesson that Moses had to learn at the rebirth of his ministry was – “Why was the bush ablaze and yet, did not burn out?”

When Moses encountered God in a burning bush [Ex. 3:1-5], it changed his life. How could the bush burn without being consumed? The answer was profound – the fuel for the fire came from God, not the bush. Moses’ understanding of how God worked was turned on its head at the beginning of this world-changing ministry. God changed his world. In Christ, it is possible to be on fire without burning out because the fuel for the fire is God’s and not ours. It changed Moses’ life which then changed the world.

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