I started college after serving two years in the U.S. Army. Upon graduation my wife and I entered seminary, which for me required three years. After seminary, we went to a missionary orientation which lasted four months. We were in class all day, five days a week for those months. From there we went to language school a full year in Guadalajara, Mexico. Again, classes all day five days a week for that year. When I finished about eight and a half years of school, I felt “brain dead,” exhausted and weary.

Do you ever feel a deep, lasting weariness? Possibly your pace today is exhausting meeting deadlines, daily schedules, constant activities, and sometimes feeling failure.  Your natural tendency is to “throw in the towel” and give up. This is the dangerous extreme of being weary. Many of these activities are necessary, but your physical, emotional, and spiritual strengths have limits. You can give until you have nothing left to give.

Dutch and Walter were retired ranchers. They were two of the finest people you would ever want to meet, and I was their pastor several years ago. Both were on the go all the time, not so much for themselves, but for others. I remember Dutch reciting a verse of scripture, which she said was always a word of encouragement and inspiration to her, “...Let us not grow weary while doing good, for in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart.” (Gal. 6:9) I learned that they started each day with Bible reading and prayer, the source of their strength.

STOP, read and listen. Yes, stop sometime during your busy, daily routine. Read your Bible and listen to God. One of the men at the Sunday afternoon Bible study at the SWC Feed Ingredients Plants asked me if I could get him a devotional book, which I did. A week later he asked if I could get one for his friend, and I did. Reading a devotion written by someone else can be very encouraging. Often the writers are sharing from their weary times and how God helped them.

In his book, How to Listen to God, Dr. Charles Stanley begins with Psalm 81, “...O that My people would listen to Me...” Dr. Stanley makes this comment, “One can feel the pulsebeat of God as He pleads for the nation of Israel, saying, ‘Please listen to Me.  Please hear My voice.’ Each of us should ask, ‘Lord, have You been trying to tell me something that I desperately need to hear?’...I wonder how many times God has spoken to us and we were not listening...we were too occupied  to pay attention.”

Or, we're just too weary to hear God.

“Those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.” ~ Isaiah 40:31

Resources:  The Bible

The Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren

How to Listen to God by Dr. Charles Stanley

Pearls of Great Price and Diamonds in the Dust by Joni Eareckson Tada

My Utmost of His Highest by Oswald Chambers