Overwhelmed

This is not for the lazy. It is for the one who has done too much for too long, and now cannot start.

You know the list. It is on the table, or on your phone, or in your chest. You have known what is on it for days, some of it for months, and every morning you tell yourself today, and every night the list is still on the table, and the not-starting weighs more than the work ever would have. You have stood in the kitchen holding one dish for a full minute. You have opened the email and closed it. You have watched other people simply do things, the way you might watch someone speak a language you never learned, and wondered what is wrong with you.

Some call it burnout. Some of you have a heavier name for it, and some have no name, just a wall. If it is the illness kind, get help for it. Scripture calls the physician a gift, and we have said so in the Healing letter and in When the Mind Goes. This letter stands beside that help, not in place of it. If the engine will not catch at all, and the spark is going somewhere else, the letter for that is No Spark.

The Bible knows you

Elijah had just seen fire fall from heaven at his word, the greatest day of his life, at the end of three years of drought and hiding and a whole day of standing alone against four hundred and fifty men. One day later he was under a tree in the desert.

1 Kings 19:4 · KJV

But he himself went a day’s journey into the wilderness, and came and sat down under a juniper tree: and he requested for himself that he might die; and said, It is enough; now, O LORD, take away my life; for I am not better than my fathers.

Nehemiah's builders, halfway up the wall:

Nehemiah 4:10 · KJV

And Judah said, The strength of the bearers of burdens is decayed, and there is much rubbish; so that we are not able to build the wall.

And Paul, the apostle, about himself:

Romans 7:19 · KJV

For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do.

It is enough. We are not able. The good that I would I do not. Those are your sentences, and they are in the Book, in the mouths of its best men. Notice what God does not do with any of them. He does not scold Elijah. He does not tell the builders to try harder. He does not take Paul's pen away. The day you cannot get up is written down without shame, by the Spirit of God.

What He did with Elijah

He starts with the body. Not a sermon, not a question.

1 Kings 19:5-8 · KJV

And as he lay and slept under a juniper tree, behold, then an angel touched him, and said unto him, Arise and eat. And he looked, and, behold, there was a cake baken on the coals, and a cruse of water at his head. And he did eat and drink, and laid him down again. And the angel of the LORD came again the second time, and touched him, and said, Arise and eat; because the journey is too great for thee. And he arose, and did eat and drink, and went in the strength of that meat forty days and forty nights unto Horeb the mount of God.

Gill, who is never florid, simply notes why the second meal was needed: “which he had to go to Horeb, without eating more than he had; and there were no provisions to be had in a common way and manner in his road thither.” But read the angel's sentence again. Because the journey is too great for thee. God agrees with him. He does not say you can do this. He says you cannot, and here is bread, and then sends him one journey to one mountain, not a plan for the rest of his life.

What He did with Nehemiah

Jerusalem's wall had been rubble for about a hundred and forty years. Generations had looked at it and gone back inside. Nehemiah did not build a wall. Read chapter three: it is a list of names, and after name after name come the same words, next unto him repaired, after him repaired. More than forty sections. The goldsmiths took one (Nehemiah 3:8). A ruler and his daughters took one (Nehemiah 3:12). And over and over, over against his house (3:23, 28, 29): they built the piece in front of their own front door. Nobody was asked to build the wall. Everybody was asked to build the piece in front of them.

And they still ran out, in chapter four, the rubbish and the decayed strength and we are not able. Look at what he did.

Nehemiah 4:16 · KJV

And it came to pass from that time forth, that the half of my servants wrought in the work, and the other half of them held both the spears, the shields, and the bows, and the habergeons; and the rulers were behind all the house of Judah.

Nehemiah 4:19-20 · KJV

And I said unto the nobles, and to the rulers, and to the rest of the people, The work is great and large, and we are separated upon the wall, one far from another. In what place therefore ye hear the sound of the trumpet, resort ye thither unto us: our God shall fight for us.

Half the men did not build anything. They stood beside the ones who did. Matthew Henry saw the mercy in that arrangement: “It is probable that they changed services at stated hours, which would relieve the fatigue of both, and particularly would be an ease to the bearers of burdens, whose strength had decayed (Neh 4:10); while they held the weapons, they were eased and yet not idle.” A small piece. Someone beside you. A sound to run to when it gets bad.

Nehemiah 6:15 · KJV

So the wall was finished in the twenty and fifth day of the month Elul, in fifty and two days.

A hundred and forty years of not able. Fifty-two days, once it was cut into pieces.

The longer road to the same wall

The people who study this for a living have arrived at Nehemiah's wall by a much longer road, and it is worth saying so, carefully. We make no claims about medicine here; read the studies, and get the help you need.

For depression, the best-tested help that is not a medicine has a plain name, behavioural activation. It says the feeling will not come first, that waiting to feel like it is the trap, and that you pick one small thing that matters, put it at a time, and do it not feeling like it, and the feeling comes behind the action, late. That is the angel's bread. Eat first; feel later.

For procrastination, the researchers found something that surprised them: it is not about time, it is about feeling. You put the thing off because of what it makes you feel when you look at it. Some people who live with this say they are out of spoons: a fixed handful each morning, one spent on every task, and when they are gone the day is over whatever is left on the list. And people who beat themselves up after putting it off put it off worse the next time, while people who forgave themselves put it off less. Self-condemnation empties the last of it; mercy starves it. The Bible had that first: “For he knoweth our frame; he remembereth that we are dust” (Psalm 103:14).

For the one who keeps going until there is nothing left, the same researchers say the fix is never more willpower. It is taking the thing out of your head and putting it in the room: the next visible step written where you will see it, a time rather than a someday, and a body beside you. They have a name for that last one, body doubling, someone in the room doing their own work while you do yours. Nehemiah had half his men doing exactly that, two and a half thousand years ago.

Haggai said it to a people who kept saying the time is not come:

Haggai 1:8 · KJV

Go up to the mountain, and bring wood, and build the house; and I will take pleasure in it, and I will be glorified, saith the LORD.

And then the promise that goes with it, five verses later: I am with you, saith the LORD (Haggai 1:13). Zechariah, to men holding a plumb line over a foundation that looked like nothing: For who hath despised the day of small things? (Zechariah 4:10). Henry notices that the prophet himself “grew dull and fell asleep, as it should seem, while the angel was yet talking with him,” and that the angel “let him lose himself a little, that he might be fresh to receive new discoveries, but then waked him.” Even the man receiving the vision about small things could not stay awake for it.

Who the work is for

Now the thing underneath, because the method is not the point, and if you leave with a method you have missed it.

The one who has carried too much thinks the job is the point, and that he is failing it. Every undone thing is a verdict. Paul says something that changes what the job is.

Colossians 3:23-24 · KJV

And whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men; Knowing that of the Lord ye shall receive the reward of the inheritance: for ye serve the Lord Christ.

And Jesus goes further than that.

Matthew 25:40 · KJV

And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.

The dishes. The call you have been dodging for three weeks. The one email. The floor. Done to Him. Not for a boss, not for the list, not to prove to anyone that you are not what you are afraid you are. Given to Christ, the way the cup of cold water was.

And God is love. We have written a whole letter on that sentence, and here is where it lands: nothing done in Him is ever against His love. Not the small thing. Not the thing done badly. Not the thing done at eleven at night after a day of nothing. And we cannot love at all without abiding in Him, which is the Vine:

John 15:5 · KJV

I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing.

Without me ye can do nothing. He said that to the healthy ones. So the first task is not the task. It is to abide. And that one you can do lying down; you can do it under the tree.

The hope

Read this slowly, and let it be about you.

Philippians 2:13 · KJV

For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure.

The willing and the doing. Those are the two things that are broken in you: you cannot want to, and you cannot do. And those are the two things He says He supplies. Not the strength to do it yourself; the wanting and the doing, worked in you by God. Gill reads the verse exactly as an answer to the one who is spent, “an encouragement to persons conscious of their own weakness to work.” Augustine goes to the root of it:

Philippians 1:6 · KJV

Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ:

A hundred half-finished things, and one Finisher. And you are one of the things He started.

Psalms 40:1-2 · KJV

I waited patiently for the LORD; and he inclined unto me, and heard my cry. He brought me up also out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and established my goings.

That is David, past tense, about himself. The miry clay is where your feet go in and do not come out. He knew it, and he was lifted.

Isaiah 42:3 · KJV

A bruised reed shall he not break, and the smoking flax shall he not quench: he shall bring forth judgment unto truth.

A wick barely going, more smoke than flame. Anyone else would pinch it out. He does not, and Matthew says this verse is about Jesus (Matthew 12:20).

Romans 8:26 · KJV

Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.

When you cannot even pray, and there are days you cannot, He prays.

Lamentations 3:22-23 · KJV

It is of the LORD’s mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness.

Written in the ruins of Jerusalem, by a man sitting in them. New every morning, including the morning after a wasted day.

2 Corinthians 12:9 · KJV

And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.

Paul asked three times for the thorn to be taken out, and it was not. Made perfect in weakness. Not in spite of it.

One more thing about Elijah

The man who sat under the tree and asked God to let him die is one of two men in the whole Bible who never died at all.

2 Kings 2:11 · KJV

And it came to pass, as they still went on, and talked, that, behold, there appeared a chariot of fire, and horses of fire, and parted them both asunder; and Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven.

That was God's answer to it is enough. Not a rebuke. A chariot.

Where this lands

You are not lazy. You are Elijah under the tree, and God has already sent the bread. You are not a failure. You are a builder with a wall too big, and He never asked you for the wall; He asked for the piece in front of your door. So eat something. Sleep. Build the one piece, with somebody beside you and a sound to run to. Do it to Christ, not to the list. And when the wanting is not there, and it will not be, hold Him to His word, because He gave it: He works in you the willing and the doing.

The wall that stood in ruins for a hundred and forty years went up in fifty-two days. The man who asked to die went up in a chariot. And Paul, who could not do the good he would, wrote this a few pages later: “Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us” (Romans 8:37). Through Him. Not through you.

Matthew 11:28-30 · KJV

Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.

A yoke is made for two. He is already in it. Get up, and put your neck beside His.

Scripture quotations from the King James Version, linked to the Study Bible. Gill, Matthew Henry and Augustine quoted from public-domain editions held in the site’s database. The talk is read in the author’s voice. See also No Spark, The Noonday Demon, Healing, Love and The Vine.