Spiritual Weariness
Meet our enemy spiritual weariness. Certainly, we know weariness can cause serious harm to your physical health, but spiritual weariness causes serious harm to our soul. If the enemy can make you weary, they can stop you in your tracks. In 2 Thessalonians Paul tells us to not let yourself grow weary or lose heart. To overcome spiritual weariness let us take a closer look at the enemy’s strategy through the struggles that the Israelites faced.
How he did not fear God, but when you were faint and weary he attacked you along the way and cut off the stragglers at your rear. Deuteronomy 25:18
This scripture was about the Amalek army that attacked the Israelites as they left Egypt. I think it reveals a key part of the enemy’s strategy against us. ‘When you were faint and weary he attacked’.
Tiredness will bring us to those moments where we tend to not pray or read the Word as much. As a result, we let the flesh completely take control of our lives and start behaving in every way other than Christlike.
When we are being hit hard with trials and testings it is so easy to get fall into spiritual weariness. Subsequently, like Job, we say, “I am weary of my life and loathe it! I will give free expression of my complaint; I will speak in the bitterness of my soul.” (Job 10:1). Free expression of my complaint! Come on I know you know what this is referring to, I do!
The Crossroads of Spiritual Weariness!
In the difficult times, we come to a moment when you stand at the crossroads of weariness. You have two choices. Weariness Avenue or Perseverance Way. Through Hebrews 12:3 we see that when we grow weary or exhausted we will lose heart, start relaxing and faint in our minds. So, what happens when you lose heart?
- You stop shining your light for Christ.
- You stop sharing what God has done in your life.
- You stop praying for people, after all, why bother you aren’t seeing answers.
- You stop reading the Word to your kids or praying with them.
- You start watching those shows that you know are sin drenched and will pollute your spiritual mind.
Old habits start to creep back in that you had found freedom from. Furthermore, here’s a big warning about returning to old habits.
When an evil spirit leaves a person, it goes into the desert, seeking rest but finding none. Then it says, ‘I will return to the person I came from’. So it returns and finds its former home empty, swept, and in order. Then the spirit finds seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they all enter the person and live there. And so that person is worse off than before. That will be the experience of this evil generation. Matthew 12:43-45
We need to stay in the place of freedom and restoration from sin. Because if we go back to those old man ways we are asking for trouble.
This generation.
While reading verse 45, the last line really hit me this time. “That will be the experience of this evil generation.” Certainly, we have lived in a country were great revivals and outpourings of the Holy Spirit have happened. During these times we have seen moments when the house has been swept clean and everything put in order. However, we let down our guard somewhere. I don’t know if it was weariness or the luxury of a godly culture where laziness set it. If you can’t see the other seven demons coming into the house right now you are blind. This generation is experiencing worse and if we continue to let our weariness handicap us this will be the experience our children have.
Restoring The Walls of Protection
In Nehemiah, we read of the account of the restoration of the wall in Jerusalem. We read that while he was just a slave cupbearer for a foreign king, Nehemiah received the news that his beloved city was in ruins. Because of this, he was deeply grieved. But God gave him favor in the sight of the King. So, he was allowed to return to Jerusalem to restore the protection and given the materials to do it. Although, we will visit that another day!
And the leaders of Judah said, The strength of the burden bearers is weakening, and there is much rubbish; we are not able to work on the wall. Nehemiah 4:10
We see that the damage was so bad that just clearing away the mess was a burden never mind starting to rebuild the wall. To add to this, reports started coming that the enemy was plotting to attack. The people became weary.
Sometimes our service can feel this way sometimes. Because the work isn’t easy, it feels like you are carrying a burden. The endless list of tasks can leave us feeling like we are not even doing what God called us to do. Consequently, the enemy sees our frustration and launches the attack. In short, we find ourselves at the Weariness Crossroads.
Work with one hand. A weapon in the other.
This is the perseverance response. This is the Undaunted Warrior response.
Those who built the wall and those who bore burdens loaded themselves so that everyone worked with one hand and held a weapon with the other hand, and every builder had his sword girded by side, and so worked. And he who sounded the trumpet was at my side. Nehemiah 4:17-18
I’m not sure where the fairy tale of serving God and His Kingdom began. To clarify, the second you said yes to God you stepped onto the Battlefield. However, it doesn’t matter if you think you are a small, insignificant part of the Lord’s army. It means you are wearing the uniform, at some point, you will be engaged with the enemy.
The Israelites in Nehemiah give us a wonderful example of how to overcome spiritual weariness. We will continue to look at their strategy against spiritual weariness tomorrow. Finally, as for today, you must decide to choose which road you will take, Weariness Avenue or Perseverance Way?