Skip to content Overcoming Soul Fatigue Sep 8 · 31 min ...more
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Rev. Paul Jeyachandran leads the Intentional Disciple Making Church (IDMC) Movement, which is all about calling churches back to its disciplemaking roots. Visit us at idmcmovement.com
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0:09 Hi, church. What a joy and privilege for us to study God's word together. Today, we're gonna be talking about overcoming soul fatigue. We're gonna look at0:20 Jeremiah chapter 2 verse 5 verse 13 and verse 18. We studied it last time, but I wanna relook at this because we wanna address the issue of0:32 soul fatigue today. Jeremiah chapter 2 and verse 5 says, what wrong did your fathers find in me that they went far from me and went after0:44 worthlessness and became worthless? What wrong did your fathers find? They walked away from God. They walked after empty things, and0:56 they became empty. Verse 13 says, my people have done 2 evils. 1, they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for1:08 themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water. 2 evils. Then in verse 18, the bible says, now what do you gain by going to Egypt to1:20 drink the waters of the Nile, and what do you gain by going to Assyria to drink the waters of the Euphrates? Now you understand the reason why they forsook God1:31 is because they didn't go to him as the source of living water. They went to alternative sources. They make strategic alliances with Egypt and Assyria, and they1:43 relied on other sources to refresh them. Now this is what we looked at last time. And we defined soul fatigue like this. Soul fatigue is the1:55 tiredness, the exhaustion in one's inner life. So you and I, we need to study about this because if we want to cultivate and transform our inner life, we need to learn2:06
2:18 the remedy for soul fatigue. Let's look at it 1 by 1. The root causes of soul fatigue. The Bible says in Jeremiah chapter 2 and verse 5, they went far
2:30 from God, and they went after worthlessness, and they became worthless. I want you to pay attention to this. 1 of the root causes is
2:42 this, we are running on empty. 1 of the causes is we are running on empty. What does it mean we are running on empty? We live a busy life.
2:54 We live a hurried life. We live a life that is filled with stress and overloads. We looked at it last time. But it's an empty life. We need to recognize that the life we
3:06 live without God, apart from God, is an empty life. And that is what the Bible means by saying we are running on empty. There is no gas. It's just
3:17 fumes. And this empty life, I want you to pay attention to this. You can notice it in people's lives. The emptiness is seen in 3 things. I want you to write this
3:29 down in your notes. It is seen with a sense of rush. If their life is filled with rush, in other words, they are running here, running there, there is a lot of activities they are involved in
3:41 which doesn't connect them to a higher purpose, there is a sense of rush about their life, that hurriedness. You know they are leading an empty life.
3:53 Number 2, not only you would see a sense of rush, there is a sense of boredom as well. You know, the empty life. Many times when you look at a person, you think that they are
4:05 living a glamorous life. Like, for example, celebrities in Hollywood. Most of us, we will envy where they live and the kind of lifestyle they have and the kind of money they
4:17 earn. But do you know they're living an empty life? You look closely, you observe closely some of these young people who are super rich.
4:29 They all they were once upon a time Disney stars, and they became very famous from a young age. They accumulated a lot in life, but yet they are addicted to drugs and alcohol
4:41 and end up wasting their life. Why? The reason is because in all the sense of attention that they get, all the popularity and fame, and all the
4:52 prosperity they enjoy, there is an emptiness within their soul. And that emptiness leads them to a boredom. They are bored with everything. Having everything actually leads
5:04 you to boredom. That's why they experiment in their sexuality. They experiment in drugs and alcohol and other things to get them a sense of being alive. Listen
5:16 carefully. A sense of rush, a sense of boredom. Not only that, there is also a sense of isolation. When you live an empty life, you may be in a crowd, you may
5:28 be in a family, but you feel lonely, you feel alone. And loneliness is a spiritual condition. You could be you could have a loving marriage. You could be in a family that loves
5:39 you, but yet you feel isolated, alone. The reason is because there is an emptiness on the inside. It is all a sign of an empty life. It is a sign of a tired
5:51 soul, a soul fatigue that has set in. So I want you to pay attention to this because we live an empty life. We are running on
6:02 empty. The second thing I would say is we have a superficial relationship with God. The reason I say this is because many times when you are in a hurried
6:14 mode, the 1 thing you will neglect is your spiritual disciplines. The 1 thing you will stop doing is having time alone with God, refreshing your heart. Just like the Bible says here,
6:26 God says they have forsook me. They have forsaken my ways. They have forsaken coming to me, the living waters. Instead, they go to other places. In other words, they have a superficial relationship with God. They're not
6:37 digging deep in the presence of God. They don't go into the word to refresh themselves. They go elsewhere. It's like almost like saying they turn off they they turn on the TV. They
6:49 turn off any sermons, other things. Oh, it's just too tiring, too boring. I just need to watch something. I just want to vegetate. Now this is what happens. You have a superficial relationship
7:01 with God. You may say a lot of things. I love God. I love God's word, but you don't really spend time with God's word. You really don't have a regular quiet time. You don't really have a silence and solitude
7:13 developed in your life. And this is why we are emphasizing in this course that you take time to develop these things. Otherwise, you will have a superficial relationship with God.
7:26 When you have a superficial relationship, something happens. It'll usually be okay in the beginning, but when a crisis comes, you crumble like a 2 dollar suitcase. The reason is
7:38 because you would say, I trusted God, but God did not do this for me. See, when you don't have a good relationship, you only have a superficial relationship, you just hold the promises of God willy
7:49 nilly. You just take 1 scripture here, 1 scripture there, and you just say, oh, I believe God will be with me. I I You walk in presumption. You don't walk in prudence. You don't have a
8:01 prudent faith in God, but rather you have a presumptuous faith. Things will be okay. Why? God will look after me. I wanna take you to a passage of scripture in Jeremiah. Jeremiah chapter 7 verse 3 to
8:13 4 and verse 8. This is what the Bible says. Thus says the Lord, the host, the God of Israel, amend your ways and your deeds, and I will let you dwell in this place. Do not trust in these deceptive
8:25 words. This is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord. Behold, you trust in deceptive words to no avail. Let me explain that passage.
8:37 Israel, the 10 tribes of the northern kingdom, were attacked, and they were decimated. They were scattered. The southern tribe of Judah, they
8:48 trusted that God will protect them. Why? Because the temple is in Jerusalem. The temple is in the southern kingdom, and the temple is in Jerusalem, so the Lord will not let any evil come to the
9:00 temple. So they were secure, and they tell they told each other, don't worry. The temple of the Lord is here. The temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord. Because of the temple of the Lord, Jerusalem will be safe.
9:12 But you know what God says? That's a deceptive word. Don't just rely on deceptive words. That's presumption. And the Lord says, it's not going to avail you in anything.
9:25 In fact, in in 7 86 BC is that right? In 7 86 BC, the northern kingdom was destroyed.
9:37 In 522 BC, the southern kingdom was destroyed. In other words, Jerusalem and everything there was decimated and
9:49 destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar. Again, the Lord was saying, don't rely on empty things. They are running on empty. Secondly, they are running
10:00 after emptiness. The Bible says the reason for their soul fatigue is because they are running after emptiness. Not only they are running on empty, now they are running after
10:12 emptiness. The Bible says in verse 18, they went to Nile to drink water. They went to Assyria, Euphrates River, to drink water, but they did not come
10:24 to God. I want you to listen to me. The Bible says God calls himself, I'm the fountain of living waters. You know, there have been times in my life where I'm so
10:35 emotionally wound up. There is a churning within, like Psalm 73, Aesop's experience. And that churning within happens because of you see certain things that is happening,
10:48 and and that produces that churning. Now what happens is in those times, there's only 1 thing you can do. I can't focus on anything, can't focus on the work, can't focus your mind
11:00 can go to 2 places. 1, just turn on the TV and watch something and just vegetate. Or you can come back into the presence of God, play a worship CD, come into presence of God,
11:12 read a portion of scripture, go and meditate, and worship the Lord, and pour out your soul before God until that churning leaves. Leaves. 1 will give you a sense of relief. The other 1 will give
11:24 you a sense of rest. This is the difference. You and I, we need to recognize, are we running after empty things, and are we running
11:36 on empty? The Bible says if you run after emptiness, empty things, worthless things, you would still have that churning within. Time would have passed. 2 hours passed
11:48 after you watch a movie, but the churning within will still be there. That is why you and I, we need to choose wisely. I want to ask you the question, do you know what tired and stressed out people do?
12:00 Do you know how they deal with soul fatigue? Most of them, this is what they will do. They will go on a holiday. They will say, I'm so stressed out at work. I need to take a break. I feel like a pressure cooker
12:11 environment. I just need a break. I just give up this. I just quit my job. I just wanna go on a holiday. Can I humbly say this? Changing geography can relieve the pressure for a little
12:22 while, but you haven't addressed the root issue. You can address the symptoms by quitting a work, by giving up on certain roles that you are responsibilities you're carrying, but you
12:34 haven't addressed the root issue. The root issue is to deal with the inner life condition, the relationship with God. That's why I wanna ask you this.
12:46 How do we deal with it biblically? To deal with it biblically, I want you to recognize there's a difference between stress reducing activities and growth enhancing activities.
12:59 Ladies in the in the group, you may agree with me. Sometimes stress reducing activity is go window shopping. Just go to a busy shopping center and walk around the shops and buy
13:10 some clothes or eat some good food, or cook up a storm and have some friends over and just have a good party, or watch a movie marathon,
13:23 or just go on a holiday. These are stress reducing activities. For a lady, maybe it could be even cutting one's hair. It's like it's like having a new hairstyle, new look, a makeover. Why am I just
13:35 talking to the ladies? I wanna talk to the men. Men, what do you do? Maybe you go to the make go to your men's cave or a men's den, and you start doing some project. Maybe you say, oh, I wanna just do this carpentry
13:47 work or sculpture, or I wanna do this, or I wanna go play more golf. I wanna go do something else. Listen carefully. These could be stress reducing activities, but they are not
13:59 growth enhancing activities. What are growth enhancing activities? Like I said, being in the presence of God, reading a good book, going through a book of the Bible, and studying
14:10 what God is saying, and writing down in a journal, these are growth enhancing. Reading a book on the subject that you're dealing with, reading a book on it, or watching or watching something that will help you
14:22 educate your mind, train your mind, or having a conversation with a mentor, calling a leader and say, can I have this time with you? I'll buy you coffee. Can we spend just half an
14:34 hour? I just wanna pour my soul. I wanna just have that dialogue. I wanna get your perspective. These things will help you. These are growth enhancing activities. Now, which 1 do you normally
14:45 choose? Ask yourself. Now this is the first thing I want you to pay attention to. The root causes for soul fatigue. We're running on empty. We're running after
14:57 emptiness. The second thing is the results of soul fatigue. The results of soul fatigue is threefold. We lose the sense of destiny. Listen carefully
15:09 to me. Every time someone has entered into a season of confusion What is a season of confusion? They are not clear on the call of God upon their life. They
15:21 are not clear about God's direction for their life. They're not clear on what God's will for their life is. The compass becomes fuzzy. They can't see clearly. It's not steady.
15:33 It's not pointing to the true north. Usually, what it means is they have lost their sense of orientation, the sense of calling, the sense of destiny that is upon their life.
15:45 And it's a sign that there is a soul fatigue that is at play. See, sometimes you just keep doing the same thing over and over again, and you keep thinking, oh, it should be okay. No. You
15:57 won't be okay. You'll you'll lose the meaning why I do what I do. And suddenly, when everything comes to a climax, that's when they throw in the towel and they say, I quit. I don't
16:09 know why I'm doing this in the first place. What is that? That's a burnout talking, isn't it? That's a burnt out person. But the reality is they have lost long time ago, they've they've allowed the
16:21 soul to be fatigued. They didn't refresh themselves to come back to God. They didn't come and realign their heart back to God. They didn't recalibrate their compass before God. Now it has come to a place where the soul
16:32 fatigue has cost them that sense of destiny, a sense of calling. Secondly, we lose the sense of courage. Fatigue makes us
16:44 fearful. I want you to listen to me. When you don't have the energy, when you don't have that there is a soul fatigue that has set in, your compass becomes very unclear
16:55 and not steady. As a result, there is a fear that creeps in. It makes us fearful. It makes us covetous. In other words, we don't want we don't have the will to fight the fight.
17:08 This is the place where people give up. People say, I can't be bothered. They have a resignation about life. They take a resignation approach in everythings. They
17:20 don't have the energy. They don't have what it takes to make a stand and to fight the good fight of faith. This is why divorce happens. I can't be bothered anymore. Go your way. I
17:32 go my way. Why? Because there's a soul fatigue, a soul that is so tired, doesn't think clearly, doesn't have the courage to really want to do the hard work that you
17:44 the a marriage requires. Listen carefully. The third thing we lose is the sense of legacy. Every time someone had fallen into sin,
17:55 we usually say they fell from grace. And even in recent times, some of the scandals that have plagued the Christian world, the root cause has been has been discerned,
18:07 and this is what they say caused it. It is because of his frequent travel, because of his exhaustive ministry, because he's so exhausted. It was It's it's been doing
18:19 this for 40 years. It's a lot of work, lot of travel, lot of miles, lot of hotels, lot of plane rides, all these things. There's a physical tiredness, and that causes
18:31 a permanent soul fatigue. And we are so so tired, we lose that sense of legacy. That means we forget the things that matter
18:43 in life. Good name, reputation. To have a good name is better. Good character is better than anything the bible says, but we forget. Why? We forget the legacy.
18:55 We forget the life we live today will impact the our wife, our children, our husband, our wife, our children. It will impact them. It will either cost them to live with joy, and live with the
19:07 with the with the the sense of, I'm thankful for my father. I'm thankful for my mother. Rather, it'll be like, I'm shameful of my father, shameful of my mother. Listen carefully.
19:19 The result of soul fatigue is we lose the sense of destiny. We lose the sense of courage. We lose the sense of legacy. Thirdly, we wanna discuss what
19:31 is the remedy for soul fatigue. The remedy for soul fatigue is threefold. 1, recognize and repent. My prayer for us as a church in this season
19:43 is this. As we are studying these subjects together, how do we train ourselves? How do we train ourselves to be godly? How do we train ourselves to be a disciple of Christ? How
19:54 do we cultivate inner life? How do we transform our inner life? It comes back to this place. We gotta recognize the state of our soul. It all begins with recognition.
20:07 If you cannot acknowledge that you have a problem, you will never overcome it. In any problem, the first thing is to be able to identify the problem. Then it's to be able to challenge and confront that
20:19 problem, and then find solutions so that you can overcome the problem. But if you don't identify, if you don't recognize the state of your own inner life, then you will just keep doing the same
20:31 thing over over and over again, hoping that things will be different. Can I humbly say this, church? That is why you've been hearing over the past few times we have studied together,
20:42 cultivate margins, cultivate disciplines, put margins in your life, put that time, schedule that time alone with God, silence and solitude. Go before God. Read the scriptures.
20:54 Reflect. Worship. Come alone with God. If you don't come away, you will come apart. That's the reality. So recognize the state of
21:05 your soul. Secondly, you gotta learn to repent. What is repentance? Repentance means not only do I acknowledge there is an issue, but I acknowledge that I contributed to the issue. Not my company that I
21:17 work for, not the ministry that I'm involved in, not the other people in my life, but my sinfulness. We gotta recognize the soul fatigue is caused by me deserting God.
21:30 Soul fatigue happens because I paid attention to river Nile and river Euphrates, and I went to Egypt. I went to Assyria. I went and sought relief, but not seek rest. I
21:42 did not seek God. That's the true state. Ask for forgiveness. Repent. Change your ways. That means there must be certain things you recognize before God, and you
21:54 say, Lord, I contributed to the state of my soul. I want to repent. I wanna come and ask for your forgiveness cleansing in these aspects of my life. If you think that there is a
22:06 your marriage is in a difficult season, before you point the finger at your spouse, can you please recognize before God, why is your marriage like
22:18 that? How did I contribute to this? What is my role in this chaos, in this confusion, in this season? And then repent. Ask God's help. The
22:30 second thing we deal with is remove and replace. We already established you cannot remove without replacing. You can't replace without removing first. You gotta take the junk out so that you can
22:42 replace it with good things. Number 1, what do I need to remove? Can you take stock of how you spend your downtime? Maybe you come back from work and you're
22:54 tired. You go for a shower. You have a meal. What do you do after that? Before you hit the bed at night, and some of you, you stay awake for a while. I don't know why you stay awake past
23:05 certain time. And in those in those kind of wee hours in the morning when nobody is watching you, I don't know what you do. Is there an accountability in your life? We need to
23:17 remove some of these things, and removing some of these things is essential. You know, average Australian watches about thousand hours of television per year.
23:29 That is the statistics. 1000 hours of television per year. Do you know how many hours in a year you get spiritual input into your life? If you come
23:41 regularly every Sunday to hear the word of God, and if you regularly attend life groups, and if you have a habit of at least reading the
23:53 scriptures 3 times a day or 3 times a week, it will still amount to only about hundred hours.
24:05 I want you to listen to me. Why I'm saying this is because thousand hours of TV, junk coming through your mind, your processing, you're being impacted by holy
24:16 word. You're impacted by Hollywood instead of spending time in the holy word. You and I, we need to take stock. We ask ourselves, why is our children like that?
24:30 Young people are These days, they are looking at so many things in their Facebook, in their in their in their Instagram. They sit there, and they just keep flicking, flicking, flicking, because there's so many stories
24:38 coming into their into their inboxes. But how often do you bring them to church so that they can be discipled? As a family, do you make a to bring your young people to
24:50 church? Do you bring your children, no matter how difficult it is to bring your young ones to church, bring them from a young age so that they can be tutored in the ways of God? They need input, spiritual input. How
25:02 often do you do that? Do you stop your young people from going to youth group because you have to drive them to youth group and say, I know you'll be just stay at home. No. Or you have an exam, just stay at home. Or
25:14 you or this is an important year, stay at home. Can I humbly ask parents, make every effort that your children will have an input of godly input into their
25:25 life? Why? If they don't have that, what else do they have? If you don't have a family altar where you're teaching them regularly theology, if they don't come to church regularly to hear it, where will
25:37 they hear? They're hearing so many things from the world, but they're not being tutored in the word of God. Listen to me carefully. Over a long haul, their soul becomes fatigued. That's the result. They lose their
25:49 sense of identity in God, that sense of courage, their sense of destiny, their sense of legacy. Listen. The remedy is to remove. So when you remove this television from your life, put
26:01 something else in place. I'm not saying remove it completely, but I would say this to you, cut down so that you can replace it slowly and build your
26:13 life in the word of God, in the presence of God. Thirdly, it is refresh yourself in the Lord. How do I refresh myself in the Lord? I want you to read this with me
26:25 in Isaiah chapter 14 and verses 27 all the way to verse 31. I wanna give you the context of this passage of scripture. The Israelites have been captured, and they are in
26:37 exile in Babylon. When they are in Babylon, they are so discouraged because they recognized the God of Israel may be weaker.
26:48 They think that God of Israel is not the God of Babylon. In Babylon, they see other temples, mighty temples. So they look at these things, and they get frightened, and they think maybe the God of
27:00 Israel cannot see. Maybe the God of Israel doesn't care why we are like this in Babylon. But the reality is this the prophet comes back with the word of God, and this is the word of God. For a people who are
27:12 tired, for a people who are discouraged, for a people who are feeling lonely, after a long exile, the walk from Jerusalem to Babylon would have taken them years. All the children would have been left
27:24 behind. The old people would have been left behind, and the people who came there were in tatters. And these are the people, they were crying out like this, and the Bible responds, and God responds to them by saying
27:34 this, why do you say, oh Jacob, and speak, oh Israel, my way is hidden from the Lord, and my right is disregarded by my God? Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the creator of
27:46 the ends of the earth. He does not faint nor grow weary. His understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might, he increases strength. Even youths shall
27:58 faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted. But they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength. They mount up with wings like eagles. They shall run and not be weary. They shall walk and not faint.
28:09 Hallelujah. Look at that. Why do you have soul fatigue? You have a God who sees everything. You have a God who notices everything. He
28:21 doesn't miss anything. And this is a God who sleeps not. He's not a God who faints. He's a God who is strong and mighty in power. And this God says to you, if you wait in my
28:33 presence, you will exchange your weakness for my strength. You feel tired, he has the refreshment. You come to him, you make an exchange. They who
28:45 wait for the Lord shall renew. The word renew there is a Hebrew word for exchange. They shall renew their strength. In other words, they give them his. They they give their
28:56 weakness to him, and they take his strength. They take their tiredness and give it to him, and they take his strength. And as a result, they shall mount up with wings like eagles. They
29:08 shall run and not be weary. They shall walk and not faint. No matter what you do, if you don't come into the presence of God, you will have soul fatigue in the long run. But when you
29:20 come regularly into the presence of God and build your life upon the word of God and in the power of God, something tremendous happens. They that wait upon the Lord
29:32 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. My prayer is that you will not be a
29:44 person who has soul fatigue, but rather you will be triumphant. You will overcome soul fatigue by putting these things in place. The remedy is recognize
29:56 and repent, remove and replace, and thirdly, learn to refresh yourself in the Lord by waiting upon him. That is why spiritual disciplines are an
30:08 essential thing in your life. Cultivate them. I hope you have a great discussion after this session. God bless you. Let's pray. Heavenly father, I thank you so much for this moment. Continue
30:20 to minister to us, mighty God. Help us to discern the state of our own inner life. If we have this soul fatigue, I pray that tonight we will make a
30:31 decisive breakthrough, that we will have this breakthrough in our lives, that we will recognize it, we will repent of our sin, we'll come before you, and we will remove those things that
30:43 are stress stress relieving activities, and we will replace it with growth enhancing activities. We'll come before you, and we ask for your grace. And we will
30:54 learn to come before your presence and to refresh from the fountain of living waters so that we will not be weary, and we will run and not faint. I thank you, Lord, for your goodness and your grace. Thank you
31:06 for your faithfulness in Jesus' name. And people of God said, amen and amen. God bless you. We love you.
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