4 Habits that Prevent Burnout ~ Titus 2 Tips {on Thursdays} A Guest Post

Are you tired?

Are there some days when you’d like to disappear, rather than get out of bed to deal with your to-do list?

I must confess that I almost burned out on ministry. I lost my passion and joy. For a long time, I thought I had it all together. I was juggling many responsibilities and doing it with flair. But, one day those tasks started to get heavy – the weight of all that I was carrying became too much, but I still struggled to let go. Everything seemed too important to surrender over to someone else, so I trudged on burdened down by own self-imposed expectations for ministry.

Looking back now, I see where I failed to make healthy choices about how I would use my time, talents, and treasure. I invested in Kingdom business, but I did not invest in myself. I forgot that I am important to the kingdom as well. I am God’s holy temple, and I am called to be a steward of my physical, social, mental, and spiritual well-being.

If I could sit down with 20 year old me, I would tell her that there are essential habits that will prevent ministry burn out.

1. Sabbath is a commandment, not a suggestion. If you don’t give yourself time to refresh your spirit, your spirit will start to get bitter. Take time to sit in the quiet and let God speak to you. Linger at His feet, listen up, and learn what His agenda is for you.

2. Keep a journal or notebook where you write down how God has worked – prayers He has answered and battles He has won in your territory. Cultivate thankfulness by noting down every day blessings. When you are in the middle of a difficult ministry season, you will need to refer back to your notes often. Besides a journal, I also created a “happy box” where I saved cards, pictures, and mementoes – Revisiting this time capsule at the end of a tough week always put a smile on my face.

3. Put fun on your to-do list. Spend time with people who energize you and encourage your heart. We are not meant to do life alone. Pick up the phone and invite a friend to join you out for coffee or dinner at least once a month. You need to make time for this – if your ministry schedule is too busy for fun, then you are too over committed.

4. Remember that you are serving as unto the Lord. People will disappoint you, but you are not serving people. You may never see the results of your efforts here on earth, but you are called to be faithful to Him. He sees you in the trenches, and your labor is not in vain.

Taking care of yourself is vital to a healthy ministry life. It’s not wrong to slow down and cross some things off of your calendar in order to create space for renewal in your life.

Sometimes, saying no is not unselfish. It’s wise.

Rest cannot and should not be an after-thought on your priority list.

Lyli Dunbar enjoys road trips with her husband, connecting with women through Bible study, and reading way too many books. A disciple, wife, educator, and mentor, Lyli is just a girl working to keep the faith day by day. She writes about life lessons and faith at 3dlessons4life.com.

Titus 2 Tips I am honoured to host these guest posts in this series on women mentoring women.   Some weeks you may find tips from the kitchen or healthy recipes, tools other women have used to grow spiritually, hints to help us build up and love our husbands, and lessons they have learned as they have walked along with their children to teach them to love God wholeheartedly, habits they have developed in keeping their home, ways they have worked on to keep their behaviour respectful, or rhythms that allow peace and rest in the home and hearts that dwell there within. You will find all the posts in the series here.  "Older women likewise are to be  reverent in behaviour,  not slanderers or slaves to much wine.  They are to teach what is good, and so train  the young women to love their husbands and  children, to be self-controlled, pure, working  at home, kind, and submissive  to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled." {Titus 2:3-5}

Declare His Glory ~ Words of Life Wednesday ~ A Link-up

{Join us below for Words of Life Wednesdays with a link-up of your post.

We'd love to hear how God's Word has been nourishing you.}

{Also linking with Coffee For Your Heart}

"Sing to the LORD, bless his name;

tell of his salvation from day to day.

Declare his glory among the nations,

his marvellous works among all the peoples!

For great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised;

he is to be feared above all gods.

For all the gods of the peoples are worthless idols,

but the LORD made the heavens.

Splendor and majesty are before him;

strength and beauty are in his sanctuary.

Ascribe to the LORD, O families of the peoples,

ascribe to the LORD glory and strength!

Ascribe to the LORD the glory due his name;

bring an offering, and come into his courts!

Worship the LORD in the splendor of holiness;

tremble before him, all the earth!

Say among the nations, “The LORD reigns!

Yes, the world is established; it shall never be moved;

he will judge the peoples with equity.”

Let the heavens be glad, and let the earth rejoice;

let the sea roar, and all that fills it;

let the field exult, and everything in it!"

{Psalm 96:2-11}

May our words bring healing and hope to the hurting around us.

May the words we speak today bring honour to the Lord of heaven and earth.

And may the Lord God grant us mercy and forgive us when we are a 

"people  [that] honours me with their lips, but their heart is far from me"

Today and forevermore may our words and lives declare His glory.

An InLinkz Link-up

Voyage ~ Meditation of My Heart Mondays ~ And a gift for you

A small gift for you to print. 

Click here to access PDF for black background.

{and for other colours click on the word not the photo}

Emerald

Violet

Blue











*Prayer from The Valley of Vision: A Collection of Puritan Prayers & Devotions

We Sing of His Steadfast Love that Endures Forever ~ Words of Life Wednesdays ~ A Link-up

{Join us below for Words of Life Wednesdays with a link-up of your post.

We'd love to hear how God's Word has been nourishing you.}

{Also linking with Coffee For Your Heart}

“Only let each person lead the life
that the Lord has assigned to him,

and to which God has called him.”

{1 Corinthinans 7:17}

To put it frankly, this is not the life I would have chosen for myself.

Is anyone really comfortable in the skin they are in? Can one truly be content in circumstances beyond control?

We are a people who like to take control? But we lose our footing and our faith is so small. And we realize we never really had much say in it all anyway.

The boy growing up without a father. The widow grieving her beloved taken much too early. The wife waking up to a nightmare of a trial she never would have ever dreamed. The husband holding on to hope when all appears to be hopeless. The mother who weeps for her child swollen with malnutrition. The loved one’s lives ended because planes are shot down.

This world wreaks havoc in our lives. We are the fallen people and we keep on falling.

We pack up clothes and kids like a can of sardines and drive to the Island with red-ribbon roads lined with pink and purple lupins and yellow buttercups, and the sapphire-blue ocean to celebrate life and to get a way from all of life’s uncertainties.

For forty years he’s been a wanderer in this world not his home, and no one can be sure of her days, so we mean to celebrate every moment to the fullest. We watch the tides and we dig for treasures, but there is no getting away from tragedy, and heartache, and loss, and death.

Not in this world.

But there is something greater.

We sing of it as we the wheels roll on and the kilometres click away and we get closer to the ocean.

Cause in this life, the one that I would not have chosen, really when I stop to consider all the good things God has graciously given, how can I not sing His praise.

“Oh, You’re rich in love and you’re slow to anger,

Your name is great and your heart is kind,

For all your goodness I will keep on singing.

Ten thousand reasons for my heart to find.
The fallen ones who became the chosen ones who had faith in the One whose love never fails, they sang of it.

Of His goodness. His great wonders. In creation. In protection. In deliverance. And redemption.

Over and over they sing; giving thanks.

For His steadfast love endures forever.

The Good Shepherd leads us to quiet waters. He tends us lovingly. We stand in the setting sun and we see it all as grace upon grace. We wonder at His creation and we marvel at His goodness. We slow down and sing loud and stop to pick lupins and search for sea glass.

We open the window to the sea and open our eyes to really see.

Life ebbs and flows, tides of life rise and fall, eroding away hope, pulling down, but His love is as constant as the waves as it washes over me.

He is supreme over all and His steadfast love, His mercy never ends.

I don’t know why I have been given this life where I can sit before still waters and many mourn their loved ones shot down from the sky.

I can’t make sense of people dying from cancer and bombs, and babies crying from aching bellies and mother’s with broken hearts.

But this I know with all my heart.

The steadfast love of the Lord endures forever.

To Him I will give thanks with all the worshiping congregation. For He is good.

This is my ultimate purpose: that I would proclaim His excellencies.

It is the same as His ultimate goal: that His people would declare His praise.

Life may not always make sense, but this is how I always need to see it.

The life that I never would have chosen, but it is the one He has chosen for me.

In suffering we can endure and do good, we can follow in His steps because He is good and His steadfast love endures. {1 Peter 2:21}

To this we have been called.

And by His grace, for all eternity we will never stop singing this same song over and over and over.

Of His steadfast love that endures forever.

“Still my soul will sing your praise unending.

Ten thousand years and forevermore.”