Dear Pastor, Fight Burnout with Thanksgiving

This article is part of the Dear Pastor series.

Dear Pastor,

I have come to notice that the most joyful people in my life and ministry are also the most thankful, and joyous people experience freshness as they go about their service. God’s grace is a means of freshness over the long haul.

Thanksgiving for that grace—and the joy that it sparks—also refreshes us in our ministry. After talking about how God helped him during a terribly painful experience, Paul said, “But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession, and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere” (2 Cor. 2:14). He says that those who are filled with the Spirit give “thanks always and for everything to God” (Eph. 5:20). Elsewhere Paul advised, “Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you” (1 Thess. 5:18). When we speak of doing the will of God, how often do we mention thanksgiving as part of it!

In the three texts above, I have emphasized the words that show that thanksgiving (and praise) are to be on our lips all the time. Sometimes the attitude of thanksgiving comes only after we have grappled with God through groaning and lament. We must develop the habit of grappling with God when things go wrong until the perspective of grace breaks through into our lives. But after the grappling will come thanksgiving, so that the abiding sentiment in our lives is one of thanksgiving for God’s grace.

Joy

The emotion that lies behind thanksgiving is joy. And joy is an important distinguishing mark of a Christian. Joy is an important Hebrew concept, given how many different terms there are for it. The Old Testament has thirteen “Hebrew roots used for some aspect of joy,”¹ which expands to twenty-three or more different words for joy. The theme of joy likewise pulsates throughout the New Testament. It begins with the announcement of the birth of Christ as “good news of great joy” (Luke 2:10), which leads to the naming of our message as the gospel—good news. British Reformer, Bible translator, and martyr William Tyndale (ca. 1494–1536) expressed his excitement over the gospel in the preface to his translation of the New Testament. He wrote that the word gospel signified “good, merry, glad and joyful tidings, that makes a person’s heart glad, and makes him sing, dance and leap for joy.”²

The Christian Approach to Life

The interconnectedness of the basic aspects of the Christian approach to life is well described in a discovery I made a few years ago of key Greek words that are etymologically based on the same Greek root: char-.

• The first word is charis, which is the grace that gives us salvation and results in us becoming God’s children. This deals with the question of identity: we are children of God.
• Those who are saved by grace also receive gifts to use for God’s glory. The word for such gifts is charisma. This gives us significance; we have work of eternal value to do.
• With the deep needs for identity and significance satisfied, we become contented people, resulting in an attitude of thanksgiving. The word for thanks is eucharistia.
• Thankful people are joyful people. The word for joy is chara.
• Out of the strength of joy we are able to give freely. That word is charizomai. Charizomai is sometimes translated “forgive” (Eph. 4:32; Col. 3:13). Grace makes us gracious, so that we have strength to forgive.

Charis — Grace
Charisma — Gift
Eucharistia — Thanks
Chara — Joy
Charizomai — Freely give, forgive

Service, then, is an overflow of the joy God has given us. We see this in Jesus’s words in John 15:11–13. He says, “These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full” (John 15:11). With that joy we have the strength to give ourselves to sacrificial service. Jesus goes on to say, “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:12–13).

Joy Gives Us Strength

Ministry brings with it many blows. Most people in vocational ministry do not acquire great wealth or earthly honor. But if we are joyful people, we are rich! Joy gives us the strength to face trials and approach life with a positive outlook. Note that when Jesus spoke about giving his joy to the disciples, he was about to endure the most painful death anyone would ever face. Joy remained with Christ even as he prepared himself for his death.

I once heard David Sitton, founder of To Every Tribe Mission, tell a story from his teenage years. A ninety-year-old missionary spoke at the youth fellowship of his church. He had been a missionary for seventy-two years. At the start of his talk, the missionary kept saying the same thing over and over again. It was something like, “I want you to remember this. You can forget everything else I say, but don’t forget this.” He repeated this for a few minutes, and the young people were getting impatient, wishing that he would go ahead and say it. Finally, he said what he wanted to say: “The joy of the Lord is your strength. When the joy goes, the strength goes.” Having said that, he sat down! He was quoting Nehemiah 8:10: “The joy of the Lord is your strength.”

The joy of the Lord is a wonderful treasure. We must not leave home without it!

Paul presents the pursuit of joy as an imperative for the Christian. He says, “Rejoice in the Lord always, again I will say, rejoice” (Phil. 4:4). Joy is something we must actively pursue with perseverance. Once in a New Year’s address George Mueller (1805–1898) said, “The welfare of our families, the prosperity of our businesses, our work and service for the Lord, may be considered the most important matters to attend to; but according to my judgement, the most important point to be attended to is this: above all things to see that your souls are happy in the Lord.” He went on to say, “Other things may press upon you; the Lord’s work even may have urgent claims upon your attention” but this pursuit of joy is “of supreme and paramount importance. . . . Day by day seek to make this the most important business of your life.”³

The joy of the Lord is a wonderful treasure. We must not leave home without it! If we always have this joy, we will have a positive attitude toward life. Then it is unlikely that the freshness of living and serving will leave us. No matter what may befall us, the roots of our renewal and strength are reliable and unchanging. A daily supply of refreshment is available to keep us enthusiastic about life and ministry.

Mueller launched into an itinerant evangelistic ministry at the age of seventy, which he continued until he was eighty-seven. During these seventeen years he traveled two hundred thousand miles, ministered in forty-two countries, and preached to about three million hearers. These figures are amazing considering that this was before the time of airplanes and sound-amplifying systems. When someone asked Mueller the secret of his long life, he gave three reasons. The third was the happiness he felt in God and his work.⁴

This article is adapted from Joyful Perseverance: Staying Fresh through the Ups and Downs of Ministry by Ajith Fernando.

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