I Am With You In the Silence | I AM... The God Who Gets Close | Menlo Church Live Stream

There can be a crash that we feel even after milestone moments with God, even if we're convinced that God's taking us in the right direction. So I wanna be direct about something because I think the church has not always been honest about this. Burnout is not just a sign of faithlessness. Oftentimes, it's evidence of faithfulness. Elijah did not burn out because he didn't trust God enough. [00:37:46] (21 seconds)  #BurnoutIsFaithfulness

The angel didn't say you're too weak for the journey or the the journey is too great for someone like you. He said the journey is too great for you. Full stop. The thing you've been carrying is genuinely too heavy, and it was always going to be this heavy. It was always going to cost too much. Elijah wasn't wrong to be tired. You're not wrong to be tired. That exhaustion is the right reaction to the journey that you're on. It's the way it's supposed to feel. [00:43:34] (30 seconds)  #JourneyTooHeavy

God provides a nap, an angelic alarm clock, warm bread, and a jar of water. There's no sermon. There's no rebuke. There's no pressure. Just get up, eat something, and go back to bed. Some of you, that's good spiritual advice. God answered the need that he couldn't even articulate himself. God knows your needs better than you know them. [00:41:25] (28 seconds)  #GodProvidesRest

But sometimes the most holy thing you can do is not to think about next, but the most holy thing you can do for someone in your life is to just sit with them, to give them a great meal, to let them get some sleep, to be the kind of person that they don't have to perform or audition for, to maybe help them find a great counselor who will listen to them and not require them to perform recovery before they've had time to actually recover. [00:42:23] (25 seconds)  #CareNotPerformance

Can we just take a moment to reflect on how strange this encounter is? But at the same time, it's kind of amazing. Right? Elijah prays to die, and God gives him a nap. Some of you, that's like maybe what you need today. There are sermons where like, all right, here's the next step. Scan the QR code, do the thing, go sign up. Like today, it's, [00:40:56] (25 seconds)  #RestNotAction

You can stand on the mountain. You can let the wind pass by. You can see the fire around you. You can let the earthquake pass. And then just listen. Not for an answer, not for a quick fix, but for the peace, the comfort, and the presence of God to remind you that he is just as real today as he has ever been, that his love for you is just as profound as it's ever been. [00:55:04] (29 seconds)  #ListenForGod

Some of you have been chasing for so long, and you finally caught it, and you're just sitting here kind of in grief, realizing that the car you were chasing was not worth the weight you had been giving it. Some of you need to hear, maybe for the first time, that God is not waiting for you to figure your life out. He's not waiting for you to get things all cleaned up. He's been waiting for you to start waiting. He's just been waiting for your attention. [00:54:29] (28 seconds)  #StopChasingStartWaiting

Now notice the timing here. This was not a year later. This was not after a period of complacency where he took God's presence for for granted in his life because it had been too long. This is the day after the victory, the very next day. All it took was a single threat in a single message and all of that faith and all of that fire from the day before went up in smoke. Can you relate to that? [00:35:31] (22 seconds)  #FaithCanFadeFast

We live in the most noise saturated culture in human history. There's never been more noise for us to absorb at any given time. Often, we do not have five minutes where content is not just flowing over our brain, every gap, every commute, every quiet moment with something. Not because we're bad, but because we have just settled for distraction in a deafening world. We have devices we can pick up and scroll that can become our vices very quickly. It fuels our false and misplaced sense of purpose and community, [00:52:55] (31 seconds)  #DigitalNoise

The silence was not a distraction for Elijah. It was calibration. It was a restoration for what was next. God didn't leave Elijah in the quiet. He used the quiet to send him back. He just needed to wait a moment for this moment that God had been waiting to give him. What about you? Have you given God any of those moments lately? [00:53:32] (22 seconds)  #QuietRestores

You would think that someone who had just watched God send fire from heaven would be untouchable, unshakable. He would get a note like this and he would say, can you imagine? Does does she not know? Do they not know who my God is? You'd think that the guy with this kind of a track record for miracles would shrug off a threat and just keep moving. But remember, when we read these stories, they're not fairy tales. They're history. He's a real person. Elijah was not a superhero. [00:35:53] (26 seconds)  #ElijahWasHuman

Elijah did not burn out because he didn't trust God enough. He trusted God so much that he left everything he had on that mountain. He was so faithful that it actually left him empty. Once it was done, he had nothing left. His tank was completely empty. Some of you, you know this feeling really well. You're in a post carmel moment right now in your life. [00:38:04] (25 seconds)  #PostCarmel

Haven't You told anybody yet, but it's true. And I want you to hear this. Elijah, he doesn't get a lecture in this moment. He gets a companion. And we're gonna get there too. But first, you have to just acknowledge the exhaustion. Elijah, a prophet of God, is sitting under a tree and asking God to take his life. [00:38:50] (18 seconds)  #CompanionNotCritique

And God wants us to to be the kind of people that he uses and that he see we see the people that he uses are really human beings, not just human doings. That they're created in his image, yes, but complete with limitations, temptations, and the impacts of sin, their own, and the sin around them. Elijah, the man of fire a chapter ago, has a moment under a tree that some of you are feeling right now. [00:39:31] (24 seconds)  #HumansNotDoings

Two different times where the angel shows up and the message is like, eat, drink. This is too big for you. The journey's too great. Now the journey is too great for you too, by the way. Whatever the journey is in your life, it is intentionally, sovereignly too large for you. And if the thing that you're pursuing in your life is not too big for you, if you're like, actually, I got it, you are settling for a life that is much smaller than the God the one that God has for you. [00:42:58] (26 seconds)  #JourneyTooBig

You're right to be tired because God places more in our lives than we are designed to carry on our own forever. He's not standing over you with a clipboard marking off your faults, failures, and shortcomings. He is right behind you with bread for you to eat and water for you to drink. You likely need to receive again in your life. You likely need to learn to receive even as you give in your life where you're not just constantly living [00:44:04] (31 seconds)  #LearnToReceive

We just aren't that great at stopping to receive it. And if we don't stop to refuel, to recharge, we will be left leading and living on empty. I've had some friends for years. We don't even live around them anymore, and they don't keep phone chargers near their bed, which that sentence is stressful for me. And I'm like, that's good. They don't keep their phones with them. No. No. No. Their phones are next to them. Just all night, the battery is depleting. [00:45:25] (27 seconds)  #StopLivingOnEmpty

So every day they wake up and their phone is, like, almost at zero, and all day they're just chasing power cords to keep their phone charged so that it can make it through the day. And I'm like, there's a better way to live. What are you doing? I have actually sent them from other parts of the country. I've just Amazon primed them more cords. I mean, like, can I can you just put this one by your bed so I know you're okay? You know? [00:45:52] (23 seconds)  #KeepYourBatteryCharged

It's a wild way to live. It sounds really stressful to me. In his book, Leading on Empty, Wayne Cordero kinda highlights this same temptation, but for our lives in the way that you and I actually need to stay regularly fueled and recharged. She points out that where we often let ourselves settle in this paradigm is kinda like a cell phone battery. You know how when it's under 20%, it turns red? [00:46:15] (22 seconds)  #LeadingOnEmpty

And in our lives, it can be really easy to charge just enough for what's right in front of us. But God, in this story, he shows us a vision for actually receiving, taking and eating and drinking deeply from his presence and living within an overflow. Actually, God refueling and charging us for what is ahead. Elijah let himself get close to zero. Some of you have done the same. But he was God's guy. So he was receiving something so difficult. He had been pushing for so long. And I think that's true for a lot of us, [00:46:50] (32 seconds)  #LiveInOverflow

God provides a nap, an angelic alarm clock, warm bread, and a jar of water. There's no sermon. There's no rebuke. There's no pressure. Just get up, eat something, and go back to bed. Some of you, that's good spiritual advice. God answered the need that he couldn't even articulate himself. God knows your needs better than you know them. This is one of the most unpreached moments in the entire Old Testament, and it has profound implications for how we care for ourselves and how we offer to care for other people. [00:41:25] (36 seconds)