Compassion Fatigue Recovery - Part II

How to Endure the Burning

by Julia C Loren

“That which is to give light must endure the burning.”
-Viktor Frankl

So you don’t feel like the light of the world shines through you. In fact, you may even think that darkness rests so heavily upon your shoulders that nothing can stop you from sinking into the quicksand beneath your feet. You’re tired, angry, perhaps depressed, and wishing everyone would go away and stop sliming you with their “stuff”. You started off in ministry full of God’s love and burning with purpose. Through the years, the burning has taken its toll. The wick runs low and the wax morphs into a figure that you barely recognize as yourself.

How do you endure burning? How to you move from the threat of burning out to the promise of walking ablaze with enduring light? Come closer to the fireplace of God’s love, pull up a chair and I will tell you what God has taught me in recent years. Perhaps it will help.

Endure the burning by rest and refocus on what is worth focusing on

Your eyes are the lamp of your body (Luke 11:33-36). When your eyes are good, your whole body also is full of light. Your eyes – how you perceive things, what you dwell, upon causes your emotions to follow suit. When you are burned out, you only perceive darkness. When you are in the process of burning out, you see a mix of light and dark. When you are burning bright, your eyes reveal that you are beholding and meditating upon the one who is the Light of the World, resting in His presence, drinking in His love.

Meditating on Scripture reveals the blazing furnace of love He has for you…not others, just you. Soaking in worship releases the salt encrusted tears locked up in your heart and enables you to keep your heart soft before God and others. Soak when you don’t feel a thing. Soak when you are overwhelmed by God’s presence. Find places to soak. Find a place where the people are alive and full of love and know how to drink in God’s presence. If you need to step away from your church/mission/ministry for a period of time then do it. Find a place to rest, refocus and soak in God’s presence, being loved not for what you do but for who you are. You will find the depression and darkness rapidly lifting as you fall into His arms for a time of rest and refocusing on His love.

Endure the burning by anchoring yourself in God’s calling

How did Paul perceive the darkness around him? How did he make sense of the betrayals and beatings that drove him out of Israel and into Rome? How did Paul endure the burning when he must have felt like his own body was a walking burnt offering? Apart from a direct encounter with God that made Him fully alive to God’s unlimited mercy and amazing love I don’t think he could have endured. What God spoke to him during Paul’s darkest, blindest moment imparted a deep undercurrent of purpose that drove Paul and helped him maintain fidelity to his mission. I think it took awhile for Paul to realize that his dramatic calling only gave him a glimpse of his purpose in life. In Acts 22:14-15 Paul continually talked about his calling and summarized it as this – to know God’s will, to see the Righteous One, to hear words from His mouth, to be his witness to all men of what he has seen and heard.

From that initial conversion experience Paul was able to articulate a mission statement that fueled his passion to the end. It took years of enduring the burning before Paul probably realized that he was called only to be faithful to the mission God gave him. The results were not for Paul to worry about, fret over, stew on or turn with anger and rage or sarcasm against those whom Paul worked with on a daily basis. In fact, Paul’s occasional bouts of sarcasm were symptomatic of burnout. At times, Paul also suffered a lack of compassion. Consider Paul’s negative response during the Mark episode and Paul’s later maturity enabling him to embrace Mark once again. But Paul endured the burning, persevered and regained, or perhaps gained for the first time, a sense of compassion during the painful course of his ministry. Paul’s concern was that he remains faithful – no matter what others do or don’t do - and he kept his focus on Christ. He continually told others of his conversion and calling, then directly translated that into a mission statement that served as the foundation for perseverance.

Endure the burning by learning to self-validate

In Acts 28:25 Paul realized the outcome of his work was not in his control. He self-validated his work by recognizing that he was faithful to God’s calling and his mission – no matter the outcomes for we live not by sight and the mysterious work of the Spirit may not be evident for years after an event or encounter. His self-worth was not tied to perceived positive outcomes.

Heroes of the faith in days gone by are remembered for the power or preaching skills as well as their fidelity to their mission – their ability to endure the burning. More modern leaders are known for what they imparted to those they touched or for how they validated one’s experience with God. Yet in our hypercritical church age, these modern heroes are also known for how they endured the burning – often burning at the stake in some church circles! Most importantly they exhibited two methods of enduring;

maintaining ruthless trust in the Father despite betrayal and criticism and mistakes and,
maintaining integrity to their mission.

In the process of paying the price of ministry to huge flocks of incessantly bleating sheep monotonously or nervously kicking about their muck in the barnyards of the Lord, these leaders reflected the light of the Father’s love. How did they do this and endure the burning? They changed their focus to meditate on what is good and noble and life giving in the Lord and in others around them – rather than on how people received them. They learned to self-validate their caregiving/ministry and leaned on their support system, a support system that they had to develop in order to endure.

Endure the burning by realizing that we will suffer in the work
Endure the burning by realizing that we will suffer in the work but it does not have to be debilitating. The late John Wimber, the key figure in the Vineyard movement, also realized that in absence of an external persecution against the church, Satan stirs up persecution from within the church. So, often, those who endured to the end of their ministry developed a theology that acknowledged that suffering was part of enduring the burning as well as a part of their own refining process.

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