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Are you tired today? It’s the day after Christmas and you’ve been so busy with all the holiday functions. I imagine you may just be plain tired. I get tired frequently. Recently I decided to see what the Word of God had to say about being tired.
First, let me assure you that it’s okay to be tired. Jesus was often tired while he was here on earth. You remember when he went sound to sleep on the boat and a terrible storm didn’t awaken him? He was tired. We read in John 4 that he was tired from a long journey. I think there is abundant evidence that he frequently grew tired and weary from dealing with people. You can hear the exhaustion in his voice when he says, “O unbelieving and perverse generation, how long shall I stay with you? How long shall I put up with you?” (Matthew 17:17).
We can know that Jesus understands our tired bodies and minds, because he experienced all of that while he took the form of man here on earth. He sympathizes with our weaknesses and the limitations we face. Just knowing that helps me a lot.
So, the first thing I would tell you today about being tired is that it’s okay. But we have to determine if we’re tired for the wrong reasons. Have you been trying to be all things to all people lately? That’s exhausting, and you can never succeed. Perhaps you’ve taken on jobs God never intended you to do, and you’re tired from trying to do too much. Maybe you’re trying to do everything to total perfection. Perfectionists are usually very tired people, trying to prove something to themselves and to the world by being perfect all the time.
You may be tired because you’ve got your priorities confused. Someone has said, “There’s always time to do God’s will,” and I think it’s true that God would never ask of us more than our bodies and minds can do without going into overload and burn-out. But when we confuse our priorities, it causes weariness and exhaustion.
Let me say to you again what I so often have to say to myself: God has not called us to be super-people. He is not asking us to do everything and do it perfectly. When Jesus was here on earth, he refused to do many things asked of him. He knew how to say “No.”
