Week 37 Sunday
Week 37 Sunday
How Never to Be Tired
Matthew 11:28-30; 2 Corinthians 4:7-11
We have been considering the fact that the Way is the way to meet “anything.” Does this “anything” include the fact of physical and mental tiredness? Is the Way the way never to be tired?
It is very interesting and important to realize that a great many people don’t carry their religion over into their bodies and minds. Their religion doesn’t get across to the nerves and tissues the renewing power of God. Such people expect to rest in heaven, but here they must put up with exhaustion and weariness. “Come to me . . . and I will give you rest” (Matt. 11:28) is interpreted as spiritual rest only. Their faith is compartmentalized and cramped. It ought to contribute to the total life in a total way; instead, it contributes to part of life in a partial way. “The body is for the Lord; and the Lord for the body” (1 Cor. 6:13). Are the Lord and the body affinities? Is an unfit body out of tune with the Lord?
“How never to be tired” obviously needs some qualification. There is a good healthy tiredness that comes as a result of heavy physical exertion. Jesus was tired from his journey, so he sat down at the well (John 4:6 CEB). There is the tiredness that comes from structural disease. There is the tiredness that comes from old age. Apart from these three qualifications, it is possible never to be tired.
In regard to the first—bodily weariness through hard physical labor—that can be balanced and balanced quickly. Marie Beynon Ray says, “This sort of fatigue cannot pile up. There can be no fatigue debt. The energy lost during the day is made up by a night’s sleep. It cannot be carried over to the next week or the next day, not with proper food and rest. A man may die of physical overwork, but if he does, it is right there, on the job, with hammer raised for the next blow.”* I find by experience that I can go to bed after speaking from three to five times a day and wake up refreshed and ready, and can keep this up for years. A night’s rest balances the accounts and throws off fatigue toxins. Ten minutes’ vigorous exercise before going to sleep relaxes me and distributes the blood through my system. I usually go to sleep at once and awake with the accounts balanced. I’ve learned to let God into the bodily processes.
O Christ, thank you for your boundless energy. Night and day people thronged you, and yet they did not exhaust you. Give me your secret; help me to tap the resources you tapped. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: “He gives you all your heart’s desire, renewing your youth like an eagle’s” (Ps. 103:5 Moffatt).
*Marie Beynon Ray, How Never to Be Tired.
Week 37 Monday
Concerning Nervous Breakdowns
Ephesians 6:13-18
We saw yesterday that if you are still tired after twenty-four hours of complete rest, then the tiredness is in the mind and spirit; it is mental and spiritual, not physical. To take a six-months rest to get rid of physical weariness is folly. You get tired resting. For after the first twenty-four hours, if you are not rested, you become worried that you are not rested, and the more you worry the less rested you are. So the more you rest the more weary you become. The cause of the exhaustion is not in the body. Dr. A. A. Brill says, “Absolutely 100 percent of fatigue of sedentary workers who are in good health is nervous fatigue.”*
That leads to the question of nervous breakdown. We are told by those who know that nervous breakdown is never caused by overwork. Dr. Austin F. Riggs, “Hard work, plenty of it, whether physical or mental, never in itself produced one single case of nervous exhaustion.” Dr. A. A. Brill, “No one ever suffers a nervous breakdown from overwork. These maladies simply do not exist.” Dr. Paul Dubois, “Of all my nervous cases, I never found one which could be traced to overwork.” Dr. Ira Wile, “Unconditionally, there is no such thing as breakdown from overwork.”*
Then nervous breakdowns come from what? Two things: (1) Too much thinking about them will produce them. A famous preacher delivered ten consecutive sermons on how to avoid a nervous breakdown and ended up with one! His psychology was bad; he thought too much on nervous breakdowns. “Whatever gets your attention gets you.” He could have stated his truth positively without emphasis on breakdowns. (2) There is some conflict at the root of every nervous breakdown. The cause of the conflict must be found and adjusted.
But a word must be uttered regarding the calling of these tirednesses and breakdowns and pains “imaginary.” They are not imaginary; they are very real. To tell the sufferer that troubles are imaginary is to add insult to injury. They are real, but are produced by wrong mental and spiritual attitudes.
O living, healing Christ, I come to you for rest. I want the roots of my weariness to be removed. If they have been covered up by excuses and rationalizations, then help me this day to uncover them. For I would be whole—perfectly whole. In your name. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: “The Eternal’s law is a sound law, reviving life” (Ps. 19:7 Moffatt).
*No published sources were found for these quotations.
Week 37 Tuesday
Things That Produce Tiredness
Philippians 4:4-7
We come now to the causes of tiredness. From my own experience, I would list them as follows: (1) self-centeredness, (2) boredom, (3) worry, (4) fear, (5) inferiority feelings, (6) resentments, (7) indecision, (8) oversensitivity, (9) inner guilts. Let us look at them briefly.
(1) A self-centered person is usually an exhausted person. Self-centered persons have themselves on their hands all the time. Preoccupation with yourself will leave you tired, especially of yourself. The self-centered are trying to live in an impossible way, as though they are the center of the universe, and they are not. God is. And they are breaking themselves on that fact. They must surrender themselves to God or else be a problem to themselves. No amount of rest can rest a self-centered person. He or she must turn the burden of self over to God and let God be God. Then the person will find release—and only then.
(2) Boredom causes exhaustion. When one is interested in one’s work, there is no exhaustion. Harvard University investigations over ten years have concluded, “The phenomenon formerly called fatigue is better described as boredom. It is boredom that causes a reduced rate of working.”*
Professor Edward L. Thorndike says that it is not actually incapacity to work but a lack of desire to work that produces fatigue. When yon are interested in your work, you are not tired by it. Thorndike concludes that boredom is the cause of 95 percent of the decrease in mental work during the closing sessions in school, and that it is a major cause of fatigue in adult life.** Interest in your work turns on the supply of hormones in the blood; a lack of interest turns them off. You can make your glands secrete or not secrete by your interest or lack of it.
A schoolteacher was preoccupied with herself and her own problems. She said that she looked over the heads of her children and wearily watched the clock. The days dragged on. Then she surrendered herself and her problems to God, was released, lowered her eyes from the clock to the faces of the children, and began to be interested in them. Her job became a joy, fatigue replaced by abounding energy.
O God, your boundless energy is mine, and I know it. I’ve been exhausting myself with impossible ways of life. And now I surrender them all to you, for I want to live and live abundantly. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: I am healthy in your Health, strong in your Strength, and free in your Freedom.
*Sources for direct quotations not found, but see information on the Harvard Fatigue Laboratory (1927–47) at http://oasis.lib.harvard.edu/oasis/deliver/~med00120.
**Sources for direct references not found, but see Edward L. Thorndike, Mental Work and Fatigue and Individual Differences and Their Causes, Educational Psychology Volume 3 (New York: Teachers College, Columbia University, 1921).
Week 37 Wednesday
Worry Makes You Tired
Philippians 4:8-13
We ended yesterday on the fact that boredom is a major cause of fatigue.
(3) Worry is also a major cause. A pilot of a plane on a trip to Latin America asked me if I enjoyed my lunch. I assured him I did and then asked whether he did; he replied, “No, I have an upset digestion.” I inquired, “What are you worrying about?” He looked surprised and then said, “Yes, I am worrying. I am afraid they are going to put me on a run I don’t want to go on, so I am worrying.” I added, “That’s what is the matter with you; worry is upsetting your digestive system.” He asked, “Are you a Christian Scientist?” I replied, “No, just a Christian.” And then he told me of another pilot, so afraid of the examiner who was putting him through his final examination for a captain’s status, that, though he was “tops,” he got mixed up and failed, had a nervous breakdown, and had to go on sick leave.
A woman, really upright, worried herself into invalidism about a sex-sin that was really nonexistent. When she surrendered it to God as we prayed, she exclaimed, “It’s wonderful. I’m released.”
There is an ulcer known as the “Dunkirk Ulcer,” developed on a large scale by men waiting anxiously to be evacuated from the beach. An examining doctor told me that in a group of army inductees who came in one truck, twenty-two out of thirty men had backaches. One had said that he had it, and the rest developed it. They were not imaginary; the aches were there, but emotionally induced. There is a “Soldiers’ Rheumatism” that is not rheumatism at all, but a functional disturbance as a result of anxiety and fear. Heart palpitation can come as a result of worry, and then worry over the heart palpitation increases the palpitation. It is a vicious circle. The trouble is entirely functional; the heart may be perfectly sound.
A schoolteacher waited on her sick mother and taught school. She began to feel sorry for herself, worried about herself, and developed a pain in her back. The doctors could find no reason and talked to her about the real source of it. She surrendered her self-pity and worry to God, and the pain left her. She then served with reserves.
O God, I come to you with anything that hinders the flow of your resources through me. For I know that you have them, and I need them, and I can have them for life—now. So I surrender all the hindrances and take your health. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: I am not a reservoir; I am a channel, a channel attached to Infinite Resources.
Week 37 Thursday
Fear Produces Fatigue
Matthew 13:20-22; 25:24-25
We come to the next cause of fatigue:
(4) Fear produces fatigue. Fear is worry become acute. Worry is general; fear is specific. A Russian psychiatrist sat at the table in a railway diner with two men and a woman who wore a gold cross at her throat. She was an exuberant person who breathed poise and health. Suddenly the psychiatrist said, “If more people believed in and lived what that cross stands for, I’d have nothing to do. I see from seventy-five to a hundred patients a day, and the three things they suffer most from are fear, loneliness, and selfishness.”
An able piano teacher wrote with great difficulty in a very shaky hand. She explained that she and her sister had written in longhand six hundred acknowledgments to those who had sent flowers and messages when the father died, and she had strained a muscle in her thumb. But in her playing, the thumb was normal. Obviously, the trouble was not physical but mental; the thumb was associated with writing letters on a painful occasion, the death of a loved one. The thumb nerves began to be upset because the emotions were upset, and the paralysis took place. Another woman put the matter to me this way, “I began to have asthma, and I saw it was rooted in the jitters. I gave up my fears to God, and the asthma has disappeared.”
(5) Inferiorities produce fatigue. When we are inwardly running away from things, the very thought of those things makes us tired.
(6) Resentments produce fatigue. When one is chewing on inner resentments, there fatigue sets in. A girl in an elevator said to me with a shake of her head, “That porter is driving everyone around here nuts.” “And especially himself?” I asked. “Yes,” she agreed, “he is driving himself nuts.” The resentments in everybody were throwing sand in the machinery of life.
A patient with a gastric ulcer got it as the result of the fact that, when he was a boy, the sound of the dinner bell was the gong that began the next round of a never-ending family fight. His stomach would go into spasms; stomach ulcer the result.
O God, I come to you to take out all resentments and fears that cause upset. I cannot take them out, but I can consent, and I do consent—wholeheartedly, now. I am free, for I give my free consent. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: “Fear knocked at the door; faith answered; nobody was there.”*
*Widely quoted proverb. No author given.
Week 37 Friday
Three More Things That Produce Fatigue
Psalm 38:3-10
The next causes of fatigue are:
(7) Indecision. The person who takes a long time to decide things, and then after they are decided, undecides them for fear of making a mistake, is always tired. The fear of making a mistake makes one make a continuous mistake, the mistake of keeping emotionally upset with indecision. It is far better to make a few wrong decisions than be indecisive. For the indecisive person is in greater danger of making wrong decisions by being emotionally upset over making any decision. Decide things, and if the decision is wrong, do better next time. Don’t wear yourself out by weighing endlessly the pros and cons.
(8) Oversensitivity produces fatigue. There must be a toughening of the fiber of life, for if you’re hurt by every passing event, you’ll be continuously hurt and tired. Very often people have an oversensitive conscience and produce false guilts within them. They get into bondage over marginal things. They make God picayunish, looking for motes. Their consciences have blind spots; they are blind to the disruption they cause to themselves and others by being upset over little things. The conscience should be healthy, not a conscience that goes into a spasm at the sight of a mouse of defect of character.
(9) Inner guilt produces tiredness. A doctor who has a great many patients a day has a number of copies of Abundant Living on the tables in his waiting rooms. The patients read them while waiting and ask where they can get them. He tells them to take one along. He has given away six hundred copies in this way. His reason, “I give the book to serve as a cathartic!” He knows that the patients are filled with fears and guilts, and no amount of medicine or physical manipulation can cure them until they get rid of these fears and guilts. Guilt produces conflict, and conflict wears out the physical organism. “There is no health in my limbs, thanks to my sins” (Ps. 38:3 Moffatt). “He pardons all your sins, and all your sicknesses he heals” (Ps. 103:3 Moffatt).
O God, I know that when I get rid of every vestige of guilt, I shall be free—wholly free of conflict and fatigue. So here I am at your feet; take me, remake me. I rise up in you strong and well and unafraid. Here I live, and live without fear and fatigue. I thank you. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: “A mind at ease is life and health, but passion makes man rot away” (Prov. 14:30 Moffatt).
Week 37 Saturday
Steps to Abounding Energy
Psalms 40:1-3; 41:3; 56:12-13
Steps to get rid of fatigue and to have a life of abounding energy:
(1) Get a physical checkup to see if there is any structural disease. If there is nothing serious enough to cause fatigue, then look for the causes elsewhere. They are probably in the mind and attitudes.
(2) See if you have your minimum requirement of vitamin. I get mine from “grass” tablets that have the whole range of known vitamins, and apparently, some not yet discovered. They have a plus not known in synthetic vitamins. You may be vitamin-starved. There is an intimate connection between vitamins and nerves. If you are vitamin-starved, you will be tired and nervous.
(3) If you are bored with your work, change your job or change your attitude. If it is not possible to change your job, then change your attitude toward your job. Do everything “for the love of God.”
(4) Surrender to God everything that produces inner conflict. Surrender self-centeredness, worry, fear, resentment, oversensitivity, inferiority feelings, and guilt. These make you tired, for they are not-the-way.
(5) Get interests outside yourself and give yourself to them. Don’t retire. The retired are the tired. Turn to new interests and new tasks. Someone has said that “life is counted not by the breaths taken but by the breaths not taken.” You will be breathless with new interests and tasks. You will be gasping with surprise at a world popping with novelty and needs, and at yourself meeting those needs!
(6) Don’t say, “I am tired.” Rather say, “I am fresh in God.” The Africans have a saying, “Don’t be tired tomorrow.” Don’t anticipate tiredness. Affirm health and adequacy. Autosuggestion? Yes, and good autosuggestion. Far better to suggest health than suggest sickness.
(7) “Turn on health” day by day through relaxed receptivity. Let the healing grace of God into every brain cell and nerve and tissue by periods of quiet relaxation in God’s presence. In India are stone slabs on pillars, called sumatungas, so people carrying burdens on their heads can rest them. An Indian woman said, “Christ is my Sumatunga.” He is.
O Christ, you are my Sumatunga; you are giving me rest. In you, I am strong and well and rested. In you, I am able for anything. Let life come on—I am ready. For I can be beaten by nothing, burdened by nothing. I am safe and ready. I thank you. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: “Come to me, all ye labouring and burdened, and I will refresh you” (Matt. 11:28 Moffatt).