STXWM Blog

“Imagine Jesus was sitting right here in this room with us. Imagine Him hearing you talk about the pressure you feel to do everything; your worry that everyone will be disappointed in you if you stopped. What do you think He would say to you?”

The therapist’s words stirred emotion deep within me as I contemplated my precious Jesus’s response to the striving and performing that had led me to the brink of burnout. I had been carrying the weight of work and family and ministry for so long that my value had become intertwined with my productivity and had stolen the joy of serving Jesus, not out of obligation, but out of freedom. In that little room of the counseling center, my eyes filled with tears as I sensed Christ’s gentle presence reminding me of what I knew, but desperately needed to be reminded of.

”I think He would tell me that He loves me, and He doesn’t love me any less when I’m less productive. He doesn’t love me based on what I do for Him. He loves me because I am His.”

”Then Jesus said, ‘Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.’” Matthew 11:28

I’ve known those truths for a long time. I’ve known that my worth isn’t in what I can do for the Lord. But somehow the pressure to strive for success in ministry—because of the pressure of others or my own internal narrative—tangled me up in a web of “good works” that I knew wouldn’t save me but seemed to define me. Who was I if I wasn’t what I did?

We often say, “You are not loved for what you do, you are loved for who you are.” And although that helps to untangled our belovedness from our doing, it still puts the emphasis on us and who we are (or are not) when it comes to being loved. The reality is, our belovedness isn’t based on us at all, but on God.

We are loved because of who God is.

”See how very much our Father loves us, for he calls us his children, and that is what we are!” 1 John 3:1

”This is real love—not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins.” 1 John 4:10

When I am wrong, sinful, and utterly unlovely, He loves me because He is love. What I do isn’t even in the equation. 

Almost every woman I meet is TIRED. The pressures of life, the pace we run at, the belief that if we stop, it will all fall apart keeps us running on fumes and hoping we can make it another day. Friends, this isn’t the abundant life Jesus invites us to! Why do so many of us get caught up in striving and push ourselves at an unhealthy pace? 

We often encourage people to “just do your best,” but sometimes our best costs us too much and we end up burned out because we never learned how to put boundaries around our ”best” and accept the fact that:

Not everything and everyone demands or deserves our all, and sometimes it’s ok to just do what we can, even if it’s not our best.

We would never look at a field, barren after the harvest and say, “Why aren’t you doing your best? Why aren’t you producing something?” We know that there are natural seasons of sowing and reaping and rest. Why do we not give ourselves the same grace?

So, if doing your best is leaving you with a broken and burned-out spirit, I want you to know—it’s ok to stop. It’s ok to do nothing for a while and let your soul breathe. It’s ok if all you can do right now is not your best, but your bare minimum. There is grace for you, friend, to remember that you are not more loved by God when you do your best than when you do your least. There is freedom from striving in the fullness of God’s love.

-by Heather F.

Jesus isn’t looking for our striving, He’s looking for our surrender. Let’s have audacious faith to embrace our limitations, and be ok with doing less than the best for the things that don’t require our best (which is often more than we realize) so we can walk in joy and freedom being the limited beings that we are, knowing we don’t have to be excellent to be enough.