How Are You Really? | Carey Nieuwhof

But how do you get better? It's a great question. And the answer is, you add margin to your life. Margin to your life. Do you remember margin? If you can think back, if you can remember, the first summer between kindergarten and first grade, kind of felt like a year does today. It just felt like it went on forever. Why? Because you had no responsibilities. Because you were free, you were unburdened. And I know this about myself. When I build margin in my life, like Moses was trying to do there, or Jethro was trying to get Moses to do, you know what, I am at my most kind when I have the most margin. Well, I want to ask you a question you've probably been asked four or five times already today. But I really want to ask the question. And the question is simple, how are you? But how are you really? How are you? From Fresno County, Nevada. How are you? How are you, young man? I like that, how are you doing? How are you really? Because sometimes, you know, I've been married,

as Adam said, 35 years. You know, my wife and I have gone to church all of our married lives. And sometimes you fight on the way to church. Not that you would know anything about that. And then you try to make this peace when you're coming in the door and someone goes, how are you? And you're like, great, isn't that right, honey? Yeah, we're doing great, right? But how are you? Like at the deepest level. Some of you, if we're gonna be really honest, you barely came in here. Because you're so tired. And you're so exhausted. And so frustrated. Some of you are hurt, deeply, deeply hurt. Some of you are struggling, the kids aren't sleeping at night. You've had too many kids, you think now. It's like, you know, like what is going on? And life seems overwhelming to you. Maybe you're in a job you hate. Or maybe you're in a job you absolutely love, but there's just too much job for you. It's a question I really had to wrestle down over the years, having led a church myself for 20 years. And even in the work I do now, talking to leaders around the world,

writing books, podcasting, that kind of thing. It's a question I have to ask myself on a regular basis. And I got into ministry, I got into pastoring, and it was a real surprise to me. Because I thought when I was seven years old, eight years old, I came home to my parents. And you know, this was like the 1970s. So we didn't have the internet. You kind of just knew what was around you. Everything was in black and white. It was the 70s, okay? So I came home one day and I just told my parents, hey, when I grow up, I want to be a lawyer. Now I don't know what sparks a seven, eight year old to want to be a lawyer, but I wanted to be a lawyer. And I followed that dream and I got into law school. And the best thing to come out of law school was my wife. We met in first year law. We got married 18 months into it. But then something really strange happened in the middle of law school. I sensed a call to ministry. I grew up in a Christian home, kind of drifted as a teenager, you know, by 19. It was like being obedient and faithful enough that if I was killed in a car accident, I think I'm gonna be in heaven, but having a lot of fun along the way. And then at 21 or 22, I just decided, I gotta decide, am I in or am I out?

And I started reading the Bible every day again. And I thought I'd do that for six months. And then I was either gonna bail on Christianity or dive in, and it didn't take six months. As I was reading the Bible, I was convinced they were the most real words I'd ever read. And so I recommitted my life to Christ, but I thought I was gonna be a Christian lawyer. So fast forward to law school, halfway through first and second year, I had a number of like supernatural events happening. And that was so strange for me because I grew up Presbyterian and I'm also a lawyer. I don't feel anything, but I really felt the presence of God. And it was like God was supernaturally getting ahold of my life, saying you should go into ministry. And being a good Calvinist, I suspected it, tested it, questioned it, rejected it, but it kept happening again and again. And so finally after law, I was completed that circuit. I thought, okay, okay, I better go to seminary out of obedience. to seminary, I don't really have typical pastoral gifts. I'm an enneagram eight, which means I'm a bull in a china shop. You know, I'm a driven leader, I'm wired, I'm ambitious and that kind of thing. And I just couldn't imagine sitting around

holding people's hands and, you know, kumbaya and all that stuff you do as a pastor. So I'm like, okay, well, I'll try it out. I'll try it out. So we found these three churches north of Toronto. And I said, we'll do that for 18 months and we'll just see, you know, how this call works out in real time. And we came to three rural, declining churches. So imagine every stereotype of a New England church that you can imagine. And those were the churches I came to about an hour north of Toronto, Canada. I'm Canadian, as you can tell by the subtitles on the screen. Kidding. But anyway, so we go to these three churches and they were small. I was basically their last ditch hope at either we have a future or we turn off the lights. And the first church, I do the circuit on a Sunday morning. First church had an average attendance of six, like literally that row right there. That was it, six people on Sunday morning. One year it even got down to two. My wife didn't even come. It was so depressing. So there was that church. And then we go to the church of 14 and I'd preach there. And then I'd wrap up every Sunday morning

at the mega church. It had 23 people on a Sunday morning. And that was like the first few months. But almost immediately we started to grow. And within a couple of years, I got ordained and they called me and we outgrew our buildings. And then we amalgamated and we moved to an elementary school. We went from one service to two services to three services. Then we built a brand new building. One service, two services, three services. And before we knew it, we became the fastest growing church in the country in our denomination and the second largest. And I'm in my 30s and I got overwhelmed. I had a terrible formula for leadership in my 30s because I'd never been part of a big church like that. Here's my formula for leadership. More people equals more hours. If more people show up, I'm just gonna work harder. I'll work nine hours, 10 hours, 11 hours, 12 hours a day. And I would just work hard. And when we got into about a decade into ministry, I had all kinds of people coming to me and saying, Carrie, if you're not careful, you're gonna burn out. But with my wiring, I'm like, I'm not gonna burn out. Like I'm not, that's for weak people. I am not weak. And that's what I thought. We got affiliated with a church in the United States, one of the largest churches in the United States. And I'm from Canada,

so we always look up to the United States and anything that happens here is amazing. And I got invited to speak at a mega church in Atlanta. And that's like being invited to play starting quarterback in the Super Bowl. I couldn't believe it. And they're like, all right, you're gonna speak there. And this was one of my heroes, Andy Stanley, who invited me. And I remember they flew my wife and my kids down. Andy was sitting right over there. And I get up, you know, to give this talk. And I'm like, okay, here we go. And I had prepped it for months and I gave the talk. And according to everybody there, it went incredibly well. And I'm kind of thinking, wow, I am on top of the world. And we got on the plane to go from Atlanta and fly back into Toronto. And when we landed in Toronto, it's like I fell off a cliff. And after a decade in leadership, everything just spiraled. I lost all my feeling, all my emotion. The only thing I felt was depression, numbness. I lost my passion. I was such a passionate young attorney, such a passionate young preacher. And it just like vaporized overnight. I could barely get out of bed in the morning. I got out of bed, but I just kind of languished all day long. And I thought, okay, this was May of 2006. I thought, okay, all I have to do is get to summer vacation

because it was May, right? So in July, I had three weeks off. I said, that's gonna solve it. So we got to July, I took my three weeks off. And at the end of the three weeks off, I felt worse than I did at the beginning of my vacation. I'm like, oh boy, maybe this is burnout. So I've always had great elders. I went to my elders, I explained what was happening. They asked me if I wanted a sabbatical. I said, if I take a sabbatical, I don't think I'm ever coming back. So I didn't take a sabbatical. And I just kind of limped along. And by the fall, I was maybe back to 70%. But then it took a couple of years to really find a new pattern. If you've been burned out, and some of you have been there, everything inside you wants to get back to normal, but I had the presence of mind enough to realize that normal got me burned out, and if I went back to normal, I'd probably just burn out again. So I tried to reconstruct my life, and I'm gonna share some of the things I learned along the way with you this morning that I hope are gonna be of practical help to you by the time you walk out of this place in a half hour. But first, back to the original question. How are you?

Like, for real. For real. Well, according to the stats, if you're young, look at this. 81% of 18- to 24-year-olds and 83% of 25- to 35-year-olds report feeling burned out. You know? If you're young, there's a high, high chance you're like, ugh, already, and you got decades ahead of you. Or if you bear a lot of responsibility at work, maybe you run your own company, you're a senior leadership executive, 82%, according to Deloitte, of senior executives regularly finish work feeling emotionally and physically exhausted, and maybe that's you. You leave it all on the field, and you get home, and you're exhausted, and what have you got left for your family? Answer, nothing. Nothing left for the kids, nothing left for your spouse, nothing left over for the weekend. You're just flat. And as I tried to figure that out, I tried to figure out, okay, what is going on as I've sort of reconstructed my life over the last 19 years?

Here's what I've discovered. God gives us three assets every day. We get time, energy, and priorities. And if you let things just unfold the way they unfold, your time becomes unfocused, your energy never gets thought about other than you don't have any, and it's unleveraged, and your priorities get hijacked by other people and other things that come your way. So you have unfocused time, unleveraged energy, hijacked priorities, and what happens? It leaves us feeling the way most people feel these days, overwhelmed, overcommitted, and overworked. I'm overwhelmed, I'm overcommitted, I got way too much going on, and I'm overworked. And some of you, you have your dream job, and you know what you do? You spend your nights thinking about how to escape from your dream job. It's like, what can I do other than this? So how do you know you're burning out? I'm not a clinical psychologist,

but I want to walk you through 11 symptoms, and I want you, these are ones that I experienced when I was burning out. I want you to keep count, okay? So just keep count in your head. How many resonate with you right now? Then I'm going to show you where you fit on a burnout scale after we're done this. So sign number one, your passion fades. I was so passionate when I was in my teens and twenties. It was like, I'm going to take the world over. By the time I burned out, it was like, no more passion. Even though I was a Christian, even though the mission of the church was important, I was toast. How about this one, number two? You no longer feel the highs and the lows. Okay, life is not supposed to be all highs. There's supposed to be highs, there's supposed to be lows. The Bible is very clear on that, right? We're to carry each other's sorrows. We're supposed to rejoice with each other. So somebody comes up to you if you're burning out, and they say, guess what, we just got engaged! And you have enough, like, memory

to, like, you know, game face to go like, good for you. But inside, what do you feel? Nothing. Somebody else comes up and says, my dad just got diagnosed with cancer. And on the outside, you know what to do. You say, oh, I'm so sorry. But on the inside, what do you feel? Nothing. Or, when you have emotions, they're the wrong emotions, third sign. Little things make you feel disproportionately angry. You know, your son leaves the garden hose out when he was supposed to put it away, and what do you do? It's a 2 out of 10 problem, but you react at a 12 out of 10 and have a total meltdown on him. So your emotions are way out of proportion to what's actually going on. Number four, everybody drains you. Okay, we know this. Some people drain you, right? There's that guy at work that you try to avoid all the time in the break room. There's that, you know, relative who's, like, not sitting next to them at Thanksgiving. There are people who are draining people, but when everybody drains you, when your

kids drain you, when your spouse drains you, when your best friend drains you, you're like, I'm not going golfing this weekend. That's a sign. Number five, you're becoming cynical. Just basically, you roll your eyes at everything. You roll your eyes at the news, you roll your eyes at what people are saying, you roll your eyes at optimists. It's like, you know what? We're gonna start a new business. It's like, good luck with that, you know? Number five, that's cinnamon. Then number six, nothing satisfies you. A good dinner out with your loved one or your best friend doesn't satisfy you. Time off doesn't satisfy you. Your hobbies don't satisfy you. Sex doesn't satisfy you. Nothing just doesn't satisfy you. It's not registering. Number seven, you can't think straight. My brain fog when I was burned out was incredible. And my job, you know, as a pastor and now as a writer and a speaker, it depends on mental clarity. When I was burned out, nothing. It was just brain fog. Number eight, your productivity is tanking. You might put in 12 hours.

What did you accomplish? Nothing. You stared at a blinking cursor, right? You're just not good at it anymore. Number nine, you're self-medicating. This one's really huge. What do I mean by self-medicating? Well, maybe you have prescription medication, but you're not taking it as directed. Maybe it's, you know, not just a drink on the weekend, but a drink every day. Maybe it's recreational drugs. Maybe it's a sex addiction that's really out of control. But basically, you're trying to control the pain. Now, I was a pastor when I burned out. A lot of those options are not available to me, okay? Can't exactly start micro-dosing psychedelics at work, okay? Not a good idea if you wanna keep your job. And that didn't, you know, jibe with my faith journey. So you know what I did? I found an addiction, work. I became a workaholic. When our marriage wasn't good and leading up to burnout, our marriage was not great, I would just get frustrated with my wife. I'd get frustrated with my kids. They're supposed to go to bed at 7.30, and I'm like, 7.30, not 7.31. Meanwhile, they want water and food, and I'm like, they're just lying.

Kids are liars. My wife's like, oh, but we gotta take care of them and help them and make sure they don't starve. They're not starving. And I would just give up and go downstairs and go to open up my laptop and bury myself till 11 o'clock and then get up and do it again. You know the problem with workaholism? It is the most rewarded addiction in America. If you drink at work, you get fired. If you work hard at work, you get a promotion and a raise. So you're just gonna get rewarded for your workaholism. So that's self-medication. Number 10, you don't laugh anymore. You're watching Netflix, you're checking out TikTok, nothing's funny anymore. And number 11, this is a big one, sleep and rest no longer refuel you. So what should happen when you're not burned out, everybody gets tired. I get tired, you get tired. I was tired this week. We had morning and evening services at our church. I had just come back from a five-day weekend at a retreat with some CEOs. I was tired. But you know what happens when you're not burning out? You go to bed, you get eight hours of sleep, you wake up feeling better. You do that for a couple of days, you're back to normal.

When you're burning out, it's like that July. I took three weeks off and it got worse. It didn't get better. So sleep and rest should refuel you. So those are the signs. 11, how did you do? Let's take a look. You got low, medium, high. If you have two to three, welcome to life on this side of heaven, okay? It's never gonna be perfect. It's never gonna be exactly right. Medium, five to six, some warning signs. If you resonated with most or all of those 10 to 11, you're probably burned out. You're probably burned out. And you know, the problem with high capacity people is you can be at 10 or 11 and you think, well, this must be what life is, except it's not. Jesus said, I've come to bring you life and life more abundant. So what do you do? Well, I've got some free resources. If you're interested, you can capture the QR code. If you want, it'll take you to an email signup. I've got free resources that can hopefully help you navigate this a lot more than I can share in the remaining time today. But you know what I would do? I would tell somebody.

I would tell somebody who loves you and somebody that you love. But now I wanna get to some reconstruction. So the question of course becomes, okay, well, if you're burned out, how do you solve burnout? You know what the number one answer is to that question is burnout. So I'm gonna show you how I solve burnout. I'm gonna solve it this way, right? You ever tried to do it that way and get away to some beautiful, all-inclusive and you're like, oh, we're gonna spend two weeks and it's gonna be amazing. They're gonna bring us the drinks with the. umbrellas and all that stuff, and maybe that's a great two weeks and you feel replenished at the end of it. But we've all had the experience where you get back on the first Monday back, by 11 a.m., it feels like you got run over by a truck. And all of that vacation just vaporized. Whatever money you spent on it, whatever time you spent on it, it's gone. Why? Well, here's why. Time off won't heal you when the problem is how you spend time on. You could take six months off. I see pastors do this all the time,

taking a six-month sabbatical. Six months. I mean, they feel great when they're done. By the Tuesday they're back, it's like, eh, done. The problem isn't how we spend our time off. The problem is how we spend our time on. And this is an old problem. Moses struggled with this. Other leaders have struggled with this. So I wanna take you back about 3,000 years to a story from Moses' life. Moses was the leader that was appointed by God to lead the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt. And so he was kind of the agitator in Egypt. Then all of a sudden he is the leader and he's leading people through the wilderness. We're gonna pick up the story. We're gonna move through it quickly, but there's some fascinating lessons. So Moses is overwhelmed. He's brand new in this leadership role. And he's like, this is a lot. So the next day Moses took his seat to hear people's disputes against each other. So he was basically the mayor, the governor, the president. They waited before him, look at this, from morning till evening. From morning till evening. So he's got a long line of people.

When Moses' father-in-law saw all that Moses was doing for the people, he asked, what are you really accomplishing here? What a great question to ask. In your life, in your job, in your work, what are you really accomplishing here? And like us, he's got all kinds of reasons. He says, oh yeah, why are you trying to do this all alone while everyone stands around you from morning till evening? So look at what Moses says. He says, because the people come to me to get a ruling from God. Like this is my job, I got all these people. You don't know how much these people want from me. And then the story continues, when a dispute arises, Moses says, they come to me and I am the one who settles the case between the quarreling parties. I inform the people of God's decrees and give them his instructions. In other words, case closed, this is my job. But it continues. This is not good, said Moses' father-in-law. And I agree with him. It's like if you're burned out, here's the thing. This is not good. You're gonna wear yourself out and the people too. You're exhausted, but you know who else is exhausted? Your family's exhausted, your team's exhausted, your employees are exhausted, your class is exhausted,

your department is exhausted. If you're burned out, everybody's around you. And then he says, this job is too heavy a burden for you to handle all by yourself. So, listen to me and let me give you a word of advice and then may God be with you. You should continue to be, you don't have to quit, you don't have to retire. You should continue to be the people's representative before God, bringing their disputes to him. However, he adds this caveat. Teach them God's decree, give them his instructions, show them how to conduct their lives. But select from all the people some capable, honest men who fear God and hate bribes. Look for other leaders with integrity and appoint them as leaders over groups of 1,000, 100, 50, and 10. In other words, we're gonna add some layers to this and we're gonna make this effective. They should always be available to solve people's common disputes, but have them bring the major cases to you. You become the Supreme Court, Moses. Let the leaders decide the smaller matters themselves. They will help you carry the load, making the task easier for you. And then, look at this. If you follow this advice and if God commands you to do so, then you will be able to endure all the pressures

and all these people will go home in peace. In other words, everybody wins. Now, you wanna see one of the first miracles in the Bible? Look at this. Moses listened to his father-in-law's advice. That's a miracle, for those of you who have father-in-laws, and followed his suggestions. So, Moses does this. So, the question becomes, well, how do you get better? That's how Moses got better. But how do you get better? It's a great question. And the answer is, you add margin to your life. Margin to your life. Do you remember margin? If you can think back, if you can remember, the first summer between kindergarten and first grade kind of felt like a year does today, it just felt like it went on forever. Why? Because you had no responsibilities. Because you were free, you were unburdened. And I know this about myself, when I build margin in my life, like Moses was trying to do there, or Jephthah was trying to get Moses to do, you know what, I am at my most kind when I have the most margin. I'm nicer to my wife when I'm not pressured. I'm nicer to my sons when I'm not pressured.

So I wanna teach you through a couple of core principles that I hope you can apply as early as this week. Okay, if you think about this, before we get to the next slide, I wanna ask you a question, because you already know this. I just wanna help you apply it. You have a sense of this already. How many of you, and I want everyone to show your hands, okay, how many of you would say you are mourning people? Hands up. Mourning people, great. How many of you are night owls? That's why you weren't at the first service, okay. How many of you are zombies all day long? Anybody? Just like, yeah, okay. Just exhausted, right? See, and acknowledging that, and knowing that about yourself, you already know half of what I'm gonna teach you. Not all hours are created equal. I'm a mourning person, so 8 a.m. is much better for me if I'm trying to write a message than 8 p.m. 8 p.m., I cannot be held responsible for my actions, okay. I'm just a different person. You night owls, it's the other way. It's like, how does anybody get up at 6 a.m.? That's insane.

I go to bed at 6 a.m. It's just different, and there's not a right answer, but you gotta figure out how God wired you or how you're wired. So I wanna introduce you to this energy clock idea, and all hours are equal in time, but they're not created equal, and they don't feel equal. So divide your day, your work day, into three zones, green, yellow, red. Green is when you are at your best. Green is when, like, the energy is flowing, right? For mourning people, that's in the morning, that's me. For night owls, it'll be later in the day. Think of that as your green zone, and then in your green zone, that's, like, my last book called At Your Best, I wanted to call it the three-hour work day, because basically, when I'm writing a book and writing a message or doing that kind of thing, I got three to five hours on my good days to get my best work done. Beyond that, it just gets difficult. You know, four o'clock in the afternoon? Just not working. So for me, that's seven to 11 a.m., and on a good day, I get a boost after lunch. Your red zone is the opposite of your green zone. Those are the couple hours where you're just tired, right? For some of you, that's right after lunch, where you're like, oh, how do I stay awake in this meeting?

For me, it's from four to six, and that's when you need a double espresso, that's when you need, you know, a nap, or you need to get your body moving, or toothpicks to keep your eyes open, or something like that. But you probably have a couple of those hours in the work day, and then yellow is everything in between. So green is high energy, red is low energy, yellow is mid. What do you do with that? Because you may be aware of that. A lot of people aren't aware of that. But if you are that, what do you do with that? Well, you do what you're best at when you're at your best. So I wanna show you what I've done with it as I was reconstructing my life after burnout. So what I do is, in my green zone, the most important value-added things I do are writing, strategy, and talk prep. That's it, because I'm a writer, I'm an author. When I was a preacher, it was sermon prep, it was vision, it was clarity, it was aligning the team, and it was making sure that the elders and the staff were all getting along. So I would do that in my green zone because that's when I'm at my best, and those are the most important things for me to do. Yellow zone, I do a lot of podcasting. I can do podcast interviews. I do my prep in the green zone,

but I do the interviews in my yellow zone. I can do my team meetings, et cetera. In my red zone, you know what I do? Because email isn't too essential to my job. Emails, expense reports. Sometimes I take a nap. Sometimes I go for a bike ride. I used to work out in the mornings. I moved that from the morning. I used to do breakfast meetings in the morning. I don't do that anymore. Why? Because I'm burning jet fuel. And now, if I was training for the Olympics, which clearly I am, but if I was clearing, you know, training for the Olympics, I would probably work out in the morning, but I'm not. So I can do that from four to six. So I move my workouts, and I just reorganize my life, and you know what? I get way more done in way less time, and I get the important things done because the reason you're working on the weekends is you didn't get that really important project done. For preachers, you didn't get the sermon done, so now you get a Saturday night special that I whipped up last night for this morning. Well, not anymore. If you work ahead, use your green. zone. That's how you do it. So how do you schedule this? Well, if you took out your calendar, you take out most

people's calendar, and I say, okay, I want you to go four months ahead. So you go four months ahead. It's like, let's look at February. What does February look like? You know what most people would say? It looks amazing, man. I got nothing planned. February is going to be awesome. The problem is that's how you felt about October four months ago. Because you looked at October and said, oh, it's going to be amazing, and now October's been a nightmare. And here's why. Blank space on your calendar is a trap. It looks like freedom, but it's jail disguised as liberty. So I want to show you my calendar. My calendar looks like this. And I know it's small. If you scan the QR code, you can get like the download on all this stuff. But you can see in the morning, I've got writing, strategy, talk prep, Friday morning catch up and projects. And then in the red zone, catch up and free time, I can have a nap, I can work out, I can get some stuff that doesn't really matter done. In the yellow zone, I've got some meetings, I've got some podcast interviews, some admin that I'm doing. And then if I get a burst, I can do some more writing after lunch. You notice what's really interesting? Saturday is pre-decided. Sunday is pre-decided. It says church and worship Sunday morning. It's got family and personal time on Saturday. Why did I start doing that? Because as a pastor, I paid a price for that for so many years. I go to an event, and when my kids were young, people would say, hey, Kerry, what are you doing this Saturday? If you've got a blank calendar, you pull it out, you look at your calendar, and you go nothing. And they say, good, can you come and help me move? And then you're stuck, right? Because you're going to say, well, I didn't really mean nothing. I mean, you're kind of stuck. And I would have to come home and say, oh, hon, I'm so sorry. I know we were going to spend Saturday together, but this guy asked me to help him move or somebody invited me to their grandparents' 50th wedding anniversary. And now I got to go and I got to say a prayer and, you know, all that stuff. And I hated it because that was the only time my wife and my kids were home. So now, since I started making this change in my life, you ask me, what are you doing on Saturday? I open my calendar, and I say, oh, I have a commitment. Now, once in a while, you get somebody who says, oh, what kind of commitment? And you know what you say? Well, I have a commitment to my family. I don't know, some of you are worried. Some of you are saying, well, what if they say, you know, like, is your family more important to you than I am? You know what you do in a case like that? You call the police. That's what you do is call the police, have them taken away, and your problem is solved. But do you see how, do you see how that really helps? Like, all of a sudden, and it could be you are taking a day off to lie in the hammock. You just write down hammock day on Saturday. And then someone says, you have a commitment? You're like, yes, I do. Or maybe you're trying to get a book deadline done, like I do. I've cleared the deck for two weeks from now. What are you doing? I just said to someone today, I'm not available. Am I available? Yes, but I'm working on my next book, so I got to be available. That's what you have to do. You know what the bottom line in all that is? It's this. You want to live in a way today that will help you thrive tomorrow. I embraced that as a mantra almost 20 years ago. And by the grace of God, I've gotten

tired. I've had really busy seasons, but I haven't burned out. And the joy most days is there. And the emotions most days, they're functioning, at least as well as they function on this side of heaven. And that's what I want from you and for you. So if we talk in the future and I ask, how are you? Maybe the answer next time is different. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you that the problems that we are dealing with are thousands of years old. They're human problems. And you deal with that. So, Lord, I want to surrender this to you. I just want to pray for everybody who showed up today tired, weary, burned out. Lord, I pray that you would do the work in them that needs to be done so that they escape this trap that they're in of never-ending work, emotional numbness, not having anything left over for the people who are most important. Holy Spirit, would you come and would you do what only you can do? And we pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Hey everyone, it's Adam from Embrace. If you enjoyed today's message, make sure to subscribe to Embrace's YouTube channel to stay updated. You can also click here to check out other videos. Thanks for watching.