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When Faith Moves You: Finding God in Life’s Exhaustion

When Faith Moves You: Finding God in Life’s Exhaustion

Last updated on: October 12, 2024 at 3:02 pm by Mark Williams

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When Faith Moves You: Finding God in Life’s Exhaustion 2024-10-12T15:02:52-07:00 Mark Williams

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Williams in God’s peace

Just move my arms and legs!

As I get older, I get closer to God. I don’t think it—I know it. Now don’t leave, I won’t get preachy. Running to the idea, I need to depend on Him to move my arms and legs, not me. I have finally learned, He is my strength and my fortress. I mean, I do the actual moving, but He actually moves them. Understand? Clear as a chocolate shake, huh? Jeremiah 16:19

Track with me.

Luckily, I realized it before I died while mowing my lawn. I have traveled to the point and season in life where I now ask Jesus, Lord, you will need to move my arms and legs if you want me to do the stuff you want me to do—whatever that is going to be. I have become tired. Like physically and mentally tired. Sometimes, I don’t want to think through things, I just want things to be what I want them to be and not have the time, cognitive ability, physical ability, or the worst one-empathy, about something I should have the ability to work through and actually care about. Why do I want to care about other people’s worries or concerns?

The world has never been a place for a peaceful life Romans 5:13. Sure, there are peaceful moments, but someone has to go out and slay the wooly mammoth so we can all eat. When you do that, you risk getting eaten by the Sabretooth Tiger. Something you never saw coming. Nope, the world hasn’t changed in, well, ever.

These days the tigers and the mammoths wear business suits and ties and say what sounds good at the time, but they have no intention of carrying it out. We are challenged from the beginning of our lives until we take our last breath to go, do, be—something. If we fail, the world seems to know it and shakes their collective heads as if they were sympathetic to our plight, but just glad it wasn’t them.

And the world keeps spinning.

…some life-changing

There are daily demands on us and after a while and many many failures, some small we don’t even notice, and some life-changing, the fatigue sets in. With fatigue, we begin to pull inside of ourselves and Hope seems to dribble away.

In my early life, both parents were deceased by the time I was nineteen. From then on, I was alone, until I married, then life got hard. We had a child, then two, then three. Money was beyond tight, and I picked up two more jobs. I woke Friday morning and didn’t go to bed until Saturday night when I spent my time on job #2, only waking on Sunday to go to job #3.

That took several years and those several years had other elements in it just to live out the day, tasks done, places needing to be, just to be in the world. As I got older, things seemed to ease a bit, but there were other things like illnesses, kids’ events, birthdays, funerals, broken vehicles, pick something and we did it or didn’t do it, depending.

That is all our story.

I realized all I could do would never be enough.

It wasn’t until just a few years ago, late in life, at the other end of the birth season, I realized all I could do would never be enough. I have always been a ‘believer’ but what does that mean? It is like a label we Christians are supposed to wear. That label and $2.88 will buy you a Starbucks coffee. It means nothing unless we are aware of what that label means.

We ran away from its source and still have been bought. We have been pulled from a pile of bodies and chosen to be the adoptive child of the God of the Universe. That’s not just any old chunk of Swiss cheese. I don’t know about you, but that is a label I haven’t paid a lot of attention to. I have sung in church all my life, I have taken as well as taught church classes, I have done all those holy things for Jesus today. And all of it only buys me a cup of expensive joe.

Jesus doesn’t make sadness

It was on my way in the early morning, God and I had and continue to have our talks. For some reason, early in the morning while driving to work or wherever I was heading, I had audible conversations with Jesus. Conversations, which was always one sided, me talking and Him listening. Sometimes tears and I wondered if I was sad or if it was joy. Then realizing Jesus does not make sadness, but He does make joy, I realized which side of the wall I was on.

I realized, in those conversations later in life, I was tired, bone tired. Which I also realized was where He wanted me to be. Finally, after waking at night and my brain kicking on and sleep would not come for the rest of the night, adding to the fatigue, I simply said as I shook my head ‘Lord, if you want me to do this life from here to the end, you will need to move my arms and legs. I got nothing on my own to run with.’

It was silent in the car on the way to work and in my room at night, starring at the ceiling.

He was the only way…

But the action of verbally surrendering to the Only One with the answer and the means to do what I was asking, seemed to do—something. It was as if I acknowledged He was the only way I would survive—myself (1 Timothy 1:15). If that makes any sense. I can and did do everything to get that wooly mammoth while not getting eaten myself. We all do. But there is a way we can live while being in complete sync with the God who hung on a tree for us. He knows how hard it is and realizes the impact of our life and its influence and relationship with the firestorm around us.

Jesus, move me!

He is completely and totally proud of our struggle attempt. Jesus wants us to be His, and he loved us enough to buy us. He is also totally with us, and, when asked, will gladly—

—move our arms and legs.

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About Mark Williams

Mark Williams spent the first twenty-one years of his career as a Special Agent for the Organized Crime Division of the State Attorney General’s Office. As part of his duties, he investigated organized crime, homicides, and fraud cases submitted by other agencies to that office. He has traveled across the United States as an instructor for law enforcement in various capacities. After he retired, he became a high school English teacher at an inner-city school in central Phoenix where he is the fourth generation in his family to live in the valley. Mark was married for almost thirty-eight years and is a retired widower. He has three children and ten grandchildren. You can read more about the author here.

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