Daniel Rose: The Pastor Next Door

Hey, welcome to the pastor next door.

This is a podcast for honest conversations about faith, especially when faith feels complicated, uncertain, or worn down.

I’m not here to give you easy answers or to fix anything.

I’m here to sit with you for a bit, maybe ask a few good questions and make some room for grace and honesty along the way.

Wherever you’re coming from today, I’m really glad you’re here.

Let’s get started.

Today, I want to talk about recovery.

I don’t want to talk, I’m not talking about growth, not talking about discipline.

I want to talk about recovery.

You see, I know that many of us, as we seek to pursue our spiritual growth, as we seek to build a faith that is resilient, we can bump up against a fatigue.

You know, we can begin to feel really, really tired.

And that fatigue is natural.

That fatigue is real.

That fatigue is not something that any of us should be ashamed of.

It’s part of life.

It’s part of growing.

It’s part of the reality that we find ourselves in, especially in this day and age.

A lot of times that fatigue can be displayed in us through a sense of cynicism.

You know, we look out at the world, we look out at the church, we look out at the people who are supposed to be the folks that are modeling the Christian life for us.

And all we see around us is failure.

We see people not in any way, shape or form meeting any level of faithfulness or honesty.

We see hypocrisy all around.

And that exhausts us.

And so we begin to feel a sense of cynicism.

That can often lead to numbness, right?

Where we just, we almost don’t feel anything, especially when it comes to our spiritual lives, especially when it comes to trying to experience the divine in our lives.

We just feel numb.

And when we are fatigued, we lose any sense of motivation, right?

We just kind of get stuck.

We don’t want to move forward.

We don’t want to engage in the means of grace.

We just don’t want to do much of anything.

And so that leads to numbness, which leads to a greater sense of cynicism, which leads us back to this reality that we are probably experiencing some significant fatigue.

Some of us aren’t struggling with doubt.

We’re just tired.

So in light of that, we can think again about our bodies.

We can think again about physical training.

One of the most important things that you learn as you begin to train your body is that growth requires recovery.

We need to recover from exercise, right?

If you go and you lift heavy, you need time to recover.

Muscles don’t keep growing during exertion.

They grow during rest.

So when you are beginning that kind of a journey, one of the things that a really good trainer will tell you is that you need sleep.

You need to get a good seven to eight hours of sleep a night, because that is when your muscles grow.

That is when they recover.

That is when they are able to do the things that they need to do to grow and get stronger.

If you’re in a constant state of exertion, if you don’t get enough rest, you will not get stronger.

You will break down.

You will burn out.

And you will get injured.

Now, the same thing is absolutely true spiritually.

We can do engage in spiritual overuse, right?

And we can be in a constant state of spiritual exertion.

So how do you know?

How do we know if we’re kind of in that in that vein of things?

Well, one thing we can do to check on that is are we over functioning in church?

Are we doing too much?

Are we somebody who never says no, always says yes, and particularly when it’s the church?

We think, oh, well, I have to say yes to the church.

The church needs me.

Yeah, the church needs each of us because each of us are members of the body of Christ.

So yes, the church needs us.

But the church doesn’t need only us.

So we need to be mindful of not over functioning.

We need to be mindful of not doing too much.

We need to be mindful of our necessity to rest spiritually.

So sometimes that means you’re not going to volunteer for that thing at church.

Sometimes that means you’re going to say no.

You’re going to pass that opportunity on to another member in the body of Christ.

And that’s okay because you need rest.

Or perhaps you’re somebody who is constantly carrying responsibility.

You hold all of the spiritual responsibility of things on your shoulders where you take on everybody’s everything.

You seek to become all things to all people in the sense that you are trying to carry everything for everybody.

Again, there are times when we are not the ones who are called to carry the responsibility.

There are times when we simply need to say no, when we need to rest from carrying the responsibility, where we might need somebody to carry responsibility on our behalf.

And that’s okay.

And that’s healthy.

And that’s good.

Because once again, while the church needs us, while God needs us, wants us, doesn’t need only us.

Our friends don’t need only us.

And so we can set down the responsibility that we seek to carry at times.

We can indeed rest.

We can oftentimes find ourselves simply performing faith, right?

It’s some sort of thing that we are putting on.

It’s like a show.

It’s a costume that we put on.

I am the good Christian.

I am the one who looks good and looks the part and is doing all of the Christian things.

I look like the perfect Christian.

That is exhausting.

Nobody can be perfect all the time.

Nobody has it all together all the time.

Sometimes we don’t have it all together.

And we need to acknowledge that.

And we need to invite other people in to, as the father in that story from the gospels says, I believe, help me in my unbelief.

Honesty, authenticity requires us to not perform.

It requires us to be faithful, to be present, but to be real and to not just chase down this phantom Christian that is out there that we think exists, this perfect ghost Christian.

Now, I got to tell you, as a pastor, this is something that I really struggle with.

I really struggle with the ghost, the ghost pastor, the phantom pastor, that perfect pastor who does everything right perfectly, who knows how to respond in every situation perfectly, who has all the right things to say, who knows how to respond to every single cultural swing and issue, who knows how to respond to every single political thing that’s going on in our world today, who knows how to respond perfectly to every person’s issue and every person’s, every heartbreaking thing that people are walking through.

And there is this great temptation to pretend that I know it all, and I don’t.

And it has taken a long time to learn that I don’t have to perform faith, that I can be honest and I can say, I don’t know, I can say, I’m not sure.

Because when I’m just simply performing over and over and over again, then what happens is I get exhausted and I get to that point where burnout can become a very real thing.

Because if I’m simply trying to perform, I’m not being real, I’m not being authentic, and I am not inviting other people in to my journey.

Another aspect of this is the person who never stops.

This kind of ties back into that over-functioning in church.

But the person who never takes a rest, the person who fills their schedule, the person for whom busyness is a symbol of effectiveness or is a symbol of spiritual maturity.

It’s not.

Busyness is a sign that we are afraid to rest.

Busyness is a sign that says we’re trying to do something through our over-activity, that we are trying to maybe fill something up in ourselves.

Perhaps it means that we are just afraid of the quiet.

But if we never stop and rest, then we will indeed burn out.

There is this thing that has developed over the last, I don’t know, 50 years or so in the American church.

And it is this belief that burnout is faithfulness.

That if you burn out, it means that you were truly and utterly faithful.

But that’s a masquerade.

That’s not, that’s just simply not true.

Faithfulness demands rest.

Faithfulness is when we can actually trust Jesus when he says, come to me all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.

Take my yoke upon you and learn from me for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.

For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.

If we are masquerading burnout as faithfulness, then we are not taking Jesus at his word in Matthew chapter 11, verses 28 through 30.

We are simply doing this spiritual thing as though there is no spiritual realm.

We’re doing this spiritual thing in a completely and totally materialist manner.

And when that happens, we begin to resent.

We resent the church.

We resent God.

We resent other Christians because when we are exhausted and burned out from our own self-conception of what faithfulness looks like, then we look at other people who are resting, who are taking Jesus at his word and are coming to him and allowing him to carry burdens.

And we resent them.

We resent them for being, in our minds, lazy.

We resent them for what we would call their lack of faithfulness, even though in reality, they are indeed being faithful.

And then at the end, we can emotionally shut down.

We can just get to this place where we become so numb that we shut our emotions down completely.

And it’s at that point that we really have entered into a state of burnout and utter exhaustion because we have so disconnected ourselves from the one whose yoke is easy and burden is light.

Exhaustion is not a badge of spiritual honor.

So how do we protect is that means of grace by which we rest and we say, you know what, I trust that God’s grace is big enough so that I can rest, so that I can take on Christ’s yoke, that I can bring my heavy burdens, I can bring my weariness to Jesus, and he will receive it, and he will take it, and he will give me rest for my soul by pure grace.

That’s what Sabbath is, and yet we run from it all too often.

I do, I know I do.

It is a constant battle.

And yet, and so as we consider this covenantally, right, we can look at God.

What does God do?

Well, God rests, right?

And I think this is part of the heartbeat of the opening of Genesis, is this reality that God rested.

He built this rhythm, right, this rhythm of work and rest.

We need both.

If we simply rest all the time, well, that’s not it either.

We need to work.

We need to work hard, but then we rest and we trust that God will continue the work.

And this is what we see in the divine being in God’s self, in Genesis chapter 1, in Genesis chapter 2.

And then God goes so far as actually commanding rest, right?

And in the Ten Commandments, we are to honor the Sabbath.

We are to rest.

We are to model our lives after the life of God.

Sometimes we think that the modeling of our lives after God started in the New Testament, started with Jesus, but it didn’t.

It starts in Genesis 1.

It starts in Exodus with the Ten Commandments and that command to honor the Sabbath.

It is part and parcel of us living out of our divine image.

It is to rest.

Rest is woven right into creation.

I mean, goodness, we’re in Michigan right now.

It is March 11th, 2026, when I’m recording this, and we are moving into spring.

We are coming out of a season of rest for the plants, right?

The plants all went to sleep.

The leaves fell.

The trees were barren.

The grass turned brown.

And you know what’s going to happen really soon?

You know what’s beginning to happen now?

My grass is turning green.

It’s starting to stand up.

The leaves, the branches are beginning to bud.

It is amazing to see what happens after a season of rest.

New growth.

If we want to continue growing in our faith, if we want to have a resilient faith, we need rest.

Rest is not quitting.

Rest is trusting.

So how do we enter into this?

Well, we need to move towards emotional honesty when it comes to this question of rest.

I was talking with a group of Christians, teaching them, doing some discipleship with them a few years ago, and when we were talking about the necessity of rest, I got the biggest pushback on anything that we talked about because rest feels weak.

Rest feels soft.

Rest doesn’t feel very active.

Rest feels scary.

But we need it.

And if we don’t practice it regularly and we enter into that phase of burnout, then we might get stuck there.

And we might get stuck there because we feel shame.

We feel a sense of shame because we got to the end of our rope and we stopped praying.

We got to the end of our rope and we stopped reading scripture.

We got to the end of our rope and we stopped caring for a while.

We stopped going to church.

We stopped doing anything.

We just shut down.

And so we feel shame about that.

We feel like we aren’t good enough anymore.

But here’s the beautiful thing.

Grace does not expire.

God’s faithfulness does not fluctuate with our spiritual energy.

If we run out of spoons, if we run out of spiritual spoons, God’s faithfulness doesn’t run out of spiritual spoons.

God’s spoons are always there.

God’s faithfulness doesn’t fluctuate.

It is steady.

It is stable.

It is consistent.

And so we can trust in that.

We can rest in that.

Even when we are completely drained, God’s faithfulness remains because grace does not expire.

Our devotional lives are not social media streaks.

We are not loved more by God because we kept a devotional streak.

Because we made a commitment to reading through the Bible in a year and I did it.

Now God really loves me.

Nah, God loved you before.

God will love you after.

God loved you during.

God’s love for you is not dependent on you doing some sort of practice.

God’s love for you is unconditional.

It does not end and it is not dependent on your activity.

You are not loved less when you fall silent.

When you bump up against a wall and you can’t pray for whatever reason.

Maybe it’s because you’re exhausted or maybe because life is just overwhelming and all you can do is sit in silence.

You are not loved less when you fall silent.

You are loved completely.

God’s love for you never fails.

And in the midst of our silence, God’s spirit prays for us.

Romans tells us that the spirit of God prays because we don’t know how we ought to pray.

So even when we’re praying, the spirit is praying on our behalf.

We can trust.

So we can rest with the full knowledge and hope and I would say confidence that God keeps his covenant when we falter.

God’s covenant through Christ that brings grace never, never fails.

We might fall short.

We will fall short because we’re not perfect.

But God, God’s grace never falters because God always keeps confident.

So maybe you’re sitting here and you’re listening to this and you’re like, okay, great.

Thanks, Dan.

But I’m, I’m smoked.

I’m done.

I’m burnt out.

I am absolutely spiritually exhausted.

That’s okay.

There’s hope.

And in the way that we tap into this hope is by beginning again and we start small.

Beginning again is starting small.

It starts quiet.

It starts humble.

We can just say one honest prayer.

One honest prayer.

Oftentimes is enough to help us move back into a state of rest.

I don’t know about you, but sometimes for me, my one honest prayer is what the heck?

What the heck, God?

Look around the world and start feeling exhausted.

And instead of coming up with some sort of, you know, big pastoral prayer thing in my time of prayer, I often simply pray, what the heck?

Or maybe it’s sitting down and just reading a psalm.

You know, just opening up to the psalms and reading one.

Maybe it’s showing up.

It’s showing up to worship.

It’s showing up with the people of God and saying, I’m tired.

I am just tired.

And going and receiving grace from being with God’s people.

A group of people who love you, who care for you, not because of what you do, but because of who you are.

When we can show up that way, we will experience a new sense of being loved and cared for.

We can rest into that.

Beginning again is not dramatic.

It is simply faithful.

Now, we don’t need to compensate, right?

So if you take a season, if you’ve had a season of exhaustion and burnout, and now you’re like, okay, I want to come back.

I need to come back.

I want to come back.

You don’t need to compensate.

You don’t need to jump back in with, you know, 17 feet and start doing all the things and just starting that cycle of burnout and exhaustion again.

You don’t need to compensate.

You can just enter back in quietly.

Enter back in with some people who love you.

Enter back in with one little prayer.

You don’t need to try to catch up, you know?

If you were like, oh, I’m going to read through the Bible.

Every day I’m going to read.

You don’t need to go back and try to read all of those sections that you didn’t read.

You can pick it up right where you left off, or you can, if you’re using some sort of plan, then you can, you know, jump to where you would have been if you had been reading all the way through.

It doesn’t matter.

You don’t need to catch up.

You just need to return.

And you don’t need to apologize excessively.

You don’t need to walk into, you know, to your community and be like, I’m so sorry that I haven’t been here.

I’m so sorry this.

I’m so sorry.

Stop.

It’s okay.

Just return.

Just come back.

Come back and be with us.

Come back and be with the people of God, the people who love you and care for you, the people who hold your arms up, the people who will hold you in your time of Sabbath, who will be there with you in the midst of your rest.

You don’t need to apologize for burning out.

You just quietly return.

So what does true rest look like?

Well, true rest, part of it is a physical rest.

Physically resting.

One of the things that I learned from Jesus is there are times when sometimes you just need a nap and a snack.

Right?

Like, you need sleep.

You need to rest your body physically.

You need to enjoy a nice meal.

Physical rest is so important for us spiritually.

If we are chasing our tails doing things for God, so much so that we’re not getting enough sleep, that we’re not getting enough physical rest, then we are going to burn out.

So a fundamental part of spiritual rest is physical rest.

Another part of spiritual rest is emotional honesty.

It’s being true to what is going on inside of us.

It is recognizing our emotional state.

It is naming it.

It is leaning into it.

It’s sitting into it.

It’s dealing with it.

Perhaps that might mean going to a counselor or going to a therapist.

Perhaps that means just having some boundaries with some people who are wounding you emotionally.

Whatever that is, emotional honesty is an aspect of Sabbath rest.

And I think something that maybe we need to talk more about in our …to bring our weariness and our heavy burdens to Christ and he will receive them and he will give us rest.

That is part of our identity.

And rest is letting God hold what you can’t, right?

We seem to think more times than not that we need to hold on to everything.

We’re not that big.

God is God and we are not.

And as much of a, you know, just kind of silly saying that is, it is so very true.

And rest reestablishes that belief in us.

So I want to read again that Matthew 11, 28 through 30.

Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.

Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.

For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.

Notice Jesus doesn’t say, come to me when you fixed yourself.

He doesn’t say, come to me when you’ve tried harder.

Jesus does not say, perform for me.

He simply says, come.

And he says, come when you’re weary.

Come when you’re carrying heavy burdens.

Just come and you will indeed find rest for your souls.

So if you are tired right now, I hope this episode feels less like instruction and more like permission.

I hope you know that you are allowed to rest.

I hope you know that you are allowed to recover.

I hope you know that you are allowed to begin again slowly.

You are allowed to come to Jesus with your weariness and your heavy burdens, and he will give you rest for your soul.

Now next week, in the final episode of this season, we are going to talk about building a simple rule of life.

Not something heavy, but hopefully something sustainable.

But for now, breathe and receive the grace that is already yours.

And until next time, love well, my friends.