by Ramesh Richard

Tired and grounded hot air balloons. Visiting the National Balloon Museum, my family came upon a modest but creative display of an interesting sport covering two centuries. Initially paper bags filled with hot air were launched in the air. Subsequently a duck, a sheep, and a rooster, were sent up to see how they would do at high altitude. Since the animals seemed to do all right, human aspirations to fly took over. The first manned flight reached 3000 feet in flying over the city of Paris. Two hundred years later they succeeded in crossing the Atlantic in a helium-filled balloon.

On that afternoon we saw flat balloons and full balloons. But none that flew. I quickly connected the scenario with spiritual fatigue in the Christian journey. When Christians should be soaring free into the sky, we are parked instead on the ground. Instead of flying high, we feel worn out. Like museum balloons that once flew magnificently over long distances, tired Christians live in laurels of the past. They still look great, but they don’t fly anymore. They grow weary in well-doing; they walk and faint; they run and fall. Spiritually fatigued, the once-mighty eagle wings don’t flap. We don’t fly anymore.

Does your spiritual life resemble a full, but tired, balloon exhibit? I propose that you check the following list of symptoms of spiritual fatigue. And then let’s fire up spiritual strategies to fly again.

Symptoms of Spiritual Fatigue

When a lace of discouragement pervades your life. Battle-sore like the prophet Elijah (1 King 19), spiritual fatigue has crept in on the heels of great victories. In spite of past exploits, neither joy nor anticipating is evident in your life.

When you question God, His Word, and His history with you. You have walked long years by His hand. Yet instead of abandoning yourself to Him in your weariness, you feel abandoned by Him. Overwhelmed by a sense of aloneness, you take His blessings for granted and trivialize His precious goodness.

When your days are constantly full but your soul is running on empty. For instance, you can’t seem to clear time for a devotional moment, to read the Scriptures, or to thoughtfully pray. You are running on spiritual fumes from the past. Busyness is wrongly equated with fruitfulness, activity with purpose.

When your days are fast—you live furiously at high speed—but your heart is dry. Daily, nightly, inner chatter revolves around the breakneck pace of recent days and months. “When you find yourself continually clearing the desk instead of writing a report, or straightening the piles of work instead of eliminating them, or making lists instead of completing them, you may have a soul problem,” so writes Douglas J. Rumford (Soul Shaping, Tyndale, 1996, p. 20).

If your remorse over sin frivolously echoes Paul’s admission (Romans 7)—“I didn’t want to do it, but I couldn’t help it”—you are living off the flesh. The flesh wars against the spirit to bring on spiritual languish. When spiritual defenses are down and your conflict with temptation is merely intellectual, you will find reasons to indulge in sin. You don’t even ask questions about doubtful habits anymore. Whether facing money, food, or sex issues, your soul is down. You want to manage sin rather than conquer it.

When you seem to lost control over basic daily routines—from personal hygiene to physical exercise—watch for signs of inner tiredness. Sometimes I want to save time by brushing my teeth faster, riding my “exercycle” faster, thereby deceiving myself. How can I be faithful over the larger responsibilities of my life if I cannot execute well the smaller, organic routines of life?

When discontentment and dissatisfaction mark your tired life. We need to distinguish between fatalistic passivity and spiritual contentment just as we separate selfish ambition from godly ambition. The former is not biblical, the latter is. Check your soul-health when you think you need to own more—whether clothes, cows, computers, cars, or castles—without adequate, prior spiritual justification.

When illegitimate anxiety rules your waking hours. Soul-stagnancy is revealed in the tired soul who lacks confidence in God, is worried about the future, and goes to the Father only as a last resort. You need spiritual energy to fly again.

When you are “humbly proudful” about your “noble temptations” of sacrifice, generosity and hard work. Sacrificial living is good, but without love it resembles the goose-egg on a test grade (1 Cor. 13:1-2). Pride over personal sacrifice nullifies it. And without love you rate a zero.

When the spiritual disciplines are done only according to the letter. Legalistic pursuit of spiritual disciplines to manipulate divine merit drains your spiritual energy. Legalism makes you concentrate on your supposed strengths and depletes you. You live the Christian life in the flesh only to suck the life from spiritual vitality.

Action “contrary to character” clues you in to the spiritual lethargy as well. When you do something out of character, it signals spiritual torpor. I normally am even-tempered. But when I surprise myself in the way I vent anger, then I must attend to soul needs. If you are wise in experience and normally decisive in temperament but currently feel shackled by long-term indecision and withdrawal from leadership, it’s time to inspect your soul-health.

Traces of spiritual fatigue includes the inability to yield to known biblical claims and an unwillingness to be broken and contrite before God. When we feel perfect about ourselves, discerning no personal sin, “we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us” (1 John 1:8). A defensive posture concerning your supposed lack of sinning should alert you to your spiritual fatigue factor.

When you don’t appreciate your spiritual uniqueness before God, when you feel defeated because of another’s superior experience or extraordinary ministry success, spiritual lassitude has set in. God doesn’t call or use everyone in the same manner as He did an Isaiah, a Paul, or a Billy Graham. Spiritual fatigue generates a negativism in reaction to other’s “success” stories.

If preoccupation with ourselves expresses itself in irritability to those closest to us, it’s time to check power levels. Are you less than responsive to the needs around you than before? Are you oblivious to breaking news of tragedy near and far? Do you pursue any ministry at all? Do you choose the easiest, most convenient ministry? Are you filled with apathy when God sensitizes you to needs?

Finally, feeling uncomfortable with this list or feeling very resistant to self-revelation likely points to a tired, grounded, and a retired life! Spiritual weariness grounds a Christian. Though inflated, unique, and pretty to look at, the believer is unable to break free of hindrances to rise and fly.

Before recommending spiritual strategy I must alert you not to equate emotional highs with high-altitude flying. You can and may experience emotional exhilaration, but elevated emotions are neither necessary nor sufficient indications of spiritual energy. Also, permanent peak performances are not sustainable this side of eternity. As long as we remain on earth, we will experience degrees of weaknesses and weariness. Indeed, spiritual burn-out can strike us at any time. It even touches me while I write this article. The issue is to identify predictable causes of spiritual fatigue and address them. Christians don’t have the power to fly, just the capacity, which non-Christians don’t even have. We definitely don’t possess competence for the journey, but we can meet the conditions for flight. Will we take the steps to overcome spiritual fatigue? Then lift off and fly?

Strategy for Spiritual Flight

“Ballooning” goes with “air.” In the Bible “air” or “wind” are alternative words for the Holy Spirit. I’d like to explore the Christian life in the language of hot air ballooning and the functions of the Holy Spirit that enable the Christian to lift off and fly. When you were born, you were individually woven by the divine hand in a unique shape within a human pattern. Like hot air balloons (not the party kind) which exhibit uniqueness within a basic design of a balloon and basket, you too are unique within the basic human type. Even if you don’t fly, your balloon and basket design is unique to you. You are good enough to stay on the earth, but you can’t fly unless the balloon is inflated. Without Jesus’ salvation your balloon is not filled; it is actually full of leaks! You need a sturdy envelope to contain the air. When you became a Christian, God lined, sealed, and filled your insides with the Holy Spirit who came to dwell in you. At conversion God gave you a new capacity, similar to modern balloon envelopes “made of reinforced fabric—rip-stop nylon, lightweight and strong.” The fabric of your life is now coated on the inside to prevent leaks.

But how can the balloon get aloft and keep flying? That takes more than salvation. It takes a relationship to the Holy Spirit, where the “air” lifts you and where the “wind” carries you. Dallas Seminary founder Lewis Sperry Chafer carefully wrote: “A Christian is a Christian because he is rightly related to Christ; but ‘he that is spiritual’ is spiritual because he is rightly related to the Spirit, in addition to this relation to Christ in salvation” (He That is Spiritual, p. 23). Two commands in the Christian’s relationship to the Holy Spirit correspond to the “lift” and “fly” functions in overcoming spiritual fatigue.

Launching Air—“Keep on being filled with the Holy Spirit” (Eph. 5:18). In ballooning, a small-gasoline powered fan blows air into the balloon. At salvation the Spirit’s indwelling provides the “presence” of divine Air. We now have air in an unleakable balloon to fill it. But we don’t lift off. Why? Well, in ballooning, the burner must be turned on to head the air and launch the balloon. When we obey Paul’s command to “keep on being filled by the Holy Spirit,” we receive the “power” to launch—heated divine air to lift off. As we allow ourselves to keep on being controlled by the Spirit the heated air controls use like alcohol controls a drunkard. Without the “in-filling” control of the Holy Spirit, we can’t fly. Fatigue then gets the best of us. Tired, grounded Christians are a testimony to cold air balloons. How do you turn on the burner? Trustingly and daily invite the Holy Spirit to dominate your life with His resources. You take off instantly. You now fly.

Propelling Wind—“keep in stride with the Holy Spirit” (Gal. 5:16). The ballooning metaphor teaches us a most important truth for spiritual application. You can only go as fast or as high as the wind. A balloon has no forward propulsion system. Its speed is determined entirely by the speed of the wind. That is why balloon races are strictly races of accuracy not speed. I visited the website of the highflying Breitling Orbiter 3, which in March, 1999 successfully flew the first around-the-world trip, non-stop. What was their strategy? They studied and used jet streams in the upper atmosphere to propel them around the world. The Holy Spirit blows where He desires and the issue for Christians is whether we are going to align our flight patterns to His moves.

As you stride through life you must depend on the Holy Spirit’s wind power to carry you on. To not fulfill the desires of the flesh, you must depend on the Holy Spirit. You can keep in step with Him. You can stay in His stride. You will be led by Him (Gal. 5:18), energized by His filling, and propelled by His leadership. It is only then that you won’t gratify the desires of the flesh (Gal. 5:16-18).

At the balloon museum we read of twelve unsuccessful attempts to cross the Atlantic before the feat was finally accomplished by Double Eagle 2. Launching off from Presque Isle in Maine on August 11, 1978 at 8:43 p.m., the strategy was to climb to a high altitude and take advantage of a high pressure ridge. On August 13 however, thick clouds screened the sun enough to cool the gas envelope and its helium. The balloon sank 3,500 feet. On the night of August 15, near the south of Iceland, the balloon became coated with 300 pounds of ice and descended 2,500 feet. The crew did everything they could to prolong the journey. They tossed our supplies, cameras, and food. On August 16 at noon, as the balloon dropped 19,500 feet to a low point of 4000 feet, the two-man crew transmitted their location and then threw the radio overboard! Finally, at three thousand feet, they broke through into sunlight, which melted the ice sheets. The great balloon soared all the way to Miserey, France where it landed on August 17, at 7:49 p.m. They had covered 3,120 miles in 137 hours and 6 minutes.

You can climb or descend depending upon the controlling power of the Holy Spirit inside you to seize the Spirit’s propulsive power outside you. That is the biblical way to shed the ice sheets, overcome spiritual fatigue, and fly again. You may influence weight and balance issues, but you don’t lift, propel, or steer the ship. He empowers the lift-off and enables us to soar. Are you rightly related to the Divine Air to lift you? The Holy Wind to carry you?