How To Recharge

As I look at how much my job requires of me, I also look at how much other people’s jobs require of them. I can’t think of any time in my life when I’ve seen people work harder, more hours and put their jobs above their families than now. The consensus seems to be that if you don’t put in the hours and hard work, there are a hundred other people waiting in line to do your job. So we work so hard that days will go by without us ever seeing the sun. We go to work before it comes up and go home after it goes down.

When we get home, we have family to attend to. The kids want your attention and they need help with homework. Your spouse wants to tell you all about their day while you eat dinner from a sack. Once you’re done with dinner, you do a couple of things around the house, put the kids to bed and sit down for the first time. You’re exhausted. You just want a moment to breathe. You just want to be able to hear yourself think, but now it’s time for you to go to bed and start all over again tomorrow.

When I get that way, I like to think of Isaiah 40:30-31. It says, “He (God) energizes those who get tired, gives fresh strength to drop outs. For even young people tire and drop out… But those who wait upon God get fresh strength.” To me, that’s like a breathe of fresh air. God will energize those who get tired. God will give me strength. All I have to do is wait on God. All I have to do is spend some down time for Him by carving out time in my crazy schedule. That may mean that I have to cut out something I really want to do in order to get recharged.

My son has a Leap Pad which he calls his iPad. Every couple of days the batteries die. He gets upset because he thinks it should just keep going. I have to pull the batteries out, put them in the charging station and let them sit there for a while. After some time, they’re back to full strength and he can play once again. We’re a lot like rechargeable batteries. We can only go so long before we run out of strength. God didn’t make us machines. He made us human. He made us to need to be recharged.

When I need to recharge, I simply pull myself out of everything and go spend quiet time with God. I go wait on Him to speak to me. I looked up that word “wait” in the original Hebrew. It means, “to look eagerly for, to wait for, linger for.” God wants us to just linger in His presence without saying a word, without checking our phones and without interruption so we can center our mind on Him instead of everything else that’s going on. When He is at the center, our lives will be centered. When our thoughts are on Him, our problems don’t seem so big. When we wait on Him, we show Him He is first in our lives and we get re energized. If you’re tired today, the way to recharge is to spend time with God.