“The solid foundation of God stands” (2 Timothy 2:19)

This devotion tells you how to avoid spiritual burnout.

The glorious Truth of your salvation, the unmovable Rock on which you stand, is God demonstrated His love toward you while you were a sinner, sending His Son to live a perfect life and die a perfect death in your place, to reconcile you to Him  (Romans 5:8, 1 Peter 3:18). All grace flows from this reality…it will never change. You’ll never stand on any other foundation, even if God uses you to heal the sick and raise the dead. God doesn’t owe you anything. You’ll never have anything more to recommend you to God apart from what Christ has done.

Mature Christians can forget this solid foundation and begin to think God owes them something for their good works. This is idolatry…when you make an idol of your good works, you forget your foundation is grace alone.

Remember how you walked by grace in the past:“Are you so foolish? Having begun in the Spirit, are you now being made perfect by the flesh?” (Galatians 3:3).

If everything you do for God seems a chore, you’ve forgotten the basis of your relationship with Christ. “Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh … if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law” (Galatians 5:16-18). “Stand  fast therefore in the liberty by which Christ has made us free … faith working through love” (Galatians 5:1-6).

If you stop operating in faith working through love, you’ll burn out spiritually, and retreat from virtue, knowledge, self-control, perseverance, godliness and brotherly kindness. “For if these things are yours and abound, you will be neither barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For he who lacks these things is shortsighted, even to blindness, and has forgotten that he was cleansed from his old sins” (2 Peter 1:8-9).