Wounded Warriors

• Galatians 6:1-10
• Isaiah 35:3
• Isaiah 54:1-4
• Hebrews 12:12

Surviving Seasons of Stress

• The major problem that is now affecting our people is being weary or faint.
• Old-time words for this kind of suffering is “battle fatigue”-extended warfare
• Giving out all the time and expend themselves in the service of others.
• Purely an attack by satan that depletes a person’s physical, emotional and spiritual resources that enable the giver to keep giving.
• Few people understand the problem and how it leads to confusion, discouragement, feeling of failure, and simply cannot believe or confess positively anymore.
• The individual is filled with fear that their fatigue, anxiety, pain, and “weakness” will be exposed and condemned.
• It is a time when the inner pressure of despair combines with the outer pressure of ministry to produce a devastating breakdown.
• Wrong relationships—many so-called Christians want to add to the burden instead of bearing burdens.
• The contrast in aim—one will restore the other exploit.
• The contrast in attitude—one approaches in meekness and love the other in pride and condemnation.
• Always asking do I spend too little time with God; whether am I working for God more than walking with God; whether have I missed the will of God or do I have hidden sin.
• Be weary-used of the husbandman who is tempted to slacken their exertions because of a prolonged effort-loss of strength
• Faint-used reapers overcome by heat and toil to relax effort to become exhausted

Four stages of spiritual overload

     a. Challenge

     b. Commitment (building and achieving)

     c. Containment (not pursuing but driven)

     d. Collapse

Stage One-Onset or Burn Out

• Chronic fatigue may make inappropriate responses that don’t make sense or can even hurt others exercising in a survival-hopeless sense of abandonment and alienation.
• Can’t sleep at night-minds always racing-nod off during day-push yourself 
• Tension, fear, and physical problems begin to happen
• You must use adrenalin rushes to keep you going need stress to function
• Stored-up unresolved hurts and tension are released.
• May avoid or evade responsibility-pressure-running on natural strength.
• May begin to want to blame others–may even misquote the facts.   
• Can’t tolerate complex and lengthy periods of work or study.
• Small tasks often appear insurmountable obstacles because you can no longer find answers to nagging questions about your faith.
• Tension begins to express itself through digestive problems such as colitis or chronic pain in the abdomen along with frequent headaches.
• Generally, a good rest will bring a person out of this stage. 

Stage Two–Depression (an emotional manifestation of the depletion of one’s physical and emotional resources of performance-oriented people)

• Adrenal burn-out begins to happen and the overproducing gland doesn’t function as it should and sickness, nausea, and fear begin to happen-the adrenaline “rush” is gone.
• Digestive problems are common such as ulcers, colitis, acid reflux, diarrhea, and extreme pain in parts of the body.
• Sleep is a battleground and fills drained, sick, and fatigued if you do get some sleep.
• Every kind of dream imaginable, many that make no sense happens continuously. 
• Personal confidence is threatened because the prayer closet is a place of fear and uncertainty rather than a sanctuary of peace-about to enter the long dark night of the soul.
• Feel guilty and believe you are letting God down but question why He is not touching you.
• Numbness to God=s word and prayer (mechanics and rituals)  with no revelation.
• Loss of confidence-lower self image-no self esteem-consider yourself a failure.
• Cannot consistently perform in a manner that is consistent with the way we see ourselves. 
• Loss of vision-wonder if you can do anything or just make a fool out of yourself
• Decreasing desire to be around people and things of ministry and must make yourself perform.
• Some try selective (only if the issue is favorable to us) or situational (only if the timing is favorable to us) obedience rather than total obedience subconsciously. 
• The person feels obligated to individuals and anything else would be a failure to that person and God and a new life pattern must quietly be established.
• Feel that if they are not working to exhaustion they are not working hard enough.
• Must have a prayer but at a distance so as not to put pressure on the person to respond.
• Must examine changes in lifestyle and support systems. (family and covenant friends)

Stage Three- Deadness/Incapacity

• State of incapacity-need to be carried not exhorted-need to be loved not instructed
• No longer pursuing our goals, they are driving us.
• Physically ill everyday-hurt-sleep never satisfactory-heart even hurts or misses beats.
• The adrenalin produced by stress has eroded the strength of connective tissues so there are aches and pains in joints, headaches, and back pains. 
• Refined sugar becomes a poison that the body craves but makes you go down not up.
• The sense that you have been betrayed even by God but dare not say that.
• Nerves are shot-can’t snap out of it-screaming inside-every nerves on fire.
• Inability to receive love and cannot receive instruction but show love and understanding even if you do not believe it is received in ways that demand no response.
• Exhausted all the time and hemorrhaging emotionally because they know there is no quick or simple way of recovery.
• Strong moods—no time for corrective or confrontive counseling.
• Don’t talk about time management, delegation, or praise God for all things.
• Listen, be available, believe in them, and assure them they are a good father, mother, minister, etc. but still don’t demand a response.

Stage Four- Suicidal, Anger, Sexual Attraction, or Violence.

• Everything happens in the other stages plus others.
• The person feels obligated to individuals and anything else would be a failure to that person and God and a new life pattern must quietly be established.
• A feeling of complete hopelessness and weariness of living.
• Believe that there is something major medically wrong that no one understands.
• Begins to think unexplainable violent thoughts and visualize themselves doing violent things to themselves or others.
• Feels like they are a complete failure and an embarrassment to God and family.
• Anger seems to boil up all the time or at the smallest things.
• Imagines a way of retaliation for all wrongs.
• Under normal conditions, morality is a gift from a strong man of God
• Temptations come as always but routinely bested
• Sometimes irresistibly drawn to pornography-then overwhelmed by the guilt
• May find a drawing to the opposite sex—May begin to drive too fast-or even to drink

Don’t want to hear praise God for all things or this is for your good.

Stage Five – Insanity

• All the other symptoms in the other stages plus.
• Think you have completely lost it and have a complete nervous breakdown.
• All hope seems lost and no way out and death seems a blessing.
• Suicidal thoughts become intense and hard to fight off.
• Withdrawn-put up fences-completely overwhelmed-
• Abusive to family and friends
• Collapse

Answers To It All-Hug The Fireball-The Spirit Of God

• Must have the help of family to break self-sacrificing patterns by showing confidence in them without demanding anything in return.
• Do not look them straight in the face or stand over them as they consider it smothering.
• Realize that you are human not God you must show the person that God loves them whether they ever do another deed or not.
• Remove yourself from the immediate problem.
• Break your life pattern-obligations-self sacrificing-isolation-self abuse-prayer patterns etc.
• Find someone who can pour in the wine and the oil.
• MUST BE A HEDGE—Job’s comforters were to stand as a hedge for him because the Lord had taken down the hedge—instead, they pointed and blamed.
• Husbands and wives are partners and if one goes down the other must stand guard over the other one
• Create an environment conducive to healing without the person seeing what you are doing.
• Determine what or who the enemy is—workaholic, self-sacrifice, physical exhaustion, too many irons in the fire, etc.
• Find someone to knit with and get in a safe environment.
• Find someone who can give support, hold them up, listen without trying to act spiritual or give them a “word” and be confidence enough never to tell anything that is said.
• Find a Godly man or ministry like “Barnabas Ministries” and ask for help.
• Never share with wounders or someone who will tell all they know.
• Know your innocence and understand what God said in:

 Ezekiel 36:26-28

A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh.

And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments, and do them.

And ye shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers, and ye shall be my people, and I will be your God.

• The I-Will’s the true answer.
• Psalms 38:1-8   58:6-7 ; 69 ;109