“Come with me by your­selves to a quiet place and get some rest” Mark 6:31

If humans could be compared to batteries, I’m probably more like a Duracell. I can keep going and going and going. That’s not much of an achievement though. When you get past the advertising hype there’s a fundamental reality. The Duracell battery is an alkaline battery – which means it can only last so long. Once it’s dead, it’s good for nothing. A new one needs to be bought to replace it.

That’s why I should aim to be a nickel cadmium battery. When they start running out of power they get placed in a charger until they’re ready to be put back to work. Then they keep going until they’re ready to be charged again, keep going until they’re ready to be charged again, keep going until they’re ready to be charged again, and so on. That makes them the best. The alternatives can’t compare. Even a dimwit knows a nickel cadmium battery can outlast Duracell, Energizer, or Rayovac.

Which makes me wonder. Why do I keep behaving like an alkaline battery? (Which implies I’m a dimwit!) Why do I keep going and going and going? And why don’t I allow myself to be placed in a charger until I’m ready to go back to work? After all, there’s nothing worse than listening to a walkman running out of power. The music gets slower and slooower and sloooooower.

All of us need times to pause and be refreshed, to be renewed, to have our morale and vision reignited and our spiritual battery recharged. This is especially true when we’re in the thick of the battle, when the pace is blistering, when our heart gets to be heavier than the load, or when the task is boring. For our ability to accomplish a task is directly linked to our morale and vision. When these two things are weakened, we begin to spiral into despondency. Life gets dreary. Challenges look larger. Days become tedious. The fuel pump of our inner drive gets clogged with pessimistic debris and then, before we know it, our battery is drained and we’ve lost our charge.

So take a regular time out.  Make sure periods of activity are punctuated by rest periods when your imagination can get unclogged and your inner battery recharged. For optimism, bravery and faithfulness feed on high morale. The ability to push on, alone if necessary, requires clear vision. And in order for goals to be reached, there has to be the inner strength which comes from spending time with God.

That’s the bottom line. God designed us to be recharge­able batteries. He wants us to return to Him again and again and again … We need to regularly pause and get plugged into His life-giving power. We need to frequently meet with Jesus for a transfusion of courage. We need to be renewed with the charge that comes from being in the tabernacle of His presence.  We need to gain strength from going up into the hills to pray. We need to be revived by calling on His name. And we need to be refreshed by a daily filling with the Spirit. So don’t delay. Recharge your batteries. In the words of Jesus, “Come with me by your­selves to a quiet place and get some rest” Mark 6:31.