How to Renew Your Faith When You're Dangerously Tired

Here are four ways to push through the fatigue of everyday life and to keep honoring God daily.
By Amanda Casanova

Say Thanks

Even if you’re already having a rough year, there are a dozen small
moments where God showed up in your life— in friendship and
coffee, in laughter and dinners, in movies, in music and so on.

Count your blessings seems like an overused things to say, but it’s
a good way to make this year and your days purposeful. Thank God
for the spotted moments of grace, the good days and the smiles.
You want this year to be remembered as orchestrated by God and
not just something “to get out of.” Hold onto those moments. Say
thanks for those days because they were God’s way of loving you
in the midst of trial.

An easy way to do this is to start a blessings journal where you

track even the smallest blessing from your day, even if it was just the hot cup of coffee in your favorite mug.
A blessings journal allows you to look back and see that although you may feel physically and emotionally
drained, God is lifting you up each day in big and small ways. That gives us the motivation and the energy to
keep going and to keep fighting.

Celebrate

It’s easy to rush through the day and get it over with
so you can start fresh, so you can “get more rest,”
but instead, let it linger. Just as you gave thanks for
those small moments of grace, celebrate rest. It may
not always be a perfect rest. It may be interrupted by
pets or babies or noise, but celebrate the few hours
of rest that God allows because he created rest for us
to enjoy and not just so we could be more
productive citizens. Rest is a gift.

Also celebrate the successes in each day, just like

the blessings journal. Celebrate the joy. Our lives
are purposeful, not just passing. You may not feel like celebrating after a trying day, but laughter and
joy from friends and family is an easy reminder that God is in control of our lives.

Have Faith
 If God doesn’t seem to be answering your prayers, know that He is still
there and still listening. Have faith that God is molding you into the
person He wants you to be, and that might mean going through some
rough times. But you’re not alone in that.

Remember that a person who exercises wants to quit because they’re

tired but if they don’t, if they hang on for one more mile, they become
stronger and faster. That’s exactly how our growth as a Christian
works.

Have faith that God is pulling you through these hard moments as a measure of his greatness and a
testament to His plan. This isn’t just for you to “get through.” It’s for His glory. It’s easy to want to stop
trying because we’re tried, but it takes more to have faith that this is a way to become closer to God and a
way to love Him more.

Wait

So much about Christianity is about waiting and if you feel like you’ve been waiting for an answer, a cure, a
break— know that God delivers.

It’s easy to want to give up on waiting on God because it is

tiring to hold fast to God. It is tiring to pray the same prayers.
It’s draining to be physically sick and needing a cure. Keep
waiting and don’t give up hope. God is faithful in waiting and
His timing, His answers, are never late. Know that He has an
answer for you even if you don’t see it yet.

We hear this a lot in Christianity, that we need to wait on the

Lord, and it’s a hard lesson to learn, but it’s also a sweet one.
It’s a way to come to God daily and rely on his grace daily
because we are expectant. We are hopeful. We are waiting.

David writes in Psalm 130: “I wait for the Lord, my whole being
waits, and in His word I put my hope. I wait for the Lord more than watchmen wait for the morning.”

That’s the kind of waiting we should strive for. It will take our whole body. It will be tiring. It will be more
than even the watchmen do, but that’s how it should be done.

Fresh Start

So many of us want a fresh start or more energy. Maybe we want to forget this year, but we can’t let go of it
all. We must remember these moments that God orchestrated and make every day purposeful. We must
hang on even though it’s tiring and wait on God’s goodness.

That isn’t an easy thing to do, and it requires leaning on a powerful God. It requires trusting in his power
more than your own. Don’t throw these days away or rush out of it because you’re tired. Make it count
toward God’s glory and pray that you stay purposeful.