What is the burn beneath your burnout?

Jacob made love to Rachel also, and his love for Rachel was greater than his love for Leah….When the Lord saw that Leah was not loved, he enabled her to conceive, but Rachel remained childless. Leah became pregnant and gave birth to a son. She named him Reuben, for she said, “It is because the Lord has seen my misery. Surely my husband will love me now.” (Genesis 29:30-32)

With Mother's Day right around the corner, I want to spend the next few weeks studying some of the working women of the Bible and what they can teach women and men about our own work today.

Before we look at the women in this series who built businesses, led armies, and negotiated with kings, I want to start with Leah: a woman whose primary work was raising children. Because if we're going to truly talk about faith and work, we can’t ignore the fact that some of our hardest, most consequential work is the work of parenting. And Leah has something to teach every worker—paid or unpaid—about the most dangerous trap in any vocation.

On the surface, Leah’s work was that of childbearing. But today’s passage shows us that the work beneath her work was winning Jacob’s love.

After her first son Reuben was born, Leah said, “Surely my husband will love me now” (v. 32).

But evidently, he didn’t, because Leah said the Lord gave her a second child, “Because…I am not loved” (v. 33).

Maybe the third son would be the proverbial charm, Leah must have thought. So she gave birth to Levi and said, “Now at last my husband will become attached to me, because I have borne him three sons” (v. 34). 

Do you hear Leah’s angst? She wasn’t just hoping for something (children). She was hoping in something (Jacob’s love) without which, she was hopeless.

But by the time Leah had her fourth son, something changed. When she gave birth to Judah, Leah didn’t say anything that would connect her work as a mother to her attempts to earn her husband’s favor. She simply said, “This time I will praise the Lord,” and “then she stopped having children” (v. 35).

It was only once Leah found love and acceptance from God and outside of her vocational performance that she could rest her body and soul. It was only then that she was freed from the work beneath her work.

The question, of course, is what is the work beneath your work or the burn beneath your inevitable burnout?

The reality is that the ambitions for your work will always be mixed. Some of your motives are surely honoring to God, while others aren’t. But we’d be wise to discern the primary motives of our hearts. Because until our motivation is predominantly to “praise the Lord” through our work, we will be restless, unsatisfied, and bound for burnout.

If this devotional has been convicting you this morning, take a 5 minute walk today without your phone and focus on this single question: Why am I working so hard? Listen to the Spirit’s prompting of answers. And repent of any motive that is dishonoring to the Lord.