It’s been three days since Charlie Kirk was shot. I have to admit I never watched his show, listened to one of his speeches, or followed him online. My only exposure was the “change my mind” meme and the occasional short clip of a Q&A with a student. Honestly, I’m not sure I would have recognized him in a crowd. It was only this week that I learned Turning Point was his production company.
Still, I’ve been thinking about this event a lot. As I’ve learned more about his life, his faith in Christ, and his relationship with his wife, the weight of it has grown heavier. I feel disappointment. Disappointment in the behavior of the young shooter, disappointment in the loss of Charlie’s voice, and disappointment in the irreverent hostility of so many who clearly do not understand what he actually said or what this actually means.
Yet disappointment is not the strongest feeling. At first, I wondered if I was sad or even depressed. But watching how some gladly smear a lifetime of faithfulness for a moment of political gain, I realized it is not depression. It is exhaustion. Exhaustion from constantly pushing back, holding back, and keeping in the pressure not to react in some terrible way. Exhaustion from refusing to let go of integrity, even when everything around seems to encourage cynicism or cruelty.
I suspect many of my friends who say they feel depressed over recent events are really feeling the same thing: exhaustion. The broken part of us looks for a chance to rise up in moments like this, to take advantage of our weakness.
Well. It will not be today.
Roy F. Baumeister, a social psychologist, described this as ego depletion, the idea that self-control draws from a limited pool of mental resources. Using willpower in one area temporarily reduces our capacity in others. He compared willpower to a muscle: it can be fatigued when overused, but it can also be strengthened through practice.
Perhaps today is a kind of spiritual leg day at the gym.
I believe this puts a fine point on the reason God so frequently brings up the idea of rest. Rest is not just idleness but a spiritual discipline that renews strength, clears perspective, and recharges the soul. Without it, exhaustion makes us vulnerable to despair and rash reaction. With it, we remember who we are, whose we are, and that the battle is not ours to win in our own strength.
Matthew 11:28 “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”
I have always felt encouragement when I consider that Jesus Christ was the man who literally had the weight of not only the entire world on his shoulders, but the weight of the entire world through all of time. How he could refer to the weight he had to bear as light and easy. In that moment he let slip not just how important he is, not just how serious he is, but how unimaginably powerful he is.
Why someone like that, the King of the universe, would condescend and take a knee just so he could look someone like me, his mortal enemy, in the eye and express his tireless love still strikes me. Why he would willingly proceed to the cross for my sake. Why he would willingly suffer on the cross for my sake. Perhaps I will never fully understand. But at the least, I will believe him.
Romans 12:14-21 "Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. 15 Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn. 16 Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position. Do not be conceited. 17 Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everyone. 18 If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. 19 Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord. 20 On the contrary: “If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.” 21 Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good."
We often comment that Jesus’ economy is an upside-down economy. What we see in this world almost always works the opposite and stands in opposition to what Jesus actually teaches. But if he is anything, he is consistent. From Genesis to Revelation, God constantly expresses his love for us in the context of just how much he wants to handle our difficult moments.
God does not want his children chasing vengeance or waving the banner of bitterness. Though we were designed for great things, it is not just that we cannot carry this weight, it is that we were never supposed to carry it. He is the one offering us rest; he is not asking for rest from us. Some of the most difficult moments of obedience are the ones where we thoughtfully and intentionally do nothing at all. It is a new banner to fly, one that declares we trust and obey, that he will do what he says he will do. There is no other way.
Surrender on the battlefield is different than this kind of surrender. Our shallow, vapid, and almost silly version of justice cannot deliver; it is enthroned with failure and so often becomes the recipe for the deepest injustice. We do not even mean well, we simply want to be right. But when we surrender to God’s justice and abandon our own nonsense, we are surrendering to what may be the finest of all things, the most emblazoned jewel in the crown of the King.
What amazes me is how we are told to do this. The fundamental blueprint for the Christian life is simple: read the Bible, obey the Bible, and share the Bible. Yet as we read, the Scriptures practically shout another command that runs right alongside those three. That command is prayer.Philippians 4:6-7 "6 Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. 7 And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus."
I grew up in a home where prayer was more formal than familiar, but I have since learned it can be both without conflict. As I have grown older, I have come to see that many of the so-called paradoxes of the faith only appear that way because of my own narrow, single-minded perspective. I once fought hard to reduce competing and cacophonous ideas down to one, thinking simplicity meant truth. But the longer I walk with God, the more I see that true theological harmony comes when I accept the mystery and allow multiple notes to fill the room.
Paradoxes reveal the glory of God and our own. The sparks of iron sharpening iron are not meant to push me to erase complexity simply because it confounds me, but to help me embrace the joy of knowing that God will never fit into a neat little box. 1 Corinthians 2:7 "7 No, we declare God’s wisdom, a mystery that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began."
Oh Lord my God
When I in awesome wonder
Consider all the worlds
Thy hands have made
I see the stars
I hear the rolling thunder
Thy power throughout
The universe displayed
Prayer is speaking to God in a way that not only he hears, but we hear too. It is the spiritual communication that forms the foundation of our relationship with him. Just as Jesus wept at Lazarus’ tomb, even though he knew he would raise him in moments, God wants to hear from us even though he already knows our every thought and counts every hair on our heads.
Prayer also humbles us mentally, verbally, and physically, drawing us into a posture that moves us toward repentance. On the one hand, our personal engagement with him as we lean in and listen reminds us of his everlasting and inexplicable love for us. We experience his goodness. And as Romans 2:4 reminds us, God’s kindness leads us to repentance. And what is repentance other than the first step in reconciliation, the finest of all the good things we can ever experience in this short life.
Then again, think of it like baptism; it is a public commitment to Christ, just as a wedding is a public commitment to a spouse. In the same way, prayer reminds us and renews our commitment to put our full weight on God. Even the vaporous whisper under our breath in the dark, shrouded in tears, is a spoken declaration of our true circumstance, our actual need, and our reliance on Jesus to ransom and rescue us from this dark world of our own making.
Sometimes we don't know what to say and we use liturgies or prayer formulas to get us through the night. Sometimes we don't know what to say and the Spirit of God steps in and speak son our behalf. All of this reminds me of a favorite song, Better than a Hallelujah. It's haunting chorus sings:We pour out our miseries
God just hears a melody
Beautiful, the mess we are
The honest cries of breaking heartsAre better than a Hallelujah. Sometimes.
Looking back, regrets, I’ve had a few. And if I am honest, far too many to mention. I have never subscribed to the sad notion that we should live with “no regrets.” Even God had regrets. The Lord told Samuel he regretted making Saul king, and in Genesis, just before the flood, he regretted making human beings on the earth. Where God regrets the choices we made, my regrets are the choices I made.
For me, though, a big one is the lack of faith I showed when I didn’t turn to prayer. Here’s what I mean: if I truly believed, I wouldn’t have been able to stop. Like jumping out of an airplane without a parachute, I ran into this broken world with nothing but my bare hands, and I wasn’t ready. The truth is, I could never be ready to do it all on my own. The showcase of all my regrets is that I haven't believed enough in God’s faithfulness to make prayer an unceasing part of my life.
And so, we circle back to the beginning. How tired am I of trying to do it all on my own? With the assassination of Charlie Kirk, I feel pulled into the whiles of my own imagination, inventing remedies born out of logic and reason as if they could fix what is broken. But how foolish I have been, and how deeply exhausted it has made me.
What I need, what we all need, is not more striving but more surrender. Not more clever answers, but more prayer. Not more weight on my shoulders, but more trust in the one who already carried it all to the cross. If there is anything this moment teaches me, it is that my exhaustion is not meant to push me on over that cliff, but to pull me back to King Jesus.
What a friend we have in Jesus
All our sins and griefs to bear
What a privilege to carry
Everything to God in prayer
Oh what peace we often forfeitIt is the glory of God to conceal a matter; to search out a matter is the glory of kings.
Oh what needless pain we bear
All because we do not carry
Everything to God in prayer