Your exhaustion may not be a sign of weakness of faith. It may be the fruit of enthusiasm. It is Lent. Fast from your fever. Embrace the exhaustion. Curb your inner enthusiast and cling to Christ.
Some of you may remember the quirky early-2000s sitcom Curb your Enthusiasm by Larry David. This article, however, has nothing to do with that. But in theological language, especially in a Reformational context, an enthusiast refers to what the Reformers called a Schwärmer. It is an old heresy, yet it continually reappears in new forms, including in our own time and, if we are honest, in our own hearts.
There is a peculiar exhaustion spreading through much of modern Christianity today. It is not the fatigue of persecution, nor the weariness of controversy. It is the exhaustion of trying to keep a spiritual fire burning that never seems hot enough.
We live in a therapeutic and experiential age. Authority is swapped for authenticity and is internalized into “my story,” “my experience” or “what God told me.” For some, the Christian life becomes an unending pursuit of the next breakthrough, the next surge of intensity, the next moment of the felt presence of God. For others, it becomes a quiet despair that they do not feel what they have been told they ought to feel. In both cases, something has gone seriously wrong.
Let this be said clearly: your exhaustion may not be a lack of faith. It may very well be the fruit of enthusiasm. When assurance depends on the intensity or vibrancy of your inner life, collapse is around the corner.
The Reformers did not deny spiritual experiences of either comfort and combat. Go read some Martin Luther and you will have a rich account on the topic. What they denied was making such experience normative or authoritative. Experience may follow faith, but it does not ground it. The only ground for faith is the preached promise of Christ.
There is therefore a necessary word for those who thrive on intensity: high emotion is not proof of spiritual health. Tears are not the evidence of sincere devotion. Volume is not the accurate measure of regenerated vibrancy. If Christianity depends upon constant spiritual adrenaline, it is not sustainable. And if quieter Christians are subtly judged as spiritually inferior, temperament has been confused with true transformation.
God has bound himself to means—not because he must, but because he wills it for our comfort.
The Reformers used the term enthusiast not to condemn zeal for the gospel, but to name a specific theological error: seeking God apart from the external Word and Sacraments. This old error has returned in modern dress, and it is quietly burning people out. Our task is not to extinguish joy or dim the lights. It is to relocate joy away from feverish inwardness and back to Christ’s concrete promises.
So when Martin Luther spoke of enthusiasts, he did not mean lively Christians. He meant those who detached the Holy Spirit from the means through which Christ has promised to give him. His primary concern was not Rome, but the radical reformers who claimed direct revelation beyond Scripture and separated the Spirit from the Word.
In the Smalcald Articles (III, VIII), Luther writes:
“In a word, enthusiasm inheres in Adam and his children from the beginning to the end of the world… This is the old devil and old serpent, who also converted Adam and Eve into enthusiasts and led them from the external Word of God to spiritualizing and their own imaginations.”
This is a severe claim. Luther is saying that the first temptation in Eden was enthusiasm: leaving the external Word for inner reasoning and imagination. He continues:
“Accordingly, we should and must constantly maintain this point, that God does not wish to deal with us otherwise than through the spoken Word and the Sacraments. Whatever is attributed to the Spirit apart from such Word and Sacraments is of the devil.”
God has bound himself to means—not because he must, but because he wills it for our comfort. When we ask, “Where can I find a gracious God?” The answer is not abstract. He has located himself in the preached Word and the Sacraments. There he is always present according to his own promise.
Today enthusiasm is rarely viewed as dramatic. More and more it’s seen as the new normal no matter the tradition. It may take the form of “God told me” spirituality, where inner impressions function as revelation. It may appear when worship is driven more by atmosphere than proclamation, when confessional doctrine is viewed with suspicion in favor of personal experience, when truth is evaluated by usefulness, or the Sacraments are reduced to optional symbols. Assurance begins to rest on how spiritually alive I feel rather than on the finished work of Christ for me. This can happen in churches that would never describe themselves as enthusiastic. Enthusiasm is not a denominational problem, but an anthropological one.
The Holy Spirit works through proclamation, not in abstraction which means faith comes by hearing. Christ and all his benefits are given in, with, and under water, bread, and wine. If the Spirit is separated from these means, Christianity dissolves into subjectivity.
The deepest Christian joy is not self-generated excitement nor atmospheric manipulated chills, it is the astonishment of being forgiven.
The Reformation’s insistence on external means was never an attempt to cool joy, it was furthermore an attempt to secure it. Christian gladness does not arise from inward fervor but from an outward accomplishment of another: Christ crucified and risen for sinners. Joy resting on inward temperature rises and falls. But the kind of joy resting on Christ’s finished work endures.
We do not need less joy in the Church. We need joy that is sustained beyond Sunday and that survives the Monday afternoon blues. Emotion is not the enemy, but it cannot be the engine. It must follow the promise, not replace it. The deepest Christian joy is not self-generated excitement nor atmospheric manipulated chills, it is the astonishment of being forgiven. The proclamation, “Your sins are forgiven,” alone can sustain a lifetime of gladness.
The very word euangelion means good news, glad tidings. Christianity begins not with a demand, but with an announcement of great joy. The angels did not whisper therapeutic advice or legislative commandments at Bethlehem. They proclaimed: “I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people” (Luke 2:10). The faith was born in joy, and joy remains the very mark and essence of the Gospel of Good News.
But zeal without grounding becomes spiritual adrenaline. Zeal anchored in the gospel becomes durable praise. There is a profound difference between emotional momentum and Spirit-created joy. You do not need to ascend emotionally to meet God. He descends sacramentally to meet you. Not to restrict joy, but to make it accessible, no matter what you feel.
Christian joy does not require sustained intensity. You are not commanded to feel constantly radiant, you are invited to receive. When your emotions are flat, the gospel remains good news. When your heart feels cold, baptism remains true. When your passion flickers, Christ remains risen. Therefore, you can finally put your inner enthusiast to death and rest.
The beauty of Lutheran theology is not dogmatic coldness but security. When your faith feels weak, the promise stands. When your repentance feels thin, absolution is still real. When your passion falters, the Lord’s supper still provides and preserves. Your salvation does not hang on your spiritual temperature, it hangs on Christ’s finished work, delivered through means he instituted. That is not restrictive, it is liberating.
Come to the altar not to prove devotion but to be embraced by mercy.
The solution is not cynicism, emotional suppression, or lifeless formalism. It is this: locate your certainty in Christ’s promises. Let emotions follow rather than lead. Receive rather than strive. Hear rather than manufacture. Come to the altar not to prove devotion but to be embraced by mercy.
Luther’s warnings were serious because the stakes are high. If the Spirit is detached from the means, assurance collapses. When assurance collapses, consciences suffer, and Christ’s comfort is eclipsed.
So curb your inner enthusiast—not your joy, but your insistence on immediacy. Let God be where he has promised to be. Let him speak to you and forgive you through human lips. Let him feed you through ordinary elements.
You are not saved by the intensity of your experience. You are saved by the crucified and risen Christ, who has located himself outside of you. His promises stand independent of your cooperation. Therefore, you are free—free to feel or not to feel it, free to rejoice and free to lament, free to be enthusiastically high or exhausted and low. In Christ, you are free to be and free to rest.
