Sometimes, we can arrive at a decision, while the motivation behind the decision is flawed.

Take Elijah. He had just come off the most decisive public moment of his entire ministry. An epic showdown atop Mount Carmel. Fire had descended from heaven. The prophets of Baal had been exposed and defeated. He was at the peak, literally and figuratively. And then, almost immediately, he was running. Not walking toward something new, but running from something. He ended up under a broom tree in the wilderness, asking God to take his life.

I want us to sit with this for a minute, because I think we find ourselves in moments like this more than we care to admit.

Elijah was operating from exhaustion, like so many of us often do. Not the good kind of exhaustion, the kind that follows a hard week of meaningful work, but the hollow kind, the kind where you are performing competently on the surface, while the engine of purpose underneath is running on fumes. And in that state, the pull toward something different can feel like a signal from God. It has that quality. That weight. That sense of finally.

Thankfully, our heavenly Father is gracious, and kind, and loving. He did not give Elijah a new assignment. Not right away. He did not rebuke him either. He sent an angel to touch him and told him to eat. Twice.

Elijah slept. He ate. He traveled forty days on the strength of that food before God addressed anything else.

The sequence matters. The impulse to abandon his post — to quit, to flee, to declare himself finished — arose at the moment of his greatest depletion. Not at a moment of clear divine redirection. And when Elijah finally arrived at Horeb and told God he was the only one left, God's gentle correction was that there were still seven thousand in Israel had not bowed to Baal. The isolation Elijah felt was real. The facts behind it were not.

Depletion distorts perception. That is not a weakness unique to Elijah — it is a feature of being human. An intentional design of our nature meant to lead us back to our source. For a refresh, a new perspective, a renewed mind.

So here is the litmus test I return to in my own moments of depletion (yes, I have them too): how much of my motivation to pivot and do something different is fatigue — weariness in well-doing — and how much of it is God?

If it’s God, it will withstand the nap, the snack, and the quiet counsel of the Holy Spirit. Mere exhaustion will not. And I must be willing to put the matter to that test. To try the spirit of redirection by the spirit of truth.

I need to practice discernment in what I’m hearing because:

None of those voices are lying, exactly. They are pointing at something real. But they are not the same as godly direction.

This audit that I just described is not about talking yourself out of a calling. Heaven forbid. Rather, it is about removing false confidence before you act on one. Because the cost of naming something prematurely — restructuring your life around a signal you never tested — is not just wasted effort. It is the kind of thing that leaves you more depleted than when you started, and more skeptical of the real thing when it comes.

Elijah was not done. God had more for him. But none of that came until the depletion was addressed first.

The signal may be real. But a depleted receiver is not a reliable instrument.

This week, take the five-part signal audit seriously — not as a checklist, but as an honest conversation with yourself. Write down the pull you are feeling toward something different. Then, one at a time, ask whether burnout, escape, envy, impatience, or borrowed ambition offers a credible explanation for why you feel it right now. You are not trying to kill the signal. You are testing it by the fire of introspection, and self-awareness. You want to know what is actually in it. If it survives the audit with something still standing, that is worth paying attention to.

Hit reply and tell me: which of the five — burnout, escape, envy, impatience, borrowed ambition — is the hardest one for you to rule out honestly?