By Hayley Louisa Mark
There is a particular kind of tired that sleep doesn’t touch. It sits behind the eyes as a dull, gritty ache, and it settles into the forearms so that lifting a kettle feels like lifting something far heavier than water. My jaw was set without my noticing it; my shoulders had crept up toward my ears weeks ago and forgotten how to come down. When someone asked me how I was, the honest answer wasn’t sad or stressed — it was empty. Scraped out. The reserve I used to draw on when the day asked one more thing of me had simply stopped being there. I would stand at the sink with both hands flat on the cold edge of it, and the only prayer I could manage was the wordless one: I have nothing left.
If you are reading this with that same hollowed-out heaviness in your chest — the depleted caregiver, the one who keeps showing up at work and at home long after the tank read empty — these verses are for you. Not for the spiritually energetic. For the ones running on fumes.
The short answer: The phrase he gives strength to the weary — and the KJV verse behind every search for he gives strength to the weary kjv — comes from Isaiah 40:29, which in the KJV reads, “He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might he increaseth strength.” It is not a promise that you will stop being tired. It is a promise that the strength you run on does not have to be your own. Isaiah 40 speaks directly to the bone-tired: God gives power to the faint — to the very ones who have nothing left.
This is one quiet room in a larger house. If your exhaustion is more racing mind than empty body, you may want How to Be Still Before the Lord, and if the tiredness underneath is really the tiredness of striving to be good enough, How Jesus Becomes Your Sabbath Rest sits closer to that ache.
How to use this list
These verses are gathered from Isaiah 40 — the chapter Scripture seems to reserve for the worn-out — with a few companions from the Psalms and the prophets. They are organised by what kind of empty you are. Jump to the situation that fits where you actually are tonight, not where you think you ought to be.
- When you have nothing left at all
- When you are tired of waiting
- When your body itself is failing you
- When you are too tired to even pray
- When the renewal feels slow in coming
- A prayer for the bone-tired
Each promise comes with the exact KJV text, a short honest reflection, one small thing to do with your body, and a line you can pray. Take one. You do not have the reserves for six.
When you have nothing left at all: He gives strength to the weary
Isaiah 40:29 (KJV)
“He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might he increaseth strength.”
Notice who this verse is actually addressed to. Not the strong who need a little extra. The faint. Them that have no might. The qualification for this strength is not having any of your own. If you have been waiting to feel a bit more capable before you bring yourself to God, this verse quietly cancels the waiting — your emptiness is not the disqualifier you feared it was. It is the very condition the promise was written for. The increase comes to the depleted, not after they recover.
One small thing: Unclench your hands. Let them fall open, palms up, on your knees or the table in front of you — the oldest posture of I am not holding anything right now. Leave them open for three slow breaths.
Pray: Lord, I am the faint one this verse is for. I have no might. Increase mine — because I cannot.
When you are tired of waiting
Isaiah 40:31 (KJV)
“But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.”
This is the famous one, and it is famous for a reason — but read it slowly, because the order of the images matters. Mount up. Run. Walk. It descends. Most days renewed strength is not soaring; it is the much humbler grace of walking and not fainting — putting one foot in front of the other through the afternoon without going under. The word translated wait carries the sense of twisting together, like strands of a rope. To wait on the Lord is not idle. It is being bound to a strength that is not yours, and letting it hold the weight you can’t.
One small thing: Plant both feet flat on the floor and feel the ground take your weight. You don’t have to soar today. You have to walk and not faint — and the floor is already holding you up. Press down gently and let it.
Pray: I am tired of waiting, Lord. Twist my weakness into your strength like a rope I can lean my whole weight on. Let me walk today, and not faint.
When your body itself is failing you
Psalm 73:26 (KJV)
“My flesh and my heart faileth: but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever.”
Sometimes the emptiness is not metaphor. The flesh genuinely fails — the chronic ache, the illness that won’t lift, the body that no longer does what you ask of it. This verse does not pretend otherwise. My flesh and my heart faileth. It says it plainly, without flinching. And then it does something remarkable: it makes God the strength of the heart that is failing — not a replacement for your body, but a strength held underneath it, a portion that does not run out when the flesh does.
One small thing: Lay one hand flat over your own heart. Feel it beating — tired, but still going. You are not asked to fix it. Just to notice that something steadier holds it.
Pray: My flesh fails me, God. Be the strength of my heart when my heart has none. Be my portion when nothing else is left to draw on.
When you are too tired to even pray
Isaiah 40:28 (KJV)
“…the everlasting God, the LORD, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary? there is no searching of his understanding.”
I have left the honest ellipsis at the front, because the verse opens with God asking “Hast thou not known? hast thou not heard?” — a gentle reproach to the worn-out who have forgotten. Here is the whole comfort of it: He fainteth not, neither is weary. When you have nothing left for prayer, the God you are praying to has not run low. Your exhaustion does not deplete him. You can collapse against a strength that never tires, and your collapse takes nothing from it.
One small thing: You don’t have to form words. Let your shoulders drop down from your ears — let them fall by an inch — and let that be the prayer. The body can say I give up holding myself together when the mouth has nothing.
Pray: You do not faint. You are not weary. I am both. I lean the whole of my tiredness against the one who never tires.
When the renewal feels slow in coming
Isaiah 40:11 (KJV)
“He shall feed his flock like a shepherd: he shall gather the lambs with his arm, and carry them in his bosom, and shall gently lead those that are with young.”
This is the tenderest line in the whole chapter, and it is for the days when the eagle-wings of verse 31 feel impossibly far off. Look at the pace of it: gently lead. The shepherd does not drive the exhausted ones. He matches his stride to those that are with young — to the slowest, the most burdened, the ones who cannot keep up. If your renewal is coming slowly, it may be because you are being led at the only pace you can bear, carried close, not chivvied along. Slow is not the same as forgotten.
One small thing: Slow your next out-breath right down — let it leave you over a count of about six, slower than the breath in. Match your own pace to something gentler. You are allowed to go slowly.
Pray: Shepherd, gather me into your arm. I cannot keep up. Lead me gently, at the pace of the bone-tired, and carry the part of me that cannot walk.
A note on the science
There is a physiological reason a long, slow out-breath calms a depleted body. When you exhale slowly — making the out-breath noticeably longer than the in-breath — you increase the influence of the parasympathetic branch of your nervous system, the “rest and recover” system, largely through the vagus nerve. Heart rate eases on the exhale; the low-grade alarm state that often accompanies exhaustion begins to settle. Unclenching the jaw and dropping the shoulders sends the same downstream signal of safety to the brainstem. This is plain physiology, and it is worth saying clearly: it is a fact about bodies, not a proof of anything in Scripture. The verse and the breath belong to two different rooms. The breath will steady your body; what you do with the quiet it makes is yours to bring to God.
The body-science here reflects established neuroscience of the nervous system. What the science actually says about a settled body → · the research behind these pages
A prayer for the bone-tired
You may be too empty to make your own words tonight. Borrow these. Read them slowly, out loud if you can, and stop wherever a line catches.
Everlasting God,
you who faint not, neither are weary —
I come to you scraped out, with nothing left to give.
My flesh fails. My heart fails. The reserve is gone.
You said you give power to the faint,
and I am the faint one this is for.
I am not asking to soar today.
I am asking to walk, and not go under —
to get through this afternoon, this shift, this long night,
held up by a strength that is not my own.
Gather me like a lamb into your arm.
Lead me gently, because gently is the only pace I can bear.
Be the strength of my heart when my heart has none,
and my portion when everything else has run out.
I wait on you. Renew me — slowly, if it must be slow.
Amen.
A few honest notes
Is “he gives strength to the weary” the exact KJV wording? Not quite. That phrasing — “He gives strength to the weary” — is the wording of modern translations such as the NIV. The KJV of Isaiah 40:29 reads, “He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might he increaseth strength.” The meaning is the same; if you are searching for the King James words specifically, “He giveth power to the faint” is the line to hold.
What does “wait upon the LORD” really mean in Isaiah 40:31? The Hebrew verb behind wait (qavah) is often connected to the image of twisting strands together, as in a rope or cord — and so it carries a sense of binding to, of expectant hoping rather than passive killing of time. I offer that gently, as commentators do; the plain English wait already holds most of it. To wait on the Lord is to attach your strength to his and let his take the strain.
Why does Isaiah keep talking to the tired? Isaiah 40 opens with “Comfort ye, comfort ye my people” — it is a chapter written to a people worn down by exile and waiting. That is partly why it speaks so directly to exhaustion: it was first spoken to the depleted, and it has been a refuge for the depleted ever since.
A small thing to take with you
If even one of these promises steadied your breath for a moment, you don’t have to keep it in your head — your head is tired enough. I’ve made a free printable Empty-Reserves Card: 6 Isaiah 40 Promises for the Bone-Tired — one page, the six verses above with their one-line prayers, made to live on a fridge or a nightstand for the days you can’t reach for more.
→ Download the free Empty-Reserves Card here — it’s free; just tell us where to send it.
And if you find that these verses become a place you want to return to a little more slowly — a few minutes a day rather than a card glanced at in passing — our Stilling Waves devotional journal was made for exactly that kind of bone-tired returning. You can find it here.
Where to go next
- If your emptiness is really a mind that won’t stop racing rather than a body with nothing left — When Your Mind Won’t Stop Racing: How to Be Still Before the Lord.
- If the exhaustion underneath is the tiredness of trying to be good enough — When the Striving to Be Good Enough Exhausts You: How Jesus Becomes Your Sabbath Rest.
- If tonight the storm is anxiety more than fatigue — When the Storm Inside You Won’t Quiet: A ‘Peace, Be Still’ Prayer for Anxious Nights.
Frequently asked
Q: What is the KJV verse for “he gives strength to the weary”?
A: Isaiah 40:29 in the King James Version reads, “He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might he increaseth strength.” The familiar phrase “he gives strength to the weary” is the modern (NIV) wording of the same verse.
Q: What does Isaiah 40:31 mean — “they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength”?
A: It promises renewed strength to those who wait expectantly on God, attaching their weakness to his strength. The images descend from soaring to running to walking, suggesting that on most days renewed strength simply means being able to walk and not faint — to get through the day without going under.
Q: Are there Bible verses specifically for exhaustion and burnout?
A: Yes. Isaiah 40:28–31, Psalm 73:26, and Matthew 11:28 (“Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest”) speak directly to physical and emotional depletion. Isaiah 40 is especially rich because it was first written to a worn-out, waiting people.
Q: Does the Bible promise I’ll stop feeling tired?
A: No — and these verses don’t pretend it does. The promise of Isaiah 40 is not the end of weariness but a strength that is not your own to carry you through it: power given to the faint, the ones who have nothing left, exactly as they are.