Serving God Through Serving Others

Galatians 6:9 says, “Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.” We all become weary at times, even to the point of giving up when things are not going well. This is even true in the church where it seems it shouldn’t be that way, but it is. This is why God gave us these words of encouragement because He knew about our weariness and frustration through His son who experienced the same things during His ministry here.

Why do we grow weary in doing good sometimes? Doing good is not always easy. It is often hard to see any results from our labor. We are a results oriented society and like to measure our success in a tangible way. However, service to the Lord isn’t always easy to measure. It may take years before there are any visible results of our work.

Criticism is another thing that can cause someone to become weary. We always seem to have a lot more critics than we need. I always admire those who are really doers and workers in the kingdom. They always seem to have their detractors and critics who are there looking for ways to squelch the good works they are doing. Instead of discouraging these people, we should be supporting and encouraging them in their work.

What are some ways we can fight the tendency to become weary in well doing? First we need to focus on our eternal reward which should be enough to keep us from ever being too discouraged. We must not compare ourselves to others or we will think we are so bad we don’t have any hope or we will be arrogant, thinking more highly of ourselves than we should. We all have different talents and abilities, different backgrounds and training, different levels of energy and health, and different personalities. We are part of a body (the church) that needs each one’s unique abilities to make it work. If we work as a body instead of a bunch of individuals, we will be able to do much more than we can imagine and our times of weariness will be much fewer.
—Jim Keevert