Wanted: Strength For The Weary
“Don’t grow weary in
doing well for, in due season, you will reap a bountiful harvest.” Galatians 6:5
Life is often
exhausting. Even with all the time-saving
devices being produced, it seems to get more active all the time. It requires a lot of strength, a lot of
energy to live life, especially when you're trying to do the right thing rather
than the easiest thing.
There are a lot of
people in life that don't try to do the right thing; they just want to do
whatever's the easiest thing. Some
people try to coast through life and they
always do the easiest thing. But when you're coasting, you're always going
downhill.
On the other hand,
when you try to do the right thing even though it's not the easiest thing,
that requires energy. That requires
effort and strength. Many of you are the
only believer where you work. It's
tough. Do you ever get tired of doing
what's right? Sure. Because it's tough
moving against the flow, swimming
upstream. One author said, “When
all the culture is going one way and you're trying to do the right thing, it's
tough.
Young William
Wilberforce, the godly English politician who brought the abolition of slavery
in Great Britain before we achieved it in the United States, was discouraged one night in the early 1790s
after another defeat in his 10 year battle against the slave trade in England. Tired
and frustrated, he opened his Bible and began to leaf through it. A small piece
of paper fell out and fluttered to the floor. It was a letter written by John
Wesley shortly before his death. Wilberforce
read it again:
It said, “Unless the
divine power has raised you up... I see not how you can go through your
glorious enterprise in opposing that
(abominable practice of slavery), which is the scandal of religion, of England, and of
human nature. Unless God has raised you up for this very thing, you will be
worn out by the opposition of men and devils. But if God be for you, who
can be against you? Are all of them together stronger than God? Oh, be not
weary of well-doing. Go on in the name of God, and in the power of His
might."
When you know God has
His hand upon you, you can find grace for every situation. Wilberforce, whose story was featured in the
film "Amazing Grace" with the song’s author, John Newton, helped
overcome slavery in England almost 70 years before we abolished it in the United
States
The more you try to
do what's right, the more energy it's going to require.
Yet God says, "Let
us not grow weary in doing right for we will reap a harvest of blessing if we
do not give up." But where do
you get the power to do the right thing, and you don't feel like doing it, and
you're dead tired?
There was probably no
man who was the most persistent man ever to live than Moses. He kept going in spite of the fact that
he spent 40 years waiting in the wilderness and then forty years wandering in
the wilderness with the complaining and murmuring of the Israelites. Each step of the way he was led by the Cloud
by Day and the Pillar of Fire by Night.
A close second would be Noah, who spent 120 years building an ark while
being pelted with questions from obstructionists who thought he needed a
psychiatrist. How did he not give up?
How did he not get tired and quit?
While his protective covering would come in the big boat he would build,
it would first come from a Big God
who would protect him. The Bible says he had God's grace....and so do we.
2 Corinthians 1 says,
"It is God who gives us the ability
to stand firm for Christ. He has
commissioned us and He has identified us as His own by placing the Holy Spirit
in our hearts." Feel like
giving up today? Don’t do it. There is a harvest coming your way as God
promises to sustain you and complete the work that He has begun in you. Let His strength become yours today…all you have
to do is ask.
Terry Risser
Reflections:
1) When do you most feel like giving up?
2) How do you find strength to continue on?
Consider reading the Word today:
Copyright 2014- Terry Risser
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