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Tracts and Literature
To Help You Reach the Lost, Grow In Christ, and Sound a Faithful Warning
Fundamental Evangelistic Association

The Antidote for Weariness

by the late Rev. J. H. Jowett, M.A.
from FOUNDATION MAGAZINE, Oct./Dec. 1995

"And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap,
if we faint not." - Gal 6:9

THIS HEARTENING COUNSEL is given to a little company of men and women, to one of the primitive fellowships which formed a part of the early apostolic Church. And what was the condition of the readers to whom it was given. They were contending against stupendous obstacles; they were rowing against a voluminous stream! That in itself is always an arduous toil; it is never an easy task to resist a popular drift, to oppose the main current, to antagonize the spirit of the age, to confront the solid and stolid majority. But in the case of these Galatians, the arduousness of the toil was intensified. You may make your way against the stream if only the atmosphere is cordial and tonic; your muscles will remain tense it there is ozone in the air; but if there be added to the resistance of a vigorous current a sultry atmosphere which breeds lassitude and languor, the enemies of progress are multiplied.

Now it was just this way with the Galatian churches. An enervating air was stealing over them, a kind of lotus atmosphere, and the muscular faculties of the members were in danger of losing their strenuousness. To aggravate the difficulties, the boat had to be driven through the coarse and fattening weeds of a fleshliness. To further add to the obstacles, and to crown the burdensomeness of the toil, many of those in the boat refused to take a hand at the oars, and insisted on being passengers rather than crew! It is little wonder that the progress was slow tedious, and there is little wonder that many of the honest and strenuous toilers were often discouraged at the oar, and were not infrequently inclined to lay their burden down and drift idly with the stream. It was to these faint and discouraged stalwarts that Paul wrote these heartening words of this great epistle.

And so to express the conditions again, using this time the figure of my text - here was a little company of Christian men and women working a little patch of tough, rough and most unpromising ground. The atmosphere is close and stifling. The soil is heavy and unclean. It is interpenetrated with roots of hoary customs, and stiff, fibrous and almost invincible traditions. Some of the little company of toilers are becoming selfish and exclusive; they are fencing off their own lives, and devoting themselves solely to the culture of their own souls. They are beginning to "look every man on his own things," and not upon "the things of others." All this makes it terribly hard for the earnest and zealous workers, who are seeking in the worldwide field to turn the desert into a garden, and to make the wilderness rejoice and blossom as the rose. They make such little progress, if indeed any at all. They have often stopped in the furrow with tired and aching limbs, and with depressed and weary hearts! They have often sent a tired cry to the bending heavens, "Lord how long! How long!" It was, I say, to men and women like these, contending valiantly against overwhelming odds, that the Lord sends this heartening and triumphant word, "Let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not."

Now, first of all, is it not a very helpful and inspiring figure which the apostle employs in the text? "We shall reap!" Would it not come with great and strengthening consolation to these wearied toilers? "We shall reap!" The apostle finds his figure of speech, not in the market, but in the field. He goes to the realm of agriculture. Our Christian work does not find its analogies in buying and selling, in swift and deft transactions, but in the leisurely and mysterious process of the field. "We shall reap. " We are not mechanics, engaged upon contrivances every part of which is visible, and needing only the rearrangement of the fittings, the readjustment of cog and wheel, of balance and spring. No, our work is not that of mechanics, but of farmers. Nothing would more discourage me than to be compelled to regard my ministry from the standpoint of the tradesman, or the mechanic. From those standpoints I should frequently have no hope, and I should lay down the work in sheer despair. But I gain infinite hope when I am taken to the domain of agriculture, and am bidden to contemplate the mysterious processes which precede the shaping and coloring of the golden ears of corn. We are not magicians, commanding budding branches out of sapless rods; we are farmers, and we have got to await the leisurely issue. "We shall reap, if we faint not!"

Now see! If our work is like farming, is it not heartening to realize that, like the farmer, we are in league with most mighty and mysterious forces? We have invisible and tremendous allies! I took down from my shelves a little primer on agriculture which I bought some years ago in order to become a little more familiar with this companion ministry to my own toil. I took it down, and once again surveyed its contents. I found much about germination, and much about the nature and composition of soils, and about fertilizers, and about the suitability and variety of implements, and much about different modes of culture, and about all the seasonable work for the entire round of the rolling year. But what most impressed me was the constant sense of impalpable and mysterious forces hiding behind every page: dim lines hinted at, not described because indescribable. I felt that all this array of principles and counsels and implements and modes, were but wise contrivances, born out of experience, prudent approaches to secure the great ally, traps to catch the mystic genius of agriculture. In all our spiritual farming, the same great real Presence fills the dim background, the same unutterable Ally is on the field, and all our methods and implements of work are but so many reverent leagues and covenants by which the alliance can be made efficient. "Work out your own salvation ... it is God that worketh in you!"

"Paul planted: Apollos watered: but God gave the increase." So is the kingdom of God, as if a man should cast seed into the ground, and should sleep, and rise night and day, and the seed should spring and grow up, he knoweth not how. For the earth bringeth forth fruit of herself, first the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear. "We shall reap, if we faint not!"

And now if our work is like farming, we shall often be working in the dark. How much of the processes of agriculture are hidden behind the veil! Anybody can see the cornfield, but who can tell just when the seed is germinating? Nay, who can get still further back, and, before the seed gives even signs of germination, can tell when the seed receives its first thrill of awaking and resurrection life? How much goes on in the dark! Anybody can count converts; that is like measuring the dimensions of a field of corn. But who can register spiritual germinations? Who can tabulate the first faint pulse which shows that the soul is awaking? A whole cornfield may be at the birth, when yet no single green thing relieves the barrenness of the desert waste! Great harvests may have begun at the very time that we are trudging home with laboring feet and weeping eyes, bemoaning our long and fruitless and inefficient day. I said, and I repeat it, that this apostolic figure of the farmer is full of heartening for you and me, as indeed it must have been to these tired and discouraged workers in the early church. "Let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not."

Meanwhile, what are we to do while the harvest tarries? Here we are, on our of rough, hard, ungracious soil, soil that is threaded with adverse biases and steely prejudices and unfriendly customs. What shall we do while the harvest tarries? "Let us not be weary in well doing!" Yes, and the words have this literal and very searching meaning,-"Let us not be weary in beautiful doing!" Because the soil is reluctant and ungracious do not let your ministry be premature and rude! Let your "doing" be "beautiful" even when you are dealing with unlovely people! Oh, that is hard and difficult work! To set beautiful things before unlovely people, and to go on doing it when the beauty seems thrown away, is a demand that is apt to strain and tire the spirit! But it is altogether right and altogether prudent. There is nothing more unwise than to let your culture become slovenly because the bit of land you have to till is scraggy and poor. We can make no greater mistake than to become rough and rude just because our audience is rough and rude. It is always a mistake for a speaker to shout because his audience is noisy.

No, our doing must be "beautiful," always and everywhere ''beautiful," and there comes in the strain! If the field is hard, let the work be beautiful! This is something like what I heard one man say of another man, as he looked across his fields. He gazed upon the most evident signs of labor and neatness and finish, and this what he said, "It's by no means easy land, but that's a bit of beautiful work!" Is not that a fitting comment upon my text? You have got by no means an easy piece of land down there in your mission, or in the night school; but let your work be beautiful; let your farm be well kept; let every furrow be as straight as though you were in competition with every farmer in the countryside; and so far as you are concerned let there be no signs of carelessness or slovenliness in any corner of your field. "Let us not be weary in beautiful doing, for in due season we shall reap if we faint not." We must not merely go to our work as knights, we must go as Sir Galahad, and our knightly ministry must be beautiful.

Yet, there are perils of weariness in the work. Every day and everywhere men and women are becoming weary and are retiring from the field. Why do we grow weary in "beautiful" doing? I think there are many people who have become wearied in Christian labor, and the entire explanation is to be found in sheer bodily fatigue. What is the remedy? Physical rest. I think such a one should severely examine his days with the purpose of making retrenchment and economizing his wasted strength. But I do not think the economy should in all cases reveal itself in the resignation of civic services or of offices in the Christian Church. For instance, if a man is out at two or three or four dinners a week, or at a continual round of parties, and he finds himself limp and physically unfit for the Lord's service in the great field of the world, I should begin the retrenchment with the dinners and the parties, and by that economy find reserves for the impoverished labors of the kingdom. I am profoundly convinced that there are many men and women who are spiritually depressed and weary, and who have no keen and appetizing relish for Christian work, who would find that much of their depression and distaste would be banished if only they got to bed a little earlier, and spent a few solidly restful evenings at their own fireside. When the prophet Elijah was in the bondage of weariness and depression, imprisoned by a melancholy which had driven all the welcome flavor out of his life, and the angel of the Lord came unto him, have you noticed the first ministry to his melancholy and depression was a physical one? "An angel touched him, and said unto him, Arise and eat!" I am equally sure that the first step to the removal of many a one's spiritual indifference is the observance of physical rest.

There are other workers upon the field who are growing weary because of the relaxing chill of a constant ingratitude. They work and work, and they witness no signs of gratitude or appreciation. You remember how in the superb and appalling play of King Lear, when the driving tempest smote the desolate and forlorn old man as it swept across the open heath, how he felt the beating wind and altogether less pitiless than the invisible storm which shook his very soul: "Blow, blow thou bitter wind. Thou art not so unkind as man's ingratitude."

That is the wind that blows upon every devoted worker of the Lord, and sometimes leaves him limp and weary. How shall we reason with ourselves? Let us begin our thinking here. "A servant is not greater than his lord, neither sent greater than he that sent him.... It is enough for the disciple that he be as his master, and the servant as his lord!" The bitter, cruel wind that beat across the heath on Lear was forever beating upon our Lord, and yet He finished His work. "I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do." Let us rest assured that the bitter winds of ingratitude will always blow across the furrows of the field, but we need not feel them as many of us feel them now. While the cold wind is blowing over the furrows, the warm summer wind of heaven's favor may be breathing over our souls. Who thinks much of the heedless wind that is howling down the streets, if we are sitting within the glow of our own fireside? "The Master praises: what are men?" Be not weary. "The joy of the Lord is our strength."

Or, lastly, we become weary because of unreasonable expectations in our work. We too frequently assume that we are magicians, and we forget that we are farmers. We assume we have got a wand, when the Lord has only given us a spade. We expect the harvest to come almost as soon as we have reached the field, and the harsh face of the desert stares at us day after day in inglorious sterility. The delay burdens us, and we retire weary from our field. Now we may be perfectly assured that every bit of honest work in the field of the kingdom will inevitably be attended by fertility. There is no such thing as wasted labor in the service of the Lord. We must not become the victims of mere appearances and judge the value of our work by results which can be measured in the scales of human reckoning.

Let us rather go out to our work possessed by the perfect confidence that the Lord of the harvest will look after the implanted seed. If we have been faithful in our share of the service we may absolutely trust Him to bring it to maturity. Let us "pray without ceasing." Let us wait continually in the Saviour's presence.

"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." Isaiah 40:31.