Don't Grow Weary

Don't Grow Weary

William Carey, who had spent years in India seeing almost no converts, wrote to a supporter: 'I am not weary. I am perhaps more surprised by the slowness of the work than I expected to be. But the seed is being sown, and it is imperishable seed — the Word of God — and it will do what it was made to do, in the time it was made to do it.' His first convert came after seven years. He stayed for forty. The harvest he did not personally see — a Bengali church, a translated Bible — has proven abundantly real in the generations since. He did not give up. The harvest came.

Galatians 6:9 addresses the specific temptation that targets faithful people: weariness. Not dramatic apostasy, not sudden moral failure — the slow draining of motivation by delayed results. Paul acknowledges the reality of weariness without surrendering to it: 'Let us not become weary' — present tense, ongoing battle. The remedy he gives is not a pep talk but a promise: at the proper time, harvest comes. The key phrase is 'if we do not give up.' The Greek ekluo means to loosen, to relax the tension. Don't let up. Don't release the grip. The harvest is timed by God's sovereign calendar, not by our expectations. Whatever good work you are tired of doing today — it is producing something. Don't give up.