College Staff Devo

English Standard Version Chapter 6

And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up.

If you guys could get our your Bibles and turn to , that is where we’ll be for devo this morning. I know we’re settling down into the mundane part of the semester with Second 6 and WinCon behind us, and there’s probably somewhat of a mix of emotions about the semester thus far. I know for me it’s been a mixture of some really encouraging things like buy in from the student leaders, and some discouraging things with a handful of the guys who’ve made professions of faith deciding that they’re not quite ready.

is a verse that Josh quotes a lot and I wanted to look at that this morning. Read verse.

In the context surrounding this verse Paul is talking about the general principle of sowing and reaping. I think there are three things about this verse that are challenging:

The first is that there is a relationship between doing good and weariness. Doing good is challenging. It requires sacrifice, and is usually never immediately gratifying, especially in ministry. If there was a fixed, causal relationship between doing good and reaping, we would have no need for faith and trust in the Lord. Doing good is hard and it necessitates faith.

The second thing that I think is challenging is that we don’t know what reaping will look like. We can trust this promise generally that if we follow Christ throughout this life we will reap eternal life, but specifically in the context of ministry, I don’t know and don’t control the reaping. The third thing that I think is challenging is closely related in that we don’t know when “due season” will be. We don’t know that in five years we’ll have a ministry that’s sending students to the nations, but we can trust God that he is sovereign, good, and working all things for his glory.

I think it’s important to remember that this verse is a promise from God to us this morning. It is a promise that we can hold as true, breathed out by God. We must not grow weary in doing good because we will reap if we do not give up. The challenge comes in pressing on, trusting in the Lord when we are weary and don’t feel like doing good. Then we must remember the gospel.

Our motivation to press on has to come from fixing our eyes on Jesus and looking at the great lengths he went to to save us. I want to read , a passage that you all know, but I want you to pay special attention to verse 3:

English Standard Version Chapter 12

Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, 2 looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.

Do Not Grow Weary

3 Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted.

The author of Hebrews here encourages us to press on while looking to Jesus and finding strength to not grow weary from looking at the hostility he endured from us and for us.

We are the people who put Jesus on the cross, yet he endured to save us. We can press on in our personal relationships with Christ and in ministry only through remembering the lengths that Jesus went to redeem us from sin.

Galatians Keep up the Good Work!

It concerns the conversion of a man named Luke Short at the ripe old age of 103. Short was sitting under a hedge when he happened to remember a sermon he had once heard preached by the famous Puritan John Flavel (d. 1691). As he recalled the sermon, he asked God right then and there to forgive his sins through Jesus Christ. Short lived for three more years, and when he died, this inscription was put on his tombstone: “Here lies a babe in grace, aged three years, who died according to nature, aged 106.”

But here is the remarkable part of the story: The sermon Short remembered had been preached by Flavel back in England eighty-five years before! Nearly a century had passed between the sermon and the conversion, between the sowing and the reaping. But a man reaps what he sows, and at the proper time Flavel reaped his harvest