A Word in Season: Unwearied in Doing Good (2 Thessalonians 3:13)

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Monday mornings are proverbially bad days for many people. It's the day when we drag ourselves out of bed, when we clump wearily and unwillingly to our place of work, and we start putting ourselves again through the pointless motions of whatever it is that we do just to put our crust on our table.

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That kind of attitude actually reveals a fearfully un -Christian attitude to the work that God has given us to do.

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We need to think perhaps more carefully about the way that we go about such business.

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To be honest, it's not just Mondays. It could be Tuesdays, Wednesdays, or really any other day of the week.

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Sometimes we can be extremely discouraged about the things that we're called to do. In Thessalonica, the

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Apostle Paul said to the brothers in chapter 3 and verse 13, but as for you, brothers, do not grow weary in doing good.

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These were men and women in the church there who were in danger of becoming disheartened with regard to their efforts and investments as Christians.

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They wanted to live to please God, but all around them in society, and in their own souls perhaps too, there seemed to be discouragements and obstacles, difficulties with regard to this work of doing good.

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In some senses, that language really summarizes the whole outlook and expectation of Christian living.

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We are to be like our Lord Jesus who went about doing good. We're to serve

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God out of a heart of love to him, loving him with all our heart and mind and soul and strength, and loving our neighbor as ourselves.

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We're to consecrate even what might seem the very mundane tasks of life to the glory and honor of God, so that we do go into our place of work on any given day of the week, and we do set about it with a spirit of endeavor, working as unto

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God and not unto men. There are many things that we do that might not seem particularly religious or spiritual that are still done with an eye to pleasing

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God. There are works of Christian devotion. There are works of Christian mercy.

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There are works of justice and righteousness that Christians are called to engage in.

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There is great labor to be done for the cause of Christ and for the care of men's souls and their bodies, and it's easy to become disheartened.

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Paul says, don't lose your edge, don't lose your spirit, don't grow weary in doing good.

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Why? Because in Thessalonica, perhaps where you and I are, there are many reasons why we might grow weary in doing good.

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In Thessalonica, there were people that we might call leeches, people we might call misleaders, and the persecutors.

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The leeches were the ones who were just ready to take anything that they were offered without ever giving anything back themselves.

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And when we're constantly giving and giving, and someone's just drawing and drawing and never seems to respond to us, that can be deeply frustrating and disheartening.

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Then there are the misleaders, the poor examples, the people who are deliberately lazy and careless, and there seemed to be a plague of them in Thessalonica.

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There were perhaps not too many who were stirring one another up to love and to good works.

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And when you feel perhaps like you're one of the only ones who's in that situation, that can be extremely disheartening.

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And then in Thessalonica too, there were persecutors. There were people who were against God's people, who were trying to undermine them and to attack them and to despise them.

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It was hard in the face of that kind of opposition to go on doing good, whether to the persecutors themselves or to anybody else.

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And so Paul, recognising that they're in this context where there's so much pressure, so much to undermine them, so much to dishearten them, says to them, brothers, don't give up.

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Don't grow weary. Don't stop doing good. Live as Christians in this and every day.

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Live as Christians in this context. You might say, well, how? How will I go on doing good when people just seem to suck it in, people seem to go astray, and people seem to press back?

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I think we need to remember him who went about doing good and the one who has done good to us in the face of all our dependence, all our unthankfulness, and all our foolishness, to fix our eye upon Christ and to walk in his ways in this as in all things.