Growing weary

And let us not grow weary while doing good, for in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart. Gal 6:9

Every felt weary, or exhausted, or just fatigued? Physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually? Close to burn out? I would imagine that many of us have as it is now something that is very common.

The church that I go to is in a season of unprecedented change. Some of us are feeling weary. With the new “cluster” groups it is easy to adopt a wait-and-see approach as we are all a little weary with having done cell for so long (myself included). I had adopted the “I’ll wait-and-see what happens before getting involved” ideology with good reasons – have run primary cell for a while so did two cells a week. On top of that I run my own company and there has been a recession to contend with. I am on trustees and also volunteer with the British Red Cross. Not to mention my family. I was out most nights doing something and I feel weary. It is not unreasonable to want to step back and take some time out when there is an opportunity to do so. I need it. My family needs it.

I believe that taking a break can be good. We all need a sabbatical every now and then to stay sharp. It could be from church (or doing church things), work – things that cause us stress and weariness.

But this was an emotional response from me (even with good reasons). It wasn’t the right response though as I discovered recently when I did a quick study on what the bible has to say about weariness.

And let us not grow weary while doing good, for in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart. Gal 6:9

This, to me is a well known Scripture. I often quote it to people in a “don’t give up” situation. Keep going. Don’t lose heart. Dig your heals in. Let that fight that is within you come out. Your season is coming. Your harvest is on the way. The seed you have sown will bear fruit, just stay with it.

It’s a great verse for that. This time though, I looked at the word weary: let us not grow weary while doing good. This tells me a number of things about weary:

1. You grow weary.
2. Weariness is something you let happen to you.
3. The real danger is that doing good things can make you weary.

You grow weary
It doesn’t just happen. Weariness is a process, and therefore is easier to stop in the early stages of development. It means that the signs of weariness aren’t always obvious.

You remember the illustration of the frog and the boiling water? You stick a frog in boiling water and he jumps back out. Put a frog in cold water and slowly heat it and he’ll stay in there and boil to death because he doesn’t notice the small changes. It’s the same with weariness. If you were put straight into the situation, you’d get right back out. Grow into weariness and it is a different matter. Small changes happen that you don’t notice and before you know life is one big pot of boiling water.

Interestingly the Bible tells us that the same thing happens with worry and it slowly chokes us. These things aren’t instant they are something that we grow into and I slowly chokes the life from us.

Weariness is something you let happen to you
This is the real ouch point here isn’t it? “let us not…” we are the subject here. We are the ones who decide to let this happen to us.

This has helped me with understanding my decision about clusters. The emotional “take-a-break” idea that I had. I was talking myself into weariness. I was letting weariness happen to me. The decision not to get involved and take a break would have caused me to become weary. It sounds odd and in conflict especially when doing good causes you to become weary. For me though, doing nothing is worse.

The Bible doesn’t tell us to stop doing good to save becoming weary. It tells us not to become weary whilst doing good. There is a difference.

So whilst doing good (for me, that is getting behind the vision of the church) I have a choice – I can choose not to become weary. I can choose not to let it happen to me. In this new change it would be easy to feel weary, especially after doing and leading cell for so long, so I have a choice to make right here, right now. I choose not to let weariness be part of my life. It has become part of my strategic plan.

The real danger is that doing good things can make you weary
This is perhaps the most interesting point about this scripture – it is doing good things that can make you weary. I believe that Martha was starting to struggle with this when she snapped at Mary for sitting at Jesus’ feet. She was worried and troubled about many things but at the same time she was doing good things (she was, after all, ministering to the Lord). That to me sounds like weariness caused by doing good things and that weariness caused her to become snappy and irritable and not a nice person to be around.

Funny, isn’t it, how doing good things – things which are supposed to benefit people, can end being the very cause of our fatigue and bad moods? It’s not an instant diagnosis for many of us. “Why am I so irritable today? I’m tired and short with the kids. I’ve been like this a few weeks now and it seems to be getting worse. Why?”

Your first answer isn’t generally “I’ve become weary from doing good, that’s what it is.”

We don’t make good decisions when we are weary
In an early post about Bitterness we looked at Esau. He had grown weary whilst doing the very things that God had gifted him to do. That weariness, left undealt with, had a serious impact on the rest of his life because he made foolish decisions.

Like Esau I was acting out of frustration and emotion in my decision to take a break. Esau out of hunger and frustration (and perhaps a large sense of personal failure on his part) led him to make an emotional decision.

We don’t make good decisions when we are weary. Take the mother who permanently looks after her baby. Generally the baby is in a good routine (something that I am for) but one night is a bad night. There is no reason for it, it was just a bad night. So mum loses some well needed sleep. This happens a few nights in a row so mum has grown weary whilst doing good (full time mums do a good thing, an amazing thing in fact and I have nothing but admiration for mums). In that weariness decisions are made that would not be made if you were not weary. They are emotional and often almost survival (Esau was hungry to survive he needed food). For the mum to survive she needs sleep. So the routine is quickly forgotten in favour on much needed sleep.

There is understanding here – it makes sense to try and get the extra sleep. But it knocks the baby from their routine. And this actually makes the problem worse.

For Esau he needed food. But he sold his birthright to get it. This made the problem worse.

So when we are weary we make bad decisions that usually have some minor benefit in the short run but usually impact our long term objectives negatively.

Matt 9:36
But when He (Jesus) saw the multitudes, He was moved with compassion for them, because they were weary and scattered, like sheep having no shepherd.

In the next verse Jesus tells us that the harvest is plentiful. So this tells me that God has compassion on the weary. This is important to understand that God is not mad at you. His compassion extends towards you. Jesus saw they were weary. So he had compassion on them and healed them. That’s the heart of God when you are weary. But I am starting to get ahead of myself.

I want you to notice the link between being weary and being scattered. The crowd had become more aware of their short term problems and the needed Jesus to intervene. But Jesus told the disciples about the harvest which is about the future.

When we become weary our lives start to become about the urgent and immediate. Exhaustion stops us seeing beyond the present. In the Amplified Bible it uses the word bewildered as a substitute for the word weary. Bewildered to me speaks of entering the wilderness. You become a person that is now in the wilderness. It is hard to think about anything but the hear and now.

Weariness & Crisis
I want to just pause a minute here and make a distinction between weariness and crisis. In times of crisis, it is absolutely right that things are stopped and short term decisions are made – but often we confuse weariness and crisis and think that we are in crisis when we are, in fact, just weary. Don’t confuse the two and identify where you are at. Crisis comes when we don’t deal with weariness over a period of time.

It’s all very good looking at weariness and spoting the symptoms. In my next post, I’ll look at how to deal with weariness.