Do You Control Your Phone — Or Does Your Phone Control You?

Do You Control Your Phone — Or Does Your Phone Control You?
(with..gaining for christ )
Within a few years of its unveiling, the smartphone had become part of us, fully integrated into the daily patterns of our lives. Never offline, always within reach, we now wield in our hands a magic wand of technological power we have only begun to grasp. But it raises new enigmas, too. Never more connected, we seem to be growing more distant. Never more efficient, we have never been more distracted.
Drawing from the insights of numerous thinkers, published studies, and his own research, writer Tony Reinke identifies twelve potent ways our smartphones have changed us — for good and bad. Reinke calls us to cultivate wise thinking and healthy habits in the digital age, encouraging us to maximize the many blessings, to avoid the various pitfalls, and to wisely wield the most powerful gadget of human connection ever unleashed.

When the Future You Planned for Never Comes

Article by Bryan Stoudt
Pastor, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Before we turned 32, my wife and I said goodbye to our golden years — and to the second half we had hoped for. The one where our kids, deeply committed to the Lord, finally grow up and leave college, giving us long-awaited margin and freedom to serve the church more deeply, relocate, and travel together.

Our precious son Matthew has autism. His diagnosis changed our family’s future forever. Matthew will not go off to school, get married, or do all the other things we typically hope for our children. At a time where we were hoping to launch him into the world for Christ, we need to have him declared legally “incompetent” so we can make decisions on his behalf. But the hardest losses are unseen, and we still grieve not truly knowing, and being known by, the person we thought he’d be.

While we know this is God’s best for us, it’s still very hard and can bring us to tears on any given day, often without warning. The next season of our lives is going to be messy, unpredictable, and far more restrictive than we imagined on the day he was born.

We know we are not alone. Many of you are facing your own challenges as you look ahead. A failed, or cold, marriage. Physical limitations that make life painful and slow. Children who aren’t walking with Jesus. Aging parents who now need you to parent them. Work that pays the bills but offers little else. Yet even if the journey ahead looks bleak, God invites us to find deep joy in him, often through stories like Job’s.

What to Do When All Goes Wrong
We can’t be sure how old Job was when calamity found him, but he was old enough to have ten children, and be known as “the greatest of all the people of the east” (Job 1:3). He was on top of the world until disasters struck, and he wasn’t. In a matter of minutes, he lost his property and wealth (Job 1:15–17), children (Job 1:19), health (Job 2:7), and his wife’s support (Job 2:9). All that remained were his life, and God. His second half wasn’t going to be anything like his first.

But Job’s life offers us massive hope when our own futures seem to veer off course. Here are three lessons to increase our joy in God, even when storm clouds loom on our horizon.

1. Don’t look back and obsess about why you’re suffering.
When our future looks grim, it’s easy to look back and become consumed with why we’re suffering. To question whether better choices might have led to a different, happier path forward.

After Matthew’s painful diagnosis, I wondered if stubborn defects in my character had played a part in his condition. At the time, I had just finished seminary and still had a fairly academic faith. Did I need a serious dose of reality — in the form of Matthew’s autism — to prepare me for the pastorate? Day and night, new possibilities pressed in on my conscience and made a dark future feel even darker.

Job, “blameless and upright,” certainly did not cause his suffering (Job 1:1). But he and his friends didn’t know that, and they tortured themselves trying to determine what went wrong as they faced his new reality. When suffering derails our future, we should repent of any known sin and consider that God may be disciplining us. Usually, though, we simply don’t know why we’re suffering. We’re not supposed to, which frees us to rest in God’s sovereign care.

2. Remember that God doesn’t owe us the future we wanted.
Like I did, many of us quietly assume our second halves will glide toward a predictable, carefree retirement. When God rewrites our story, we can get angry and demand a rationale. God has never fully explained Matthew’s autism to us, and he never fully explained Job’s suffering to him. He probably won’t fully explain yours — at least this side of glory — either. He doesn’t owe us that.

After the initial shock of our son’s diagnosis passed, the implications for our future began to sink in. We felt despondent as we realized Matthew would never get married, have children, or possess the ability to share his heart with us. Overwhelmed with these realities, my wife took a weekend away and read through the entire book of Job. As she reached the part where God shows up, her perspective began to change.

“Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding.” (Job 38:4)

God reminded my wife she was a creature who simply couldn’t comprehend God’s purposes for Matthew, or why our future wouldn’t follow the usual script. While God didn’t change the forecast, he transformed my wife’s perspective on it by reorienting her toward his majesty and loving care. When we truly learn that God is both sovereign and good, we can open our hands, without resentment, to the future of his choosing rather than our own.

3. Bring your confusing, frustrating future before the King.
As we truly come to terms with the limitations God places on our future, it’s natural for our thoughts and emotions to bounce all over the place. I remember the day we discovered Matthew’s yearly therapy costs would approach half of my salary. And then, learning our insurance company wouldn’t cover them. In one moment, I would experience deep anger and resentment toward God, then in the next a desperate hunger for forgiveness and faith.

In his distress, Job accused God of wronging him and withholding justice (Job 19:6). But in the next breath, he erupts with this beautiful confession:

“I know that my Redeemer lives,
     and at the last he will stand upon the earth.
And after my skin has been thus destroyed,
     yet in my flesh I shall see God.” (Job 19:25–26)

When we’re struggling with the rocky path God has placed before us, we don’t need to pretend we don’t struggle. God invites us to bring our sorrows and confusion to our Father. As Paul Miller puts it, “The only way to come to God is by taking off any spiritual mask. The real you has to meet the real God.”

The Coming of the Lord
You may be thinking, Job’s suffering was worse than mine, but his story had a happy ending. God gave him back everything he lost. That’s never going to happen for me. You may be right. Often, God orchestrates deep losses that are never restored in our lifetime. That’s where we need to look beyond Job’s story — and frankly, our own stories — to Jesus.

Jesus endured unparalleled suffering and shame by keeping his focus squarely on “the joy that was set before him” (Hebrews 12:2). His unhappy ending wasn’t really the end. And your second half, no matter how unhappy, won’t be the final word for you, either.

While we persevere in suffering like Job (James 5:11), we’re waiting with him for “the coming of the Lord” (James 5:7–9), when God will transform the future we’re dreading and everything that caused it. One day soon, I’m going to have a long, heartfelt talk with Matthew, and the sorrows still ahead will fade away. In the twinkling of an eye, your bleak future will be transformed, too. Can you picture it?

At that time, as C.S. Lewis puts it, we’ll begin “Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.”
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What Comes First: My Obedience to Jesus or My Joy in Jesus?

Interview with John Piper:our dear man of GOD 

How is my obedience connected to my joy? It’s a question today from Jonathan. “Hi, Pastor John. I’m a seminary student in South Africa. My question is about Christian Hedonism. What a deep and powerful thing enjoying God is. God used this greatly in my conversion!

“After a couple of years, however, my joy in God grew very dim. Not only my joy, but also my contentment and prizing of God above all else — a most joyful state — disappeared. This is especially true when I fall into sin. I feel sin blinds me to who God is and thus I don’t enjoy him for who he is because I can’t see him for who he is. Is that true? And how much of our joy in Christ is only achievable and possible in a state of robust obedience?”

Joy and Obedience

I’m going to say things a little differently than Jonathan, but first let me affirm his insight. When we are living in disobedience to Christ, our joy in him will be minimal or nonexistent, depending on the depth and duration of the disobedience. That’s true. You might say our greatest enjoyment of Christ can be enjoyed only in a robust state of obedience. I think that’s true.

“If we treat obedience as something we do first and then joy in Jesus follows, we will have turned obedience into a work of the law.” Tweet Share on Facebook

But I think it’s important to penetrate into the relationship between obedience and joy a little more deeply. Let’s not stop at simply saying, “If you obey Jesus, your joy will be greater.” If we leave it at that, we won’t really see clearly what the nature of obedience is and its relationship to joy and Christ.

I would ask Jonathan, or anybody, “Do you think that obedience to Jesus is distinct from enjoying Jesus?” In other words, is it accurate to think of obeying him as one thing, and then, as a result of doing that, this other thing happens called “enjoying him”? It’s really not like that, is it? Why not?

Well first, we are commanded to enjoy him, to “delight yourself in the Lord” (Psalm 37:4 and elsewhere). We must rejoice in the Lord. That obedience is enjoyment of God, not just a cause of enjoyment.

Second, all Christ-honoring obedience is rooted in our treasuring of Jesus, our enjoying of Jesus, so that it wouldn’t be accurate to say that enjoying Jesus is only the result of obedience. In fact, joy is a part of obedience, the cause of obedience, the root of obedience.

Losing Sight of Christ

So what Jonathan is saying is not at all wrong; it’s only half or maybe a third of the picture. He’s stressing the utterly necessary truth that whenever we are walking in disobedience, our joy is going to be limited, even canceled. That’s true.

“Our greatest enjoyment of Christ can be enjoyed only in a robust state of obedience.” Tweet Share on Facebook

You can see it especially in John 14:21–23, where Jesus says, “Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him” (John 14:21).

In other words, there’s a correlation between our loving Jesus and keeping his commandments and the clarity and sweetness of the manifestation that we have of Jesus and the Father in our hearts. Jesus says, “I will manifest myself to him.” He says this to those who are loving him and walking in fellowship with him and keeping his words.

Those manifestations of the preciousness and sweetness and power and reality and presence and beauty and worth of Jesus will be forfeited when we are loving other things more than Jesus, and not keeping his word. That’s true. That’s the truth that Jonathan is seeing and emphasizing.

He has experienced the loss of joy, and of the intimate, sweet manifestations of Christ to his soul because he’s walked in sin. That’s true; that’s what will happen.

Pathway to Obedience

But, there’s another side to this. If we miss it, there will be no way out for Jonathan. How’s he going to get out of this? Because if he thinks simply in terms of “I’ve got to obey so that I can enjoy,” he’ll never get out.

Because seeing Jesus as satisfying and experiencing him as precious is the pathway to obedience, not just the result of obedience. You can’t obey first in order to enjoy if the enjoyment of him is the path to obedience.

If we treat obedience as something we do first and then all joy in Jesus follows, we will have turned obedience into a work of the law, or a legal external performance that has in it no Christ-exalting worth and therefore will not result in true enjoyment of Jesus.

All Christ-exalting, gospel-rooted obedience is the obedience of faith (Romans 1:5). Obedience comes from faith, and faith is a seeing and savoring of the truth and beauty and worth of Jesus in the gospel. Therefore, faith, specifically what Paul calls in Philippians 1:25 “the joy of faith,” is the root of all Christ-exalting obedience, not just the fruit.

So by all means, Jonathan, cease from all outward sin. Cease. But let the main battle of your life be not just against outward actions that have to change, but mainly against inward blindness that needs to be overcome with fresh glimpses of the glory of Christ. Then the new obedience will not be a tribute to your willpower, but a tribute to the beauty of Christ that has broken the power of the deceitfulness of sin.

Where the Battle Lies

Jonathan has been walking in disobedience because of the deceitfulness of sin (Hebrews 3:13; Ephesians 4:22). Sin is telling lies to him. It is saying that the path of disobedience will produce more pleasure. It won’t. It’s a lie.

“All Christ-exalting, gospel-rooted obedience is the obedience of faith.” Tweet Share on Facebook

The pleasures are fleeting (Hebrews 11:25). They are shallow. So the battle to be fought in Jonathan’s heart, in all of our hearts, is not just how to stop doing bad things so that we can enjoy Jesus. No, no, no, no, no. The battle is how to stop believing false things.

By all means, forsake bad behaviors. But mainly the battle is to look to Jesus. Look to all that God is for you in him, and pray for eyes to see his all-satisfying beauty and worth, so that you rest in him and are so satisfied that the root of sin is severed, and you walk in obedience.

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No Soul Is Too Far Gone

Article by Francis Chan
Pastor, San Francisco, California


My teenage daughter and I burst into tears in worship last weekend. One of our pastors was preaching about the cross. Ellie and I were overcome with emotion as he described Christ absorbing our sin and enduring the wrath of God, all on our behalf.

Why? Why were we weeping with joy and wonder while others felt nothing? Our weeping was a gift from God.

Even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake. For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. (2 Corinthians 4:3–6)

As we heard the story of Good Friday again that Sunday, we could have felt nothing — blind, dark, unbelieving — but God showed up in our hearts again with light.

Beg God for Them
I remember the first time I climbed deep into a cave. Until that day, I had no idea what “pitch dark” really meant. I could hear the voice of my friend who was right next to me, but I couldn’t see him. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t even see my hand in front of my face.

Then my friend turned on his flashlight. Everything changed. Darkness was gone, and the cave was visible and beautiful. This is what the apostle Paul describes in his letter. We all walk in complete spiritual darkness unless God decides to shine his light on us. In some mysterious way, God shines light in a person’s heart so that he instantly sees the beauty of the gospel. No amount of human effort can produce this. Salvation is a miracle of God.

Many of us would say that we believe this theological truth, but our actions betray us, revealing just how much we trust in people, speeches, and events. On more than one occasion, people have begged me to speak to their lost friends, believing that my words would make the difference. Too often, I have granted their wish (rather than correcting their theology), and tried desperately to come up with the perfect words to talk their friends into falling in love with Jesus. Do you see yet how ridiculous this is?

Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians 4:4 that Satan has blinded these people. Apart from God’s working, our begging someone to see the beauty of Christ is as pointless as begging a blind man to enjoy the beauty of a sunset. Do we direct our begging, first and foremost, to God?

My Thirty-Year Prayer
Jesus tells us the parable about a persistent widow to remind us that we “ought always to pray and not lose heart” (Luke 18:1). There is tremendous power in perseverant prayer. God is not like us; he is not bothered by his children asking for the same thing over and over. He is pleased by the faith demonstrated when we pray and pray for someone to be saved.

When I love particular people deeply, it’s natural to persistently pray for them. I think it would actually require more effort to refrain from praying for them. My best friend in college decided that he didn’t want to follow Jesus. It broke my heart. Ken and I went our separate ways, and our lives went in opposite directions. I never stopped praying for him though — I couldn’t. Whenever Ken’s name would pop into my mind, prayer was my natural reflex.

Two years ago, I was speaking in Seattle where Ken lived. I invited him to the event so we could reconnect. We graduated from high school in 1985. After thirty years of prayer, God decided to shine his light on his heart. Suddenly Jesus looked beautiful to him and he couldn’t believe that he didn’t see it all this time. A few weeks later, Ken and his wife flew down to San Francisco, and I baptized them. I can’t express what a gift that was. He is one of the few people I have prayed for consistently for thirty years — a small price to pay to be with him for the next thirty million.

No One Is Too Lost
No soul is too far gone for God to bring back. No heart is too hard for God to soften. No son or daughter is too lost for God to rescue. Keep praying for God to do what only he can.

When we understand the consequences of rejecting Christ, and we are filled with love for another human being, persistent prayer should be the natural response. To this day, I still have questions about how the decreed will of God meshes with the effectiveness of my persistent prayers. For now, I’m more than content to obey and pray. Though I’m still uncertain how it works, I have seen it work. Meditate with me on Luke 18, trust the words of Christ, and then pray with sincerity and expectation.

If you can see the riches you have in Christ, take time to thank God with all of your being. He has given us the greatest treasure we could receive. He has “shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”

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Why Do Christians Harm Themselves?

Aticle by 

Emma scrivener

Guest Contributor

He approached me before a talk I was giving on self-harm, an older man, white-haired and polite.

“I’ve been a Christian for nearly 40 years. I’ve seen a lot. But this! Cutting and burning and all sorts; terrible, just terrible. Young girls, trying to kill themselves? We didn’t have it when I was their age. Why are they doing it?”

I sympathize with this man’s emotions of bafflement and despair. They’re understandable. But I don’t believe his views are accurate. So, let’s examine his questions. As we do, we’ll see that self-harm is an ancient scourge and something that we can all understand, at least at some level.

“Girls are trying to harm themselves?”
Self-harm is “an act which involves deliberately inflicting pain and/or injury to one’s own body, but without suicidal intent” (Babiker, The Language of Injury). It affects men, women, and children, from all races, cultures, and backgrounds (including Christians).

Self-harm has links to suicide, but the two are not the same. Those who attempt suicide are trying to end their life. Those who are self-harming, guided by horrific and wicked lies, are trying to make theirs better. On a deep level, those who self-harm are trying to heal themselves — through punishing themselves. They are treating one sort of pain (emotional) with another (physical). The behavior seems like a contradiction to others, but the temptation may not be as foreign as it sounds.

Imagine that you’re running late for a meeting and have lost your house keys. How might you respond? On the outside you might seem calm. But internally you can hear yourself saying: Idiot! How could I have done that? I’m so stupid. Why do I keep making the same mistakes? Berating ourselves doesn’t make the keys suddenly appear and it certainly doesn’t get us to our appointment any sooner.

If our spouses or friends spoke to us in this way, we’d challenge them. Yet we are routinely tempted to tell ourselves the same things — sometimes worse. Perhaps you can relate to self-harm more than you realized. Of course, there are degrees of self-harm; and most of us won’t qualify for a diagnosis. But as Christians, we are especially aware of and awake to brokenness and sin. We know that, apart from Christ, all sinners will seek to make life work outside of God. Self-harm is just another example of a universal problem — and not a modern example, but an ancient one.

“We didn’t have it when I was young.”
The prophets of Baal slashed themselves before their God (1 Kings 18:28). The man inhabited by demons injured himself while he lived alone among the tombs (Mark 5:1–20). The 5th century Stylites exposed themselves to the elements for decades atop pillars. Catherine of Siena, a 14th century nun, whipped herself with chains and deprived herself of food and sleep. She died of starvation, but was revered for her holiness.

The practice of self-harming as a misguided form of self-healing or self-redemption is as old as history. It’s been around since sin and shame entered the world.

“Why are they harming themselves?”
In the beginning, Adam and Eve were naked and felt no shame. As soon as they sinned, the guilt they felt produced something deep and insidious: shame. This was not mere regret over their actions, but disgust at themselves.

Shame is a powerful emotion — and it needs a powerful cloak. We see this first in Genesis 3. Adam and Eve disobey God and are ashamed when their sin is exposed. First they hide behind shrubbery, then behind excuses and accusations. The deeper their shame, the more covering they needed. Adam lashed out against Eve (and God! Genesis 3:12), because anger is often strong enough to temporarily cover shame.

We are all tempted, like Adam, to deal with shame in unhealthy and ungodly ways. And while some of us vent our anger on others, some turn it upon themselves. Like an ancient religious ritual, we lift up a sacrifice and do violence to it. We wash, prepare, and ritualize it, and we cut it up and pour out our anger upon it. We worship it and we destroy it; we sanctify it and we scapegoat it. We look to self-harm for redemption. We purge our flesh and we sacrifice it. We fetishise it and destroy it, punish it and care for it — all at the same time.

Self-harm is a human antidote to shame. As one friend told me, “Every time I cut, I was trying to save myself.” In other words, it’s a deeply spiritual problem.

How to Respond to Self-Harm
The self-harmer might look like they’re trying to die, but they’re actually trying to live. It’s not their scars that are so crippling, but the fact that they’re trying to make life work outside of Christ. It is a survival instinct wired into every one of us, whether or not we’ve harmed ourselves.

As Christians, we should be able to understand the dynamics of self-harm more than others. We recognize that, apart from sovereign grace, we are not only stuck in our sins, but we choose them (John 3:19). Self-harm is a mixture of bondage and indulgence, and only the gospel will heal its wounds.

Because of the gospel:

We don’t stand aloof from the problem. We’re all sick sinners and we’re all desperate and hopeless apart from Christ.

We don’t panic. Self-harm is nothing new and nothing beyond God’s saving power (2 Corinthians 3:5).

We don’t retreat. We are called to engage with our broken brothers and sisters in love. As churches, we partner with professionals; but we also keep pointing back to Jesus.

We don’t cast ourselves as ‘fixers.’ Self-harm is a complex issue of the heart, so the solution requires far more than telling sufferers to stop. Again, self-harm is a powerful mixture of choices and chains, so it requires both grace and truth. As we seek to help others, we recognise that recovery is often a long-term process, with backwards steps along the way. In all of this, Jesus is the rescuer, not us.

We don’t focus on ourselves. Our problems go far deeper than anything that rituals might fix. Our solution lies outside of ourselves, in Christ.

We don’t despair. The gospel has power to change and reach hearts, not just behaviors. Broken people need a Savior who is broken for them, and, wonderfully, by his wounds — his! — we are healed.

In seeking freedom from shame and self-harm, we look to Christ’s broken body, not to our own.

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Your Top Ten Questions About Bible Reading

Your Top Ten Questions About Bible Reading

Featured Book: Reading the Bible Supernaturally
God wrote a book, and its pages are full of his glory. But we cannot see his beauty on our own, with mere human eyes.

In Reading the Bible Supernaturally, John Piper aims to show us how God works through his written word when we pursue the natural act of reading the Bible, so that we experience his sight-giving power — a power that extends beyond the words on the page.

Don’t Grow Weary Doing Good

Those who genuinely “do good” will be tempted soon enough to grow weary. Give yourself to doing good for others — on God’s terms, to fulfill his calling — and it’s just a matter of time before you will be tempted to tire.

Even the apostle Paul, with the utter clarity of his calling, testified to “fighting without and fear within” (2 Corinthians 7:5). And becoming spiritually and emotionally drained was enough of a temptation in his day, that he wrote twice in his letters, Do not grow weary in doing good (Galatians 6:9; 2 Thessalonians 3:13).

Weariness can be contagious (Deuteronomy 20:8). But when we fight back, it also can work the other way: to help others persevere. God means for us not only to endure in “doing good” ourselves, but to help others “not grow weary” (1 Thessalonians 5:14).

When doing good gets tough — and it will — Paul does not simply say, “Don’t quit.” He says, “Do not grow weary.”Don’t Grow Weary Doing Good

How Not to Grow Weary
God does not rescue us from sin and death to then do nothing. He means for his people to give our lives, what precious little time we have, to “doing good.” “As we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone, and especially to those who are of the household of faith” (Galatians 6:10). That kind of doing doesn’t simply “overflow” or happen effortlessly. It takes intentionality and practice and planning. “Let our people learn to devote themselves to good works, so as to help cases of urgent need, and not be unfruitful” (Titus 3:14).

“Doing good” is not just for peaceful, convenient times in our life, but just as much for seasons of suffering and conflict. “Let those who suffer according to God’s will entrust their souls to a faithful Creator while doing good” (1 Peter 4:19; see also 1 Peter 2:15). Are we excused from “doing good” when wronged? “See that no one repays anyone evil for evil, but always seek to do good to one another and to everyone” (1 Thessalonians 5:15). How do we fight back against the darkness? “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good” (Romans 12:21). Jesus himself champions, “I say to you who hear, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you” (Luke 6:27).

The vision may be clear enough in Scripture, but how do we not grow weary in doing good when we are challenged from within and without?

1. Humbly test yourself.
First, when tempted to grow weary, ask with open hands, Am I “doing good,” on God’s terms, for others’ good and not just my own? Am I serving others, or self, with my sense of calling? When resistance comes, internally or externally, we do well to ask about the nature of the opposition:

Is this resistence a gift from God?
Are people who manifestly love me trying to helpfully redirect me?
Am I being opposed by those who aren’t defining “good” on God’s terms?
In my “doing good,” am I seeking my own glory instead of God’s (John 7:18)?
Opposition presents us with the opportunity to humble ourselves and test our labors. The temptation to weariness begins as a chance to check our own hearts. As we release our grip on what we’re doing, we can test to what degree it is “good,” and whether it might be better. Are we truly serving the needs of others, or just actualizing our own selfish desires?

2. Expectantly turn to God.
Peeling the onion of our own hearts will only get us so far. We need solid footing outside ourselves to persevere. When we feel the temptation to weariness, we have somewhere to turn — Someone to turn to — for clarity and direction and strength. We are not left to drum it up from within. We know the one who does not faint or grow weary.

Have you not known? Have you not heard?
     The Lord is the everlasting God,
the Creator of the ends of the earth.
     He does not faint or grow weary;
          his understanding is unsearchable. (Isaiah 40:28)

And not only do we have our divine, heavenly Father, but also his fully human, flesh-and-blood Son who himself “went about doing good” (Acts 10:38). Jesus faced relentless resistance. He knew weariness (John 4:6). He felt opposition — from within in Gethsemane and from without at Golgotha. We look to him “who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted” (Hebrews 12:3) — not just “not quit,” but “not grow weary.”

After humbly testing ourselves, one concrete, powerful avenue we have for not growing weary is to turn our attention to Christ. But how, specifically? When faced with weariness in our good works, how do we “consider Jesus” (Hebrews 3:1; 12:2) and draw strength from our God who “does not faint or grow weary” (Isaiah 40:28)?

3. Confidently lean on his promises.
God has given us his word that we might learn to lean on God himself. Not just generally on true ideas, concepts, and Christian slogans, but specifically on the actual words of God for us, letting all the ways God speaks to us brace us for doing good.

Hear the risen Christ say to you, through his appointed spokesman, “My beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain” (1 Corinthians 15:58). Or rehearse the very words of Jesus in this parable:

“The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground. He sleeps and rises night and day, and the seed sprouts and grows; he knows not how. The earth produces by itself, first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear. But when the grain is ripe, at once he puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come.” (Mark 4:26–29)

We humble ourselves, turn to God, open his word, and trust what he says — not what we see. We seek to readjust our hearts to his truth, not allowing the world’s appearances to steer us. We aim to lean not on our own understanding, whether self-justifying or self-doubting, but on his specific words and promises to us in the Book.

4. Patiently trust his timing.
Walking by faith in God’s promises is no magic spell to force his hand. Trusting his words doesn’t bend his arm to conform to our timing. Rather, it readies us to adjust our sense of timing to his. That is the great ground on which Paul gives his charge in Galatians 6:9: “Let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up.”

How often does our weariness stem from our own sense of “due season” instead of God’s?

God has impeccable timing. His promise to exalt us, if we humble ourselves under his mighty hand, comes with one of the most important phrases in the New Testament: “at the proper time” (1 Peter 5:6). If you are genuinely “doing good,” on God’s terms — serving others, not self — and you are discouraged by the result, or the opposition, take this promise to heart: you will reap in due season. God will exalt you at the proper time. Keep sowing faithfully. God sees. He knows. In Christ, your labor will not be in vain.

Where Doing Good Happens
Both prominent charges to not grow weary doing good (Galatians 6:9; 2 Thessalonians 3:13) are humble and out-of-the-spotlight contexts. The vast majority of “doing good” happens not in the limelight to be celebrated by thousands, but in the private, unobserved place where God’s kingdom goes forward and eventually turns the world upside down. Doing good is not like the flash and sizzle of fireworks, but the slow, organic growth of crops. Not through remotes and apps that let us feel a sense of control, but through planting and watering and waiting that forces us to trust in God.

When Christ gives us a particular calling to fulfill, he emphatically does not promise that it will come easy. In fact, it is often precisely the opposite. Difficult obstacles emerge to confirm the genuineness of our calling. The breakthrough will come not in retreat, but in enduring under trial with faith in God’s promises. We may even swell in hope as obstacles increase, anticipating that the breakthrough we need may be near at hand.

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