Continue To Do Good
Do you remember the last time you were completely exhausted? Maybe you spent your entire day or week working on a hard project. Maybe you felt depleted after helping other people in your life. Or maybe hard situations and setbacks made you feel like giving up. All of us grow tired at some point.
Paul, the writer of Galatians, knew that the people he was writing to would also become tired of the work they were doing. During Paul’s time, there was a lot of persecution and hurting people, and Paul was writing to encourage them in the work they were doing.
Inside Paul’s encouragement to the Galatians is this truth:
Even good people will tire of doing good things.
That’s why Paul encourages everyone to continue to push forward in doing good. We should continue to help people. We should continue to share the hope of Jesus with people. We should continue to try and live as God would want us to.
God knows that we’ll eventually grow weary. And when we grow tired and frustrated, we’ll probably begin to question why we’re doing any of this to begin with. (Maybe you’ve already asked yourself this.)
But Galatians 6:9 encourages us to persevere in doing good things. Similar to how a farmer must work diligently to plant his crops and wait months before the actual harvest, Paul says there will be a harvest for those who do not give up.
Just like the Christians in Galatia, we also need to persevere in living godly lives and helping those around us. If we do not give up, Scripture says there will be a reward for us. We may receive that reward during our time on earth, or in heaven—but regardless of when we receive it, we should persevere in doing good.
That means that your work matters. There is value to how you live and love others.
So spend some time today considering the good that you have done and can continue to do for others. Who can you help? Who can you share the hope of Jesus with? How can you continue to persevere in living a godly life?
If you’ve grown weary or defeated, make a commitment today to never give up. Choose to persevere through whatever season of life you’re in, knowing that there will be a harvest for those who finish well.
Look at the Fruit
Imagine you have two seeds in your hand, but you can only plant one...
One seed grows easily, but it produces ugly, terrible tasting fruit. Cultivating the other seed takes time and consistent attention—but the fruit it produces is beautiful and delicious.
Which seed would you choose to plant, water, and grow?
In Galatians 5, the apostle Paul talks about two types of fruit that our lives can produce: fruit of the flesh and fruit of the Spirit.
“The flesh” refers to our unchecked desires that pull us away from God’s Spirit. Those desires produce hate, impatience, bitterness, selfishness, chaos, anxiety, and self-indulgence—and God has no association with such things.
But when we commit our lives to Jesus, He gives us His own Spirit. The power of the Holy Spirit helps us “crucify” the desires of our flesh and put them to death. And when we crucify those desires, we create room for the Holy Spirit to produce good fruit in our lives—fruit that leads to positive ...