And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not.
Do not grow tired and give up doing good, for at its proper appointed time there will be a harvest if there is no fainting. Sowing to the Spirit is living by the Spirit and bearing its fruit in restoring the erring in meekness, bearing one another's burdens, and doing good to all, especially fellow believers, rather than sowing to the flesh to reap corruption. The reaping is everlasting and immortal life with heavenly treasure in the kingdom prepared from the foundation of the world, given by Christ to the holy whose holiness produces abundance in good works. Only those who continue faithfully without fainting will reap, so when people do not respond at once or wound those helping them, the work must still go on, for giving up before the appointed time loses the reward. Even when earnest persevering efforts seem almost fruitless and results remain unseen in this life, the work is noted in heaven and the reward cannot fail, with patient self-sacrificing dependence on God bearing fruit in due time.
Verse Words and Context
The verse lays down a plain principle of true Christianity that belongs together with restoring one overtaken in fault in meekness, bearing one another's burdens to fulfill the law of Christ, humbly proving one's own work without self-exaltation, sowing to the Spirit to reap everlasting life rather than sowing to the flesh to reap corruption, and using opportunity to do good to all, especially the household of faith. The command is not to abandon doing good through weariness, with assurance of a harvest at its proper time if one does not give up. That continuing good includes helping everyone when opportunity comes, especially fellow believers, with godliness, brotherly kindness, strengthening one another and guarding one another's interests.
Sowing to the Spirit means living by the Spirit and bearing its fruit, shown in persevering kindness that restores erring brethren and heals those broken in heart, wounded and bruised, rather than discouraging, destroying, casting them aside, or driving them to despair by proud harsh accusation. The good work especially includes doing good to everyone as opportunity offers, particularly fellow believers, and those who continue without fainting will in due season reap life everlasting. Spiritual sowing is welcoming the truth of the Word, repenting under sharp reproof, sowing true repentance, continuing in faith and in hope, and becoming sanctified and cleansed from appetite for cheapness and folly. Continuance in well-doing in overcoming means subordinating self to a different experience, accepting daily the sanctifying processes, and keeping Christ's perfection ever before the mind as the mark, which brings peace, righteousness and perfect love and makes a person a daily victor.
Reaping follows God's great law that without proper sowing of seed and tillage there will be no harvest in sheaves, in things spiritual as well as natural. Divine blessing waits for human working of the soil of the heart and industry to care for the soil while the Lord sows His seed, through breaking up fallow ground, cleansing the soil, depositing and harrowing the seed, and enduring rough searching severe discipline that breaks hard soil and stubborn clods and the determined will. The harrowing is not always pleasant and is sometimes disabling when the receiver does not sense the virtue of the Word and submit to the tilling, and rebellion must be met by continued discipline until sincere repentance and submissive continuance bring in the spiritual harvest. As a harvest requires sowing, overcoming requires earnest effort, with the light of truth revealing sinful passions to be resisted with all strength, through Christ's merits and unwearied prayer to Jesus for help against Satan's devices, doing one's part diligently and at the right time, since carelessness and neglect bring a harvest proportionate to the work expended.
People reap the harvest of what they sow: sowing patience, compassion, and love brings a harvest of those qualities and shapes character for eternity, as life on earth trains people for heaven. By contrast, faultfinding and spreading suspicion plant seeds that bring a harmful harvest, while careless choices sow seeds whose harvest must be reaped, showing actions have consequences. Every good deed is a seed sown, calling for continued effort in doing good, applied to parents' work of forming children's character through Christian living and home training, with those departed from true godliness urged to repent, begin at once, and work wholeheartedly, also in faithfully performing home duties, comparing life with Christ's, and praying for a humble sanctified mind. Christ sows His word as good seed in hearts today, and all who receive it into good honest hearts grow like a tender plant needing sunshine and shower, summer and winter, dew, frost, and wind to develop and bear fruit, and by not fainting they reap the formation of Christian character by the grace of Christ.
Doing good is sowing the seeds of truth through unselfish obedient effort in order to reap a harvest for God, to be done heartily and continued in. Those who continue without giving up reap in due time a glorious harvest of truth and a rich harvest whose full good no human mind can measure, including a harvest of souls gathered by workers who faithfully sow and do not become discouraged.
Harvest Promise and Timing
The reaping promised is everlasting life and immortal life with heavenly treasures for those who continue in Spirit-led sowing without giving up, obedience showing belonging to God's family. The reward is not to be sought as promotion in this life but is looked for when Christ exalts the sanctified to His throne, when the persevering inherit the kingdom prepared from the foundation of the world. Holiness produces right actions and abundance in good works, including self-denial, mercy, compassion and righteousness, while its absence leads to sin, and this gives reason to look beyond trials and abuses, keep believing, and labor faithfully and earnestly in humility.
Even when earnest persevering efforts seem almost fruitless and results remain unseen in this life, as if the effort were lost, the work is noted in heaven and the reward cannot fail. Patient self-sacrificing dependence on God rather than human strength bears fruit in due time if perseverance holds out, though the full good accomplished may remain unknown here. Faithful perseverance in sowing truth will bring its harvest even in difficult fields.
Unselfish unwearied toil beyond reach and knowledge still reaps in eternity, including parents and teachers training children by faith, messages of strength and hope and courage sent in loneliness and obscurity, gifts bestowed, burdens borne, labor done, seed sown that others will reap above the sower's grave, and trees planted that others will eat from. Parents, teachers, and other workers may die without seeing results, yet their efforts continue to inspire and benefit people long afterward, with children becoming a benediction and inspiration whose influence is repeated a thousandfold. Every gift leading to unselfish effort is recorded in heaven, and when providences are seen in the light of eternity the doer will behold the fruit, the outworking of every right principle and noble deed, faithfulness unsealing springs of blessing that never cease to flow, with the full action and reaction of all agencies for good set in motion as one of the studies and rewards of the heavenly school.
In due season means at the proper appointed time, ultimately when time shall be no longer, for time is short. God continually gives the great blessing of His Gift to the world, and those cooperating with Christ by learning His word and love, sharing what they learn, practicing His self-denial, dressing plainly and neatly, spending little on self, saving pennies for missionary work, gaining clearer understanding of the Word day by day and improving every opportunity to impart it, will then receive their reward. The harvest comes after glorification, when workers and those saved through persevering labor, patience, forbearance and earnest yearning for souls that would otherwise be lost are together with the Lamb sharing the Redeemer's glory, where no worker regrets the cost because the gratitude of the ransomed and the joy of seeing them redeemed make heaven more precious.
The harvest includes many souls saved as the reward of faithful work, with precious souls present before God because of faithful patient personal effort. This well-doing is the covenant duty of every member under Christ's banner to do the Saviour's work in one's own neighborhood and beyond, by steady repeated entreaties and earnest persuasions to flee to safety and to the Stronghold, fighting the battle over and over rather than praying once in haphazard fashion and declaring the work done. Such patient self-denying labor, continued with faith, earnest endeavor, prayer and united cooperation without relaxing, discouragement, separation or fainting, will be remembered with gratitude by the redeemed, and no one will regret having continued faithfully.
The harvest includes character itself, formed through patient continuing well-doing as a day-by-day lifetime work of preparation bearing fruits of righteousness. Practicing Christ's meekness and humility helps form character, with growing experience and knowledge multiplying opportunities and strengthening believers through Christ to bear responsibilities. What is sown in good works and begun on earth will be completed in the higher holier life that endures forever in the world to come.
Persevering well-doing also brings present blessings of happiness, satisfaction, clear conscience, sweet peace of Christ, and joy and courage from knowing a good work is done, with beneficence blessing both giver and receiver and humble self-sacrificing service from principle rather than changing feeling bringing peace and joy and lasting happiness by making others happy. Explaining truth with love for souls in Sabbath-school, temperance and other enlightening work makes one's own understanding clearer and broader and the truth increasingly plain and forceful, yielding a rich harvest both in the present life and at the end of the world. Helpful duties give worthwhile exercise, and persisting in obeying nature's laws despite effort and sacrifice brings gradual healing and restoration to health of body and mind, so impatience should not lead to giving up.
Now is the sowing time when every privilege and opportunity must be seized while it lasts, while probation lingers and mercy is proclaimed with hearts ready to receive the message. Because time passes swiftly toward crisis and the closing scenes, trust in the Lord is needed now more than ever, with true faithfulness as long as life is spared shown in hearts sanctified by grace, active love for God, and consistent obedience interwoven even with little things. Doing good revives the doer like a passing shower that waters, while idle hands reap only a small harvest, and older persons of experience are especially charged to care for the young and help the helpless under account to God. Labor must continue without setting a limit, without fainting when unappreciated or apparently failing since one success outweighs prior discouragements, working while strength and opportunity remain until the Master calls service to be laid down, for faithful labor has effects enduring through all ages, persecution only scattering workers to new places to continue, and the reward prepared is beyond human understanding.
Call to Persevere
Only those who keep doing good without giving up will gather the reward, for the harvest comes at its appointed time to the faithful continuer. Those laboring to help and rescue others must keep reaching out even when there is no immediate response and when those they seek to help wound them with rejection. If they persist they will reap an abundant and precious harvest, but if they quit beforehand they forfeit it.
Growing weary in doing good greatly displeases God, and He grows weary of those who grow weary of good. Weariness springs from selfish covetous traits never fully overcome, when grace softens covetousness only for a time and then its saving influence is withdrawn. Then people forget the sacrifice of Jesus to redeem them from Satan and from misery, feel that too much is required of them, and abandon generous service. Instead of expanding in benevolence they wither in selfishness, and like Judas they sell noble generous principles for a little earthly gain until they are sifted out from among God's people. Those who would gain heaven must with all energy encourage heavenly principles, use every opportunity to do good to one another, cherish unselfishness, and follow the pattern of a life marked always by disinterested benevolence with no selfish interest.
Weariness betrays itself when zeal to help save others fades, when the work is left to ministers, when burdens are avoided, and when believers withdraw into comfortable inactivity. It sets a limit to efforts to benefit others instead of working on until the Master calls the service to be laid down, waiting and watching in submission to God's will and readiness for every call of duty. The remedy is refusal to yield to idleness and discouragement, remaining faithful in assigned labor through the grace God supplies, which prepares workers to share as fellow workers in a harvest of infinite blessedness.
Continuance must be daily and steady, not by fits and starts. Each task completed gives way to another according to ability, and repeated service in small duties is valuable to God and brings success and a good report even through good or evil report. This persevering continuous burden includes thinking of regions beyond and distributing means to strengthen young causes, build churches, and supply facilities where there are none rather than centering money in favored localities, and in this the Lord's blessing is received. Prayerful watchful obedience to Christ's example in promoting the knowledge of Jesus forms Godlike character and prepares for entrance into His everlasting kingdom.
Strength to continue does not come from reliance on one's own strength but from dependence on God and union with Christ. Humility and holiness bring peace and strength for faithful service, and serving from inward principle rather than changing feelings brings peace and joy, with lasting happiness found especially in doing good to others and making them happy. Eternal life is worth lifelong untiring effort, and the promise of reaping in due season if there is no giving up gives reason to persevere without weariness or discouragement. Jesus lives and pleads and will not leave or forsake those who entrust their souls to Him, and they are to take courage and look to Him as their eternal reward. This endurance is sustained by praying every day for strength from above greater than human strength, and as a farmer must sow to expect a crop so faith must be active in God's work, overcoming through Christ's help.
Unwearying continuance in right doing marks true conversion. It is loyalty to God and to Christ shown in unsuspected purity, habits of strictest temperance, daily study of the Word, and earnest faithfulness to duty, growing up to full stature in Christ as Head. Such doers act from real inward principle and endure, unlike spurious converts produced by excitement and feeling who are one thing today and another tomorrow and fail when temptation sets inclination against principle.
Perseverance calls for good courage in the Lord and continual striving for the victory without fainting, for reaping will surely follow. It works faithfully with courage through trials, holds fast to Jesus and to God's promises, and refuses discouragement because truth will triumph and the persevering will share and prevail in that triumph. It meets trial with bravery and cheerfulness that carries joy and courage into other lives, speaking right pure true words full of sympathy and love and doing right actions that help and bless the weak. Even in severe trials and amid difficulty, inconvenience, and sacrifice, it keeps encouraging others and sowing words that will spring up and bear fruit while making trust in the Redeemer visible and seeking day by day greater power to help those around.
Strength to Continue
Weariness in doing good is forbidden because heavenly helpers cooperate with believers in fighting the battle of life, so perseverance does not stand alone. Christ and the angels work with every faithful effort in the home, the church, and the world, and the unfainting are assured a harvest in due season. Even when the outcome is unseen, indolence and discouragement over the outlook must be refused, with life, energies, and soul put wholly into the committed work, for a witnessing angel stands beside the laborer and the books of record reflect words, works, and character as faithfully as a polished plate reproduces features. Through given grace, ceasing to do evil and learning to do well prepares a laborer together with God to become a reaper of a golden harvest of infinite blessings.
The command rests on coming out from the world under the pledge of baptism to the service of God in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Heaven answers compliance with a pledge of life to those who seek the things above where Christ sits at the right hand of God. Those baptized into Christ have enlisted as laborers together with God to make His will known to those perishing in sin, and must therefore search the Scriptures diligently to learn His will and do it heartily, sowing truth as seed in hearts in order to reap a harvest for God. The promised reaping for those who do not faint is doing good unto all as opportunity comes, especially unto those of the household of faith. Even when the heavens are as brass, perseverance holds by trust like Paul's deliverance from unreasonable and wicked men, saying though He slay me yet will I trust Him, with self crucified and the love of God shining in words and works.
Christ's own ministry models this perseverance, for despite physical exhaustion He continued healing, teaching the way to eternal life, and sacrificing so that light and truth could reach the world. His followers are therefore urged not to grow weary in doing good but to serve through living faith that works by love and purifies the soul. To such workers God promises power to win a glorious victory.
God reads every purpose of the heart and knows every thought, and He reviews the workers' work without strife over who shall occupy the highest place. He endorses what is worthy when done to the honor and glory of God, causing it to increase in knowledge and improved character as workers strive to meet the will of Christ and do their best in every line. He does not pass over the faithful who choose to suffer affliction with His people rather than enjoy self-indulgence and the pleasures of sin, but gives them the due-season harvest for unfainting good, including treating the talent of means as sacred to help God's children, dealing justly, and refusing to spend the Lord's money lavishly to exalt ambitious plans and monuments to self or to exalt one worker while poor, burdened, suffering fellow workers are left unappreciated and unaided. Even feeble and weak workers who put brain and soul into their work will gather by and by a precious future harvest, opposite the eternal loss of those who refuse to improve their talents.
From the cross to the immortal crown the Christian life is earnest work, a battle and a march requiring wrestling with inbred sin and warfare against outward wrong. Diligence to make calling and election sure is required in active, earnest, fervent, cheerful, joyful service whose example awakens in sinners desire for the Fountain of life, while slothful, languid profession never secures an abundant entrance into the kingdom. Victory over selfishness, defects of character, and sinful passions revealed by the light of truth is possible through Jesus Christ now, for Satan is battling for souls, but delay and half-hearted effort can leave character fixed in the wrong direction. As a harvest requires sowing, overcoming requires earnest effort with all one's strength and unwearied prayer to Jesus for help against Satan's devices through Christ's merits. Peace in Christ is found in learning meekness and lowliness from Him and opening the heart to the Sun of Righteousness, which is worth more than all earthly treasures, and those who do their best for God and their fellow people will enter heaven with triumph at last.
Labor in Gospel Mission
Gospel work calls for continued effort as long as probation lasts and mercy is still proclaimed, laboring wherever there is ability to work and hearts ready to receive, until heaven declares it finished. Persecution does not end the work but scatters workers to new places where they continue it, and each completed task gives way to further work that remains to be done.
Missionary sowing requires the mind of Christ and His example of continual sacrifice for the good of others. It means sowing the seed of truth carefully and selflessly, with self-denial, unselfishness, earnestness, anxiety and perseverance, trusting God to quicken the seed into life. The seed may lie dormant for a time, but God's grace awakens it in the heart until it springs up and bears fruit to His glory in the salvation of others, with missionaries laboring together with Christ and heavenly angels. Even in difficult fields, patient self-sacrificing effort that depends on God rather than human strength bears fruit, though the full good may remain unknown in this life.
Workers should keep laboring in new and unpromising fields without losing heart or becoming quickly discouraged, continuing where help is most needed even when few respond and the effort is difficult. God gives strength for the labor, and continued untiring soul-saving effort bears fruit in due time if they do not give up. Abandoning the field leaves it to the enemy, and those who do not endure the testing may be replaced by others who take up the work.
Faithful missionary work belongs in every place and not only a few, by personal effort for those outside the fold and by public and private efforts including medical missionary work. It prepares the way of the Lord by establishing memorials such as sanitariums in prominent places, large cities and the home field, gathering men and women from the highways and byways, entering new unworked places, proclaiming the last message, setting churches in order, closing unbelief, and making straight paths so the weak are not turned aside amid increasing deception. It also means arousing sleeping churches to obey the truth and warn a doomed world, gathering every ray of light amid moral darkness with faith joined to works. Even where little success first appears, perseverance is required because the Lord opens the way and gives signal success with sinners won to the Saviour.
Every member standing under Christ's banner has entered covenant relation with God to do the Saviour's work and must not grow tired in that good work, especially in steady patient repeated personal labor for perishing souls in one's own neighborhood and beyond. This is not random haphazard effort, such as praying once for a repentant drunkard and declaring him saved, but fighting the battle over and over with faithful entreaties and earnest persuasions to flee to safety. Kindness, love and Christlike tenderness prepare hearts as gospel sowing, and patient self-denying labor will be remembered with gratitude by the redeemed. In due season, when the redeemed stand before God, precious souls will be present because of such efforts, and those who labored together with God will receive their reward with no regret for having continued faithfully.
A specific application is steadily and perseveringly continuing to sell Christ's Object Lessons to relieve school debts, remove them, create a fund for schools in needy fields, and advance the Berrien Springs school and its buildings, a work not limited to the special effort of 1900 and 1901. That well-doing is showing the book to friends and neighbors and telling them of its instruction and purpose, taken up with faith, sanctified effort, much prayer and cooperation with God. After effort and trial a blessed result to God's glory will be seen, bringing the peace of Christ, joy and courage from knowing a good work is done, and an experience fitting for more successful work for the Master.
Related service includes sisters distributing Christian literature without weariness when connected with God, gaining precious experience and training as workers by doing what they can for others. It includes canvassers putting life, energies and soul into the work and living wholly for God without yielding to indolence or discouragement over the outlook, even when the outcome is unseen, with a witnessing angel beside them and the record reflecting words, works and character. Through given grace, ceasing to do evil and learning to do well prepares a laborer together with God to become a reaper of a golden harvest of infinite blessings. It also includes continuing to give toward the work in Washington rather than letting offerings dwindle.
Faithful workers for souls must keep working on with faith in God, earnest endeavor, prayer and united cooperation without relaxing, discouragement, separation or fainting, and such persevering labor will reap its harvest with many souls saved as its reward. Persevering together in practical service brings spiritual growth, increased ability and souls saved, and faithfully using and applying what has been learned develops wisdom and knowledge with abundant temporal and spiritual results. This includes men who carry forward the Lord's work in difficult places, laboring far beyond strength for small wages with strict economy and sacrifice, bearing the disagreeable burden and heat of the day to establish a school, a sanitarium or some other interest, laboring and praying and striving with all strength without giving up or losing courage. Such builders should be upheld with words of cheer and encouragement rather than inconsiderately replaced by others supposed to do better.
Weariness in doing good hinders soul-saving, so workers need enduring patience, love, sincere faith and acceptance of discipline and spiritual training, since mere pious seeming and good intentions are not enough. Discouragement when efforts are ignored, seem fruitless, are poorly appreciated, or meet rebuffs, sneers and contempt is no reason for inactivity, despondency or return to self-caring lives, which receive no heavenly reward, for each will be judged according to works. Patient painstaking effort and courage are required even when results are not immediate, and even one grateful response or a small number rightly benefited shows faithful work bears fruit and makes the labor worthwhile, with one success outweighing prior discouragements.
Training Children and Youth
Parents are taught by this verse to persevere in the daily work of training children and not become discouraged when improvement is slower than hoped, continuing patient instruction and training as seeds that will bear good fruit in due time if they do not give up. They are to keep sowing good instruction and example with prayer and not quit when results are not immediate, because faithful labor brings its harvest in due season. Faithfully educating children will in due time show its fruit in seeing them grow into Christian men and women.
This training of children must be continuous patient work that does not tire of doing good, taken up bravely and cheerfully as a life duty laid by God on parents, not to be neglected or handed to others. It requires parents first to practice self-control themselves and to govern with love and justice side by side, enforcing prompt obedience while guiding the will and restraining the passions. The good work is not vigorous effort one day and neglect the next, nor eagerness for some great act or great sacrifice, but unceasing care in the little things of everyday life, hourly pruning and training of wayward tendencies, and giving instruction, reproof, and encouragement little by little as needed. It forbids expecting children to correct faults and form right character all at once or to reach maturity at a bound, and forbids becoming disheartened when hopes are not immediately realized. Mothers especially are to make the education of young children their highest aim, keeping habits and dress simple to have time to make them happy and lead them to cheerful willing obedience, making the Word of God the standard against worldly fashions and preparing the soil of the heart for truth to be sown.
Those who persevere without quitting will at the proper time gather a harvest of useful beautiful character formed after the Divine Pattern, built by successive steps, seeing children grow into Christian men and Christian women whose future happiness depends on early training. Parents who keep faithfully training their children in kindness and patience will reap an abundant harvest as surely as a farmer who sows good seed in his field reaps a crop, even when the teaching seems like time and effort thrown away like seed thrown on the ground. Faithful effort in guiding children will bring reward in due time if they do not lose heart or grow weary in doing what is right, even to bringing their children to God to receive immortal life.
Parents and church workers should keep patiently sowing good seed through loving instruction, encouragement, and steady effort, even when they do not see results at once, continuing to work in faith while waiting and hoping for God's salvation because labor will bear fruit if they do not give up. Steady loving instruction and care may not bring immediate results, but they are to continue in faith waiting for God's saving work in its proper season. Thoughtful earnest living in childhood and youth, taught through simple clearly understood lessons from God's Word and their own experience learning to conform life to the highest standard, can yield a rich harvest of good.
Students do good by encouraging and sustaining their teachers rather than tempting or discouraging them, and are urged to persist in this course as those who sow to the Spirit and do good to others when opportunity comes, since efforts will bring a harvest in due season if they do not give up. The seeds sown through a student's choices and influence can produce a harvest for heaven, for school life is a favorable time to live by God's principles and help direct others to Jesus. In teaching, faithfully sowing and cultivating the truth in children and youth is not in vain, trusting they may come to love and obey God, follow Christ, receive forgiveness and the Spirit's impressions, and grow in godly character. A teacher's faithful efforts may sometimes seem fruitless, but patient persevering work for good will be rewarded in due time, with noble characters and useful lives repaying toil and care.
Patiently guiding and caring for tempted and erring youth may be trying, but workers must not grow weary or give up in doing good, keeping on serving with love and encouragement in the trust that heaven's angels and heavenly beings work with each effort and that faithful effort will not fail. Efforts to do good such as supporting an afflicted brother and caring for his children will not be in vain, calling for continued service without failing or becoming discouraged. Sustaining afflicted or aged workers who have served faithfully is an example of this continuing duty not to tire in doing good because of reaping in due time if there is no giving up, and patient labor in the Lord's work will not fail.
Generosity and Daily Living
Well-doing with means treats money as a sacred trust to help God's children, dealing justly and refusing to spend the Lord's money lavishly to exalt ambitious plans and build monuments to self. It refuses to exalt one worker while poor, burdened, suffering fellow workers carrying heavy loads are left unappreciated and unaided, for God reads every purpose and thought and gives the due-season harvest to faithful ones who choose affliction with His people over self-indulgence rather than passing them over. Continuing without weariness means acting with Christlike kindness rather than sharpness or close dealing even amid difficulties. It means cooperating with Christ in doing good to souls and bodies after His example of bringing health to bodies to reach souls, valuing people as He valued them in giving His life for them, with every follower doing his given Christian duty in work nigh and afar off and making the best use of entrusted means as the Lord's money.
Giving to support missionary work must not tire despite repeated appeals and call after call, for God provides blessings and fruitful provision and faithful service has its reward. Faithful giving from entrusted means will bear fruit in due time if there is no giving up. That self-denying good includes dressing plainly and neatly, spending as little as possible on self, saving pennies for missionary work in a self-denial box, gaining daily a clearer understanding of the Word and improving every opportunity to impart it while cooperating with the Lord Jesus and learning His love, because God constantly imparts the great blessing of His Gift and time is short until time shall be no longer when the unfainting receive reward. It includes denying self to help the poor and needy, especially by supporting schools where Black people learn to read and write and learn of Jesus, with children kept taking part in the work. It includes continuing in self-sacrifice and teaching children to give even small amounts, for every penny is needed and reward is according to purity of motive so that even a gift as small as the widow's mite is noticed by the Lord.
Those prospered of God and conveniently settled must not weary in well-doing but must carry the burden of other fields perseveringly and continuously, not by fits and starts, thinking of regions beyond and distributing means to strengthen the young cause in new fields and to build churches and provide facilities where there are none rather than centering money in favored localities, and in this they receive the Lord's blessing. Those who have given money nobly to carry God's work must not become weary even when call after call comes, for God keeps giving gift upon gift with dew, sunshine, and showers making fields fruitful. Using wealth to advance truth and laboring to help people come to Christ and continue in faith belongs to persevering Christian life that leads to a rich reward in due time through growth in grace. Investing in God's cause and sacrificing for its advancement shows faith in its ultimate triumph and brings a precious eternal harvest far above earthly gain, while idle hands reap only small harvest.
Generous well-doing, especially in giving means and support for God's work, fails when selfish and covetous traits are not fully overcome. Grace and truth may soften covetousness for a time, but without entire victory Satan withers every noble generous principle when saving influence is withdrawn. Those who grow weary then feel too much is required of them because they forget the great sacrifice Jesus made to redeem them from Satan's power and hopeless misery.
Doing good to one another without ceasing includes showing godliness and brotherly kindness, strengthening one another and guarding one another's interests. Cultivating gentleness and having Christ's peace in the heart is both privilege and duty, and living as peacemakers and followers of Christ sows precious seed producing a harvest unto eternal life. Cultivating unselfish interest in others' welfare sows seeds of kindness reaping love, tenderness, and thoughtfulness in associates, for manifesting friendship and good will wins affection and good will, and self-forgetful readiness to assist brings accommodation and assistance in return.
In the home, not growing weary means persevering in love, truth, kindness, and forbearance in daily relationships, with reaping in due season for those who do not give up. It means doing good to all by faithfully performing home duties and comparing life with Christ's while praying for a humble sanctified mind, rather than faultfinding and spreading suspicion that plant seeds bringing a harmful harvest. The sincere Christian continues faithfully in doing right without weariness and grows toward the full stature of Christ.
Pure religion opens the eyes to the helpless, afflicted, and needy around, becoming acquainted with them and refusing to hide from them or shut out their needs, but doing all possible to help as proof of religion untainted with selfishness or corruption in aid of the great plan of salvation, without fear of good works and without weariness, sure of reaping in due season without fainting. It keeps abounding in the Lord's work and walking and working by faith, for God alone gives strength for each day's important responsibilities and weariness in doing good must not take hold. It works while strength and opportunity last, enduring reproach without faltering and devoting self to God's service in hope of final approval and reward. It labors with long patience and noblest effort to reap the fruit of toil on the way to heaven. It meets effort, tears, and hardship in learning life's lessons of duty and happiness without faltering or weariness, persevering in right to progress and prepare for life with holy angels. It toils zealously without giving up even while carrying families, home cares, anxieties, and heavy burdens, learning through effort and hardship, laboring with patience and noblest effort, encouraging the faithful to continue, warning not to let the weak be led astray, and holding on in faithful work.
Churches and teachers cooperate in spiritual tillage without weariness, sowing righteousness with hope of reaping unto eternal life, and even when meeting perversity, thwarting, evil hearts of unbelief, and stubborn soil where fallow ground must be broken up, they do not pause in doubt, fail, or grow discouraged but prosecute the labor as workers together with God, trusting not in self while God plows, sows, moistens, and waters through them. Continuing without weariness in a life of good works means using knowledge of truth not to quarrel but to be light-bearers persuading men to accept it, sowing in meekness and faith in hearts of all around for whom Christ died seeds bringing fruit unto righteousness according to ability given, surely gathering the harvest at the right time without giving up.
Do not grow tired and give up doing good, for at its proper appointed time there will be a harvest if there is no fainting. Sowing to the Spirit is living by the Spirit and bearing its fruit in restoring the erring in meekness, bearing one another's burdens, and doing good to all, especially fellow believers, rather than sowing to the flesh to reap corruption. The reaping is everlasting and immortal life with heavenly treasure in the kingdom prepared from the foundation of the world, given by Christ to the holy whose holiness produces abundance in good works. Only those who continue faithfully without fainting will reap, so when people do not respond at once or wound those helping them, the work must still go on, for giving up before the appointed time loses the reward. Even when earnest persevering efforts seem almost fruitless and results remain unseen in this life, the work is noted in heaven and the reward cannot fail, with patient self-sacrificing dependence on God bearing fruit in due time.
Verse Words and Context
The verse lays down a plain principle of true Christianity that belongs together with restoring one overtaken in fault in meekness, bearing one another's burdens to fulfill the law of Christ, humbly proving one's own work without self-exaltation, sowing to the Spirit to reap everlasting life rather than sowing to the flesh to reap corruption, and using opportunity to do good to all, especially the household of faith. The command is not to abandon doing good through weariness, with assurance of a harvest at its proper time if one does not give up. That continuing good includes helping everyone when opportunity comes, especially fellow believers, with godliness, brotherly kindness, strengthening one another and guarding one another's interests.
Sowing to the Spirit means living by the Spirit and bearing its fruit, shown in persevering kindness that restores erring brethren and heals those broken in heart, wounded and bruised, rather than discouraging, destroying, casting them aside, or driving them to despair by proud harsh accusation. The good work especially includes doing good to everyone as opportunity offers, particularly fellow believers, and those who continue without fainting will in due season reap life everlasting. Spiritual sowing is welcoming the truth of the Word, repenting under sharp reproof, sowing true repentance, continuing in faith and in hope, and becoming sanctified and cleansed from appetite for cheapness and folly. Continuance in well-doing in overcoming means subordinating self to a different experience, accepting daily the sanctifying processes, and keeping Christ's perfection ever before the mind as the mark, which brings peace, righteousness and perfect love and makes a person a daily victor.
Reaping follows God's great law that without proper sowing of seed and tillage there will be no harvest in sheaves, in things spiritual as well as natural. Divine blessing waits for human working of the soil of the heart and industry to care for the soil while the Lord sows His seed, through breaking up fallow ground, cleansing the soil, depositing and harrowing the seed, and enduring rough searching severe discipline that breaks hard soil and stubborn clods and the determined will. The harrowing is not always pleasant and is sometimes disabling when the receiver does not sense the virtue of the Word and submit to the tilling, and rebellion must be met by continued discipline until sincere repentance and submissive continuance bring in the spiritual harvest. As a harvest requires sowing, overcoming requires earnest effort, with the light of truth revealing sinful passions to be resisted with all strength, through Christ's merits and unwearied prayer to Jesus for help against Satan's devices, doing one's part diligently and at the right time, since carelessness and neglect bring a harvest proportionate to the work expended.
People reap the harvest of what they sow: sowing patience, compassion, and love brings a harvest of those qualities and shapes character for eternity, as life on earth trains people for heaven. By contrast, faultfinding and spreading suspicion plant seeds that bring a harmful harvest, while careless choices sow seeds whose harvest must be reaped, showing actions have consequences. Every good deed is a seed sown, calling for continued effort in doing good, applied to parents' work of forming children's character through Christian living and home training, with those departed from true godliness urged to repent, begin at once, and work wholeheartedly, also in faithfully performing home duties, comparing life with Christ's, and praying for a humble sanctified mind. Christ sows His word as good seed in hearts today, and all who receive it into good honest hearts grow like a tender plant needing sunshine and shower, summer and winter, dew, frost, and wind to develop and bear fruit, and by not fainting they reap the formation of Christian character by the grace of Christ.
Doing good is sowing the seeds of truth through unselfish obedient effort in order to reap a harvest for God, to be done heartily and continued in. Those who continue without giving up reap in due time a glorious harvest of truth and a rich harvest whose full good no human mind can measure, including a harvest of souls gathered by workers who faithfully sow and do not become discouraged.
Harvest Promise and Timing
The reaping promised is everlasting life and immortal life with heavenly treasures for those who continue in Spirit-led sowing without giving up, obedience showing belonging to God's family. The reward is not to be sought as promotion in this life but is looked for when Christ exalts the sanctified to His throne, when the persevering inherit the kingdom prepared from the foundation of the world. Holiness produces right actions and abundance in good works, including self-denial, mercy, compassion and righteousness, while its absence leads to sin, and this gives reason to look beyond trials and abuses, keep believing, and labor faithfully and earnestly in humility.
Even when earnest persevering efforts seem almost fruitless and results remain unseen in this life, as if the effort were lost, the work is noted in heaven and the reward cannot fail. Patient self-sacrificing dependence on God rather than human strength bears fruit in due time if perseverance holds out, though the full good accomplished may remain unknown here. Faithful perseverance in sowing truth will bring its harvest even in difficult fields.
Unselfish unwearied toil beyond reach and knowledge still reaps in eternity, including parents and teachers training children by faith, messages of strength and hope and courage sent in loneliness and obscurity, gifts bestowed, burdens borne, labor done, seed sown that others will reap above the sower's grave, and trees planted that others will eat from. Parents, teachers, and other workers may die without seeing results, yet their efforts continue to inspire and benefit people long afterward, with children becoming a benediction and inspiration whose influence is repeated a thousandfold. Every gift leading to unselfish effort is recorded in heaven, and when providences are seen in the light of eternity the doer will behold the fruit, the outworking of every right principle and noble deed, faithfulness unsealing springs of blessing that never cease to flow, with the full action and reaction of all agencies for good set in motion as one of the studies and rewards of the heavenly school.
In due season means at the proper appointed time, ultimately when time shall be no longer, for time is short. God continually gives the great blessing of His Gift to the world, and those cooperating with Christ by learning His word and love, sharing what they learn, practicing His self-denial, dressing plainly and neatly, spending little on self, saving pennies for missionary work, gaining clearer understanding of the Word day by day and improving every opportunity to impart it, will then receive their reward. The harvest comes after glorification, when workers and those saved through persevering labor, patience, forbearance and earnest yearning for souls that would otherwise be lost are together with the Lamb sharing the Redeemer's glory, where no worker regrets the cost because the gratitude of the ransomed and the joy of seeing them redeemed make heaven more precious.
The harvest includes many souls saved as the reward of faithful work, with precious souls present before God because of faithful patient personal effort. This well-doing is the covenant duty of every member under Christ's banner to do the Saviour's work in one's own neighborhood and beyond, by steady repeated entreaties and earnest persuasions to flee to safety and to the Stronghold, fighting the battle over and over rather than praying once in haphazard fashion and declaring the work done. Such patient self-denying labor, continued with faith, earnest endeavor, prayer and united cooperation without relaxing, discouragement, separation or fainting, will be remembered with gratitude by the redeemed, and no one will regret having continued faithfully.
The harvest includes character itself, formed through patient continuing well-doing as a day-by-day lifetime work of preparation bearing fruits of righteousness. Practicing Christ's meekness and humility helps form character, with growing experience and knowledge multiplying opportunities and strengthening believers through Christ to bear responsibilities. What is sown in good works and begun on earth will be completed in the higher holier life that endures forever in the world to come.
Persevering well-doing also brings present blessings of happiness, satisfaction, clear conscience, sweet peace of Christ, and joy and courage from knowing a good work is done, with beneficence blessing both giver and receiver and humble self-sacrificing service from principle rather than changing feeling bringing peace and joy and lasting happiness by making others happy. Explaining truth with love for souls in Sabbath-school, temperance and other enlightening work makes one's own understanding clearer and broader and the truth increasingly plain and forceful, yielding a rich harvest both in the present life and at the end of the world. Helpful duties give worthwhile exercise, and persisting in obeying nature's laws despite effort and sacrifice brings gradual healing and restoration to health of body and mind, so impatience should not lead to giving up.
Now is the sowing time when every privilege and opportunity must be seized while it lasts, while probation lingers and mercy is proclaimed with hearts ready to receive the message. Because time passes swiftly toward crisis and the closing scenes, trust in the Lord is needed now more than ever, with true faithfulness as long as life is spared shown in hearts sanctified by grace, active love for God, and consistent obedience interwoven even with little things. Doing good revives the doer like a passing shower that waters, while idle hands reap only a small harvest, and older persons of experience are especially charged to care for the young and help the helpless under account to God. Labor must continue without setting a limit, without fainting when unappreciated or apparently failing since one success outweighs prior discouragements, working while strength and opportunity remain until the Master calls service to be laid down, for faithful labor has effects enduring through all ages, persecution only scattering workers to new places to continue, and the reward prepared is beyond human understanding.
Call to Persevere
Only those who keep doing good without giving up will gather the reward, for the harvest comes at its appointed time to the faithful continuer. Those laboring to help and rescue others must keep reaching out even when there is no immediate response and when those they seek to help wound them with rejection. If they persist they will reap an abundant and precious harvest, but if they quit beforehand they forfeit it.
Growing weary in doing good greatly displeases God, and He grows weary of those who grow weary of good. Weariness springs from selfish covetous traits never fully overcome, when grace softens covetousness only for a time and then its saving influence is withdrawn. Then people forget the sacrifice of Jesus to redeem them from Satan and from misery, feel that too much is required of them, and abandon generous service. Instead of expanding in benevolence they wither in selfishness, and like Judas they sell noble generous principles for a little earthly gain until they are sifted out from among God's people. Those who would gain heaven must with all energy encourage heavenly principles, use every opportunity to do good to one another, cherish unselfishness, and follow the pattern of a life marked always by disinterested benevolence with no selfish interest.
Weariness betrays itself when zeal to help save others fades, when the work is left to ministers, when burdens are avoided, and when believers withdraw into comfortable inactivity. It sets a limit to efforts to benefit others instead of working on until the Master calls the service to be laid down, waiting and watching in submission to God's will and readiness for every call of duty. The remedy is refusal to yield to idleness and discouragement, remaining faithful in assigned labor through the grace God supplies, which prepares workers to share as fellow workers in a harvest of infinite blessedness.
Continuance must be daily and steady, not by fits and starts. Each task completed gives way to another according to ability, and repeated service in small duties is valuable to God and brings success and a good report even through good or evil report. This persevering continuous burden includes thinking of regions beyond and distributing means to strengthen young causes, build churches, and supply facilities where there are none rather than centering money in favored localities, and in this the Lord's blessing is received. Prayerful watchful obedience to Christ's example in promoting the knowledge of Jesus forms Godlike character and prepares for entrance into His everlasting kingdom.
Strength to continue does not come from reliance on one's own strength but from dependence on God and union with Christ. Humility and holiness bring peace and strength for faithful service, and serving from inward principle rather than changing feelings brings peace and joy, with lasting happiness found especially in doing good to others and making them happy. Eternal life is worth lifelong untiring effort, and the promise of reaping in due season if there is no giving up gives reason to persevere without weariness or discouragement. Jesus lives and pleads and will not leave or forsake those who entrust their souls to Him, and they are to take courage and look to Him as their eternal reward. This endurance is sustained by praying every day for strength from above greater than human strength, and as a farmer must sow to expect a crop so faith must be active in God's work, overcoming through Christ's help.
Unwearying continuance in right doing marks true conversion. It is loyalty to God and to Christ shown in unsuspected purity, habits of strictest temperance, daily study of the Word, and earnest faithfulness to duty, growing up to full stature in Christ as Head. Such doers act from real inward principle and endure, unlike spurious converts produced by excitement and feeling who are one thing today and another tomorrow and fail when temptation sets inclination against principle.
Perseverance calls for good courage in the Lord and continual striving for the victory without fainting, for reaping will surely follow. It works faithfully with courage through trials, holds fast to Jesus and to God's promises, and refuses discouragement because truth will triumph and the persevering will share and prevail in that triumph. It meets trial with bravery and cheerfulness that carries joy and courage into other lives, speaking right pure true words full of sympathy and love and doing right actions that help and bless the weak. Even in severe trials and amid difficulty, inconvenience, and sacrifice, it keeps encouraging others and sowing words that will spring up and bear fruit while making trust in the Redeemer visible and seeking day by day greater power to help those around.
Strength to Continue
Weariness in doing good is forbidden because heavenly helpers cooperate with believers in fighting the battle of life, so perseverance does not stand alone. Christ and the angels work with every faithful effort in the home, the church, and the world, and the unfainting are assured a harvest in due season. Even when the outcome is unseen, indolence and discouragement over the outlook must be refused, with life, energies, and soul put wholly into the committed work, for a witnessing angel stands beside the laborer and the books of record reflect words, works, and character as faithfully as a polished plate reproduces features. Through given grace, ceasing to do evil and learning to do well prepares a laborer together with God to become a reaper of a golden harvest of infinite blessings.
The command rests on coming out from the world under the pledge of baptism to the service of God in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Heaven answers compliance with a pledge of life to those who seek the things above where Christ sits at the right hand of God. Those baptized into Christ have enlisted as laborers together with God to make His will known to those perishing in sin, and must therefore search the Scriptures diligently to learn His will and do it heartily, sowing truth as seed in hearts in order to reap a harvest for God. The promised reaping for those who do not faint is doing good unto all as opportunity comes, especially unto those of the household of faith. Even when the heavens are as brass, perseverance holds by trust like Paul's deliverance from unreasonable and wicked men, saying though He slay me yet will I trust Him, with self crucified and the love of God shining in words and works.
Christ's own ministry models this perseverance, for despite physical exhaustion He continued healing, teaching the way to eternal life, and sacrificing so that light and truth could reach the world. His followers are therefore urged not to grow weary in doing good but to serve through living faith that works by love and purifies the soul. To such workers God promises power to win a glorious victory.
God reads every purpose of the heart and knows every thought, and He reviews the workers' work without strife over who shall occupy the highest place. He endorses what is worthy when done to the honor and glory of God, causing it to increase in knowledge and improved character as workers strive to meet the will of Christ and do their best in every line. He does not pass over the faithful who choose to suffer affliction with His people rather than enjoy self-indulgence and the pleasures of sin, but gives them the due-season harvest for unfainting good, including treating the talent of means as sacred to help God's children, dealing justly, and refusing to spend the Lord's money lavishly to exalt ambitious plans and monuments to self or to exalt one worker while poor, burdened, suffering fellow workers are left unappreciated and unaided. Even feeble and weak workers who put brain and soul into their work will gather by and by a precious future harvest, opposite the eternal loss of those who refuse to improve their talents.
From the cross to the immortal crown the Christian life is earnest work, a battle and a march requiring wrestling with inbred sin and warfare against outward wrong. Diligence to make calling and election sure is required in active, earnest, fervent, cheerful, joyful service whose example awakens in sinners desire for the Fountain of life, while slothful, languid profession never secures an abundant entrance into the kingdom. Victory over selfishness, defects of character, and sinful passions revealed by the light of truth is possible through Jesus Christ now, for Satan is battling for souls, but delay and half-hearted effort can leave character fixed in the wrong direction. As a harvest requires sowing, overcoming requires earnest effort with all one's strength and unwearied prayer to Jesus for help against Satan's devices through Christ's merits. Peace in Christ is found in learning meekness and lowliness from Him and opening the heart to the Sun of Righteousness, which is worth more than all earthly treasures, and those who do their best for God and their fellow people will enter heaven with triumph at last.
Labor in Gospel Mission
Gospel work calls for continued effort as long as probation lasts and mercy is still proclaimed, laboring wherever there is ability to work and hearts ready to receive, until heaven declares it finished. Persecution does not end the work but scatters workers to new places where they continue it, and each completed task gives way to further work that remains to be done.
Missionary sowing requires the mind of Christ and His example of continual sacrifice for the good of others. It means sowing the seed of truth carefully and selflessly, with self-denial, unselfishness, earnestness, anxiety and perseverance, trusting God to quicken the seed into life. The seed may lie dormant for a time, but God's grace awakens it in the heart until it springs up and bears fruit to His glory in the salvation of others, with missionaries laboring together with Christ and heavenly angels. Even in difficult fields, patient self-sacrificing effort that depends on God rather than human strength bears fruit, though the full good may remain unknown in this life.
Workers should keep laboring in new and unpromising fields without losing heart or becoming quickly discouraged, continuing where help is most needed even when few respond and the effort is difficult. God gives strength for the labor, and continued untiring soul-saving effort bears fruit in due time if they do not give up. Abandoning the field leaves it to the enemy, and those who do not endure the testing may be replaced by others who take up the work.
Faithful missionary work belongs in every place and not only a few, by personal effort for those outside the fold and by public and private efforts including medical missionary work. It prepares the way of the Lord by establishing memorials such as sanitariums in prominent places, large cities and the home field, gathering men and women from the highways and byways, entering new unworked places, proclaiming the last message, setting churches in order, closing unbelief, and making straight paths so the weak are not turned aside amid increasing deception. It also means arousing sleeping churches to obey the truth and warn a doomed world, gathering every ray of light amid moral darkness with faith joined to works. Even where little success first appears, perseverance is required because the Lord opens the way and gives signal success with sinners won to the Saviour.
Every member standing under Christ's banner has entered covenant relation with God to do the Saviour's work and must not grow tired in that good work, especially in steady patient repeated personal labor for perishing souls in one's own neighborhood and beyond. This is not random haphazard effort, such as praying once for a repentant drunkard and declaring him saved, but fighting the battle over and over with faithful entreaties and earnest persuasions to flee to safety. Kindness, love and Christlike tenderness prepare hearts as gospel sowing, and patient self-denying labor will be remembered with gratitude by the redeemed. In due season, when the redeemed stand before God, precious souls will be present because of such efforts, and those who labored together with God will receive their reward with no regret for having continued faithfully.
A specific application is steadily and perseveringly continuing to sell Christ's Object Lessons to relieve school debts, remove them, create a fund for schools in needy fields, and advance the Berrien Springs school and its buildings, a work not limited to the special effort of 1900 and 1901. That well-doing is showing the book to friends and neighbors and telling them of its instruction and purpose, taken up with faith, sanctified effort, much prayer and cooperation with God. After effort and trial a blessed result to God's glory will be seen, bringing the peace of Christ, joy and courage from knowing a good work is done, and an experience fitting for more successful work for the Master.
Related service includes sisters distributing Christian literature without weariness when connected with God, gaining precious experience and training as workers by doing what they can for others. It includes canvassers putting life, energies and soul into the work and living wholly for God without yielding to indolence or discouragement over the outlook, even when the outcome is unseen, with a witnessing angel beside them and the record reflecting words, works and character. Through given grace, ceasing to do evil and learning to do well prepares a laborer together with God to become a reaper of a golden harvest of infinite blessings. It also includes continuing to give toward the work in Washington rather than letting offerings dwindle.
Faithful workers for souls must keep working on with faith in God, earnest endeavor, prayer and united cooperation without relaxing, discouragement, separation or fainting, and such persevering labor will reap its harvest with many souls saved as its reward. Persevering together in practical service brings spiritual growth, increased ability and souls saved, and faithfully using and applying what has been learned develops wisdom and knowledge with abundant temporal and spiritual results. This includes men who carry forward the Lord's work in difficult places, laboring far beyond strength for small wages with strict economy and sacrifice, bearing the disagreeable burden and heat of the day to establish a school, a sanitarium or some other interest, laboring and praying and striving with all strength without giving up or losing courage. Such builders should be upheld with words of cheer and encouragement rather than inconsiderately replaced by others supposed to do better.
Weariness in doing good hinders soul-saving, so workers need enduring patience, love, sincere faith and acceptance of discipline and spiritual training, since mere pious seeming and good intentions are not enough. Discouragement when efforts are ignored, seem fruitless, are poorly appreciated, or meet rebuffs, sneers and contempt is no reason for inactivity, despondency or return to self-caring lives, which receive no heavenly reward, for each will be judged according to works. Patient painstaking effort and courage are required even when results are not immediate, and even one grateful response or a small number rightly benefited shows faithful work bears fruit and makes the labor worthwhile, with one success outweighing prior discouragements.
Training Children and Youth
Parents are taught by this verse to persevere in the daily work of training children and not become discouraged when improvement is slower than hoped, continuing patient instruction and training as seeds that will bear good fruit in due time if they do not give up. They are to keep sowing good instruction and example with prayer and not quit when results are not immediate, because faithful labor brings its harvest in due season. Faithfully educating children will in due time show its fruit in seeing them grow into Christian men and women.
This training of children must be continuous patient work that does not tire of doing good, taken up bravely and cheerfully as a life duty laid by God on parents, not to be neglected or handed to others. It requires parents first to practice self-control themselves and to govern with love and justice side by side, enforcing prompt obedience while guiding the will and restraining the passions. The good work is not vigorous effort one day and neglect the next, nor eagerness for some great act or great sacrifice, but unceasing care in the little things of everyday life, hourly pruning and training of wayward tendencies, and giving instruction, reproof, and encouragement little by little as needed. It forbids expecting children to correct faults and form right character all at once or to reach maturity at a bound, and forbids becoming disheartened when hopes are not immediately realized. Mothers especially are to make the education of young children their highest aim, keeping habits and dress simple to have time to make them happy and lead them to cheerful willing obedience, making the Word of God the standard against worldly fashions and preparing the soil of the heart for truth to be sown.
Those who persevere without quitting will at the proper time gather a harvest of useful beautiful character formed after the Divine Pattern, built by successive steps, seeing children grow into Christian men and Christian women whose future happiness depends on early training. Parents who keep faithfully training their children in kindness and patience will reap an abundant harvest as surely as a farmer who sows good seed in his field reaps a crop, even when the teaching seems like time and effort thrown away like seed thrown on the ground. Faithful effort in guiding children will bring reward in due time if they do not lose heart or grow weary in doing what is right, even to bringing their children to God to receive immortal life.
Parents and church workers should keep patiently sowing good seed through loving instruction, encouragement, and steady effort, even when they do not see results at once, continuing to work in faith while waiting and hoping for God's salvation because labor will bear fruit if they do not give up. Steady loving instruction and care may not bring immediate results, but they are to continue in faith waiting for God's saving work in its proper season. Thoughtful earnest living in childhood and youth, taught through simple clearly understood lessons from God's Word and their own experience learning to conform life to the highest standard, can yield a rich harvest of good.
Students do good by encouraging and sustaining their teachers rather than tempting or discouraging them, and are urged to persist in this course as those who sow to the Spirit and do good to others when opportunity comes, since efforts will bring a harvest in due season if they do not give up. The seeds sown through a student's choices and influence can produce a harvest for heaven, for school life is a favorable time to live by God's principles and help direct others to Jesus. In teaching, faithfully sowing and cultivating the truth in children and youth is not in vain, trusting they may come to love and obey God, follow Christ, receive forgiveness and the Spirit's impressions, and grow in godly character. A teacher's faithful efforts may sometimes seem fruitless, but patient persevering work for good will be rewarded in due time, with noble characters and useful lives repaying toil and care.
Patiently guiding and caring for tempted and erring youth may be trying, but workers must not grow weary or give up in doing good, keeping on serving with love and encouragement in the trust that heaven's angels and heavenly beings work with each effort and that faithful effort will not fail. Efforts to do good such as supporting an afflicted brother and caring for his children will not be in vain, calling for continued service without failing or becoming discouraged. Sustaining afflicted or aged workers who have served faithfully is an example of this continuing duty not to tire in doing good because of reaping in due time if there is no giving up, and patient labor in the Lord's work will not fail.
Generosity and Daily Living
Well-doing with means treats money as a sacred trust to help God's children, dealing justly and refusing to spend the Lord's money lavishly to exalt ambitious plans and build monuments to self. It refuses to exalt one worker while poor, burdened, suffering fellow workers carrying heavy loads are left unappreciated and unaided, for God reads every purpose and thought and gives the due-season harvest to faithful ones who choose affliction with His people over self-indulgence rather than passing them over. Continuing without weariness means acting with Christlike kindness rather than sharpness or close dealing even amid difficulties. It means cooperating with Christ in doing good to souls and bodies after His example of bringing health to bodies to reach souls, valuing people as He valued them in giving His life for them, with every follower doing his given Christian duty in work nigh and afar off and making the best use of entrusted means as the Lord's money.
Giving to support missionary work must not tire despite repeated appeals and call after call, for God provides blessings and fruitful provision and faithful service has its reward. Faithful giving from entrusted means will bear fruit in due time if there is no giving up. That self-denying good includes dressing plainly and neatly, spending as little as possible on self, saving pennies for missionary work in a self-denial box, gaining daily a clearer understanding of the Word and improving every opportunity to impart it while cooperating with the Lord Jesus and learning His love, because God constantly imparts the great blessing of His Gift and time is short until time shall be no longer when the unfainting receive reward. It includes denying self to help the poor and needy, especially by supporting schools where Black people learn to read and write and learn of Jesus, with children kept taking part in the work. It includes continuing in self-sacrifice and teaching children to give even small amounts, for every penny is needed and reward is according to purity of motive so that even a gift as small as the widow's mite is noticed by the Lord.
Those prospered of God and conveniently settled must not weary in well-doing but must carry the burden of other fields perseveringly and continuously, not by fits and starts, thinking of regions beyond and distributing means to strengthen the young cause in new fields and to build churches and provide facilities where there are none rather than centering money in favored localities, and in this they receive the Lord's blessing. Those who have given money nobly to carry God's work must not become weary even when call after call comes, for God keeps giving gift upon gift with dew, sunshine, and showers making fields fruitful. Using wealth to advance truth and laboring to help people come to Christ and continue in faith belongs to persevering Christian life that leads to a rich reward in due time through growth in grace. Investing in God's cause and sacrificing for its advancement shows faith in its ultimate triumph and brings a precious eternal harvest far above earthly gain, while idle hands reap only small harvest.
Generous well-doing, especially in giving means and support for God's work, fails when selfish and covetous traits are not fully overcome. Grace and truth may soften covetousness for a time, but without entire victory Satan withers every noble generous principle when saving influence is withdrawn. Those who grow weary then feel too much is required of them because they forget the great sacrifice Jesus made to redeem them from Satan's power and hopeless misery.
Doing good to one another without ceasing includes showing godliness and brotherly kindness, strengthening one another and guarding one another's interests. Cultivating gentleness and having Christ's peace in the heart is both privilege and duty, and living as peacemakers and followers of Christ sows precious seed producing a harvest unto eternal life. Cultivating unselfish interest in others' welfare sows seeds of kindness reaping love, tenderness, and thoughtfulness in associates, for manifesting friendship and good will wins affection and good will, and self-forgetful readiness to assist brings accommodation and assistance in return.
In the home, not growing weary means persevering in love, truth, kindness, and forbearance in daily relationships, with reaping in due season for those who do not give up. It means doing good to all by faithfully performing home duties and comparing life with Christ's while praying for a humble sanctified mind, rather than faultfinding and spreading suspicion that plant seeds bringing a harmful harvest. The sincere Christian continues faithfully in doing right without weariness and grows toward the full stature of Christ.
Pure religion opens the eyes to the helpless, afflicted, and needy around, becoming acquainted with them and refusing to hide from them or shut out their needs, but doing all possible to help as proof of religion untainted with selfishness or corruption in aid of the great plan of salvation, without fear of good works and without weariness, sure of reaping in due season without fainting. It keeps abounding in the Lord's work and walking and working by faith, for God alone gives strength for each day's important responsibilities and weariness in doing good must not take hold. It works while strength and opportunity last, enduring reproach without faltering and devoting self to God's service in hope of final approval and reward. It labors with long patience and noblest effort to reap the fruit of toil on the way to heaven. It meets effort, tears, and hardship in learning life's lessons of duty and happiness without faltering or weariness, persevering in right to progress and prepare for life with holy angels. It toils zealously without giving up even while carrying families, home cares, anxieties, and heavy burdens, learning through effort and hardship, laboring with patience and noblest effort, encouraging the faithful to continue, warning not to let the weak be led astray, and holding on in faithful work.
Churches and teachers cooperate in spiritual tillage without weariness, sowing righteousness with hope of reaping unto eternal life, and even when meeting perversity, thwarting, evil hearts of unbelief, and stubborn soil where fallow ground must be broken up, they do not pause in doubt, fail, or grow discouraged but prosecute the labor as workers together with God, trusting not in self while God plows, sows, moistens, and waters through them. Continuing without weariness in a life of good works means using knowledge of truth not to quarrel but to be light-bearers persuading men to accept it, sowing in meekness and faith in hearts of all around for whom Christ died seeds bringing fruit unto righteousness according to ability given, surely gathering the harvest at the right time without giving up.