Avoiding the Slime

03.15.12

Galatians 6.9 9 Let us not lose heart in doing good, for in due time we will reap if we do not grow weary. NASB

Since Paul said, let us not lose heart in doing good, let’s look at what causes us to lose heart in the first place. Before we go there however, I want to share briefly about my day. For one thing, I’d already done my devotions for the day – or so I thought. At about 2:30 pm or so I was beginning to lose heart. I had seven interviews in for the day – not bad by my standards (I shoot for 10). I had one enrollment. Not bad. But boy, was I looking for a way out because I had put a lot of miles on the car in the meantime and been told no a-plenty. I was beginning to get pretty discouraged.

Now, why do we get discouraged and why would Paul posit the reality of losing heart in doing good? The obvious answer is that when we do good (help, pray, encourage, befriend, etc.) we are by nature anticipating something to happen – even to the point of maybe even expecting a thank you or some visible or tangible sign that something of our effort is working. We want to see fruit. And when we don’t see something we naturally tend to think nothing is happening despite our effort. And that is precisely where discouragement begins to grow.

First, if Paul wasn’t concerned about this he wouldn’t have mentioned it; and remember: the Holy Spirit inspired Paul to mention it. God knows who we are and how fallen we are. The reality of discouragement is truly multi-faceted and there are many reasons for it but one of the biggest is our desire to see results and when we don’t, we tend to think it’s all in vain. The result of that kind of thinking leads to wanting to “chuck it” because we to think it just isn’t working.

But God (through the Apostle) is telling us, don’t chuck it, you don’t do good because of what you see, you do good because of who you are and in the long run the result of doing good will reveal itself in blessings you could have in no other way had. Doing good is like putting a small amount of money in the bank each month and seeing that money grow in value over the years that we keep at it. The net result far outweighs the monthly discipline.

So today, tired and frustrated, I kept at it. I was doing good my God, the membership, my prospects, my country, and for myself. And at the end of the day I wound up with three enrollments (that’s the goal) and I came home after a long day of hanging in there happy that I did.

I wish doing good, in the sense that Paul was sharing, was that easy – it’s not. The people- factor precludes that. Sometimes no matter how much good we do the result is still the same slimy person doing the same slimy things. A motive-check at that point might be helpful: just why am I doing what I am doing for this slime-ball? A quick reminder of the reason might help too: because Jesus ...while being reviled, He did not revile in return; while suffering, He uttered no threats, but kept entrusting Himself to Him who judges righteously; and He Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross, so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness; for by His wounds you were healed. (1 Peter 2.23-24 NASB) We are healed from our tendency to give up, and we are healed in our tendency to write off a slime-ball as never amounting to anything more than an eternity of being a slime-ball. God doesn’t want us to go there – this former slime-ball attests to that!